| This question <34|34> overall <30|32> Copenhagen: <557-22|142>. |
| Question 110: Carefully explain the meaning of the statement: “The conversion of all commodities into labor-time is no greater an abstraction, and is no less real, than the resolution of all organic bodies into air.” |
| [31] Copenhagen: Marx states that this reduction takes the form of an abstraction, but it is an abstraction that is made every day in the social process of production. The conversion of all commodities into labor-time is no greater an abstraction and is no less real, than the resolution of all organic bodies into air. |
| He is talking about the reduction of human labor power into nothing. Marx states that if we disregard the specificity of the productive activity and therefore the useful character of the labor, then nothing remains of it but that it is an expenditure of human labor power. In his example he gives the difference between the tailor and the weaver of the cloth that is being tailored. Tailoring and weaving, though qualitatively different productive activities, are both the productive expenditures of human brains, nerves, and muscles, and in this sence are both human labor. |
| In the end we can basically break down every task that is performed by laborers and break it down to the nerves and muscles of the activity, which is human labor, or we can focus on the big picture, the commodity that is produced. It doesn't matter how useful the laborers or the productive activities might be, it is a physiological truth that they are functions of the human organism, and that each such function, whatever may be its nature or form, is essentially the expenditure of human brain, nerves, muscles, sense organ, etc. |
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