| This question <31|31> overall <33|35> Hans: <30|35>. |
| 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.” |
| [34] Hans: Fire is a process of real abstraction. Copenhagen [31] brings the right Marx quotes, but he does not place them into the right context. Copenhagen's first Marx quote is: |
| This reduction takes the form of an abstraction, but it is an abstraction that is made every day in the social process of production. |
| Marx is talking here about the reduction of all the diverse labors that exist to undifferentiated, homogeneous, simple labor. One can make this abstraction in one's head and say: yes, all these labor processes have in common that they are the expenditure of human brain, muscles, nerves, etc. Alone the fact that all these different activities have the same name, they are called “labor,” shows that this mental abstraction is often made. But in a commodity-producing society this abstraction is not only a mental abstraction but also a real abstraction. When people change careers, wander from one job to the next in order to follow the market, then they show practically that all the labors they perform have something in common. |
| Now the Marx quote continues with the passage which was taken into the text of the question: |
| 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. |
| A student of chemistry learns that all organic materials are composed of molecules that consist of lots of C and H atoms and only very few other kinds of atoms. For the sake of the argument say they only consist of C and H atoms linked together in different ways. This is an abstraction, it is the reduction of the many organic materials to something simple they have in common. At first this is only a mental abstraction: we know this about the organic materials. But when there is a fire, then nature itself makes this abstraction: The C atoms combine with oxygen to CO2, and the H atoms to H2O. I.e., in the fire, the organic materials are dissolved into carbon dioxide and water vapor or, as Marx says, into air. Fires are real abstractions, they show us vividly that all organic materials are composed of the same atoms. Basically they are composed of air and dissolve back into air. |
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