| This question <43|43> overall <40|42> Akudiya: <5|205>. graded A |
| Question 109: Define abstract labor and explain why Marx's theory can be summarized as: “Under capitalism, labor has social significance only as abstract labor.” |
| [41] Akudiya: Abstract labor and its significance. Prof. Ehrbar quotes Karl Marx on page 61 of the annotations as Marx states, “If we disregard the specificity of the productive activity and therefore the useful character of the labor, then nothing remains but that it is an expenditure of human labor-power.” |
| Abstraction is the key for Marx to understand the capitalist society. |
| While reading the annotations, it is clear how Marx is trying to approach understanding capitalism through the commodity, because it is the basic form of wealth of the commodity, as Marx states on page five of the annotations as he states, “In a capitalist society wealth takes the form of commodities.” |
| In order to understand the commodity, Marx moves toward labor as the increment within a commodity that becomes the decisive factor within its exchange value. |
| Then the abstraction takes place. |
| As the quote at the beginning of this passage stated that nothing remains in labor if it is extracted but, “the expenditure of human labor power.” |
| The expenditure of internal faculties is what labor comes down to in Marx's abstraction of labor. |
| When you look at labor in those terms, then the exchange value of a particular commodity can be somewhat quantified, which leads us to the second part of the question as to why abstract labor is the only type of labor which is significant under capitalism. |
| This goes back to the beginning of the annotations and how wealth is measured with the commodity. If the only way to distinguish the exchange value of a commodity is by examining the abstract labor that was put into the commodity, then the capitalist would be most interested in that abstract labor since it is the decisive factor within the commodity. |
| The exchange value is what that commodity is traded for and that is why the abstract labor has so much social significance in a capitalist society. |
| “The human expenditure of human brain, muscles, nerves,” as Marx states on page 61 of the annotations, is abstract labor and is the only type of labor which holds social significance in the capitalist society. |
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