| This question <56|89> overall <79|81> Peace: <77|237>. |
| Exam Question 70: What is abstract human labor? I want you to say what it is, not what its significance is in commodity-producing society! These are two different questions. |
| [80] Peace: Abstract Drudgery Abstract human labor is not merely a cognitive act, but it is in fact concrete or has “ontological” status. But it is not concrete specific, but is (concrete) labor in general (or as such). |
| Abstract human labor is a social process that exists in capitalist production relations, but is not rendered an empirical status until the act of exchange. In this sense, abstract human labor should be understood as a reality that exists in capitalism (it has ontological status). |
| Abstract human labor is a generative mechanism of capitalism. |
| It is the condition that is necessary for the emergence of commodity production. Marx wants to explain the generative mechanisms which presuppose the existence of commodity production and the act of exchange, this is not necessarily an empirical question, but a more transcendental (as Collier explains in the optional course text) question. Or to repeat, it is the type of (transcendental) question that asks what is necessary for the act of exchange to exist that renders heterogenous labor homogeneous. The generative mechanism that is necessary to perform this function (which is specific to capitalism) Marx dubs “abstract human labor.” |
| Hence, in this sense it is a social process in capitalism. More specifically it occurs in the labor process itself. |
| Hans: You don't seem to realize to what extent abstract labor is an aspect of every actual labor process. |
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