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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract and concrete labour | 1/6 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_and_concrete_labour | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T15:40:03.138517+00:00 | kb-cron |
Abstract labour and concrete labour refer to a distinction made by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. It refers to the difference between human labour in general as economically valuable worktime versus human labour as a particular activity that has a specific useful effect. As discussed in this article, according to Marx abstract labour is a concept that was known and used already in ancient society, but it evolved across time, and is fully developed only in the market relations of industrial capitalism.
== Overview == As economically valuable worktime, human labour adds value to products or assets (thereby conserving their capital value, and/or transferring value from inputs to outputs). In this sense, labour is an activity which creates/maintains economic value pure and simple. This could be realized as a sum of money once labour's product is sold or acquired by a buyer. If an employer hires a worker for a contractually specified time to produce something but the worker does not actually do any work, it's not only a waste of time, but also an extra cost to the employer (a loss of value). The value-creating ability of labour is most clearly visible, when all labour is stopped, for example during a strike or a disaster. If all labour is withdrawn, the value of the capital assets worked with will normally deteriorate. In the end, if all labour is permanently withdrawn, nothing remains but a ghost town. As a useful activity of a particular kind, human labour can have a useful effect by producing/supplying particular tangible products which are used by others, or by the producers themselves. In this sense, labour is an activity which creates use-values, i.e. "tangible products, results or effects", which can be used or consumed. The use-value of products is usually taken for granted. Its importance becomes very clear only when goods and services are created, which are (1) of poor quality, (2) not supplied on time and (3) mainly useless to the consumer. Labour must be applied to produce usable and useful products, regardless of how much they are sold for, otherwise they cannot be used and there is no use-value or utility at all. If labour produces useless products or results, it creates no value and it is simply a waste of labour-time. Most likely, useless products cannot be sold other than perhaps to a recycling business. So, Marx argues that human work is both (1) an activity which, by its useful effect, helps to create particular kinds of products, and (2) in an economic sense, a value-forming activity that, if it is productively applied, can help create more value than there was before. If an employer hires labour, the employer thinks both about how useful the labour service will be for his business operations, and about the value that the labour can create for his business. That is, the right kind of work not only needs to get done, but it also needs to get done in a way that it helps the employer to make money. If the labour makes no net addition to new value produced, then the employer makes no money from it. The labour will be only an expense to him. If the labour is only a net expense (overhead), then it is commercially speaking unproductive labour. Yet, it may be very necessary to employ this unproductive labour. If that labour was not done, then considerable capital value might be lost from the employer's financial investments. Indeed, the business might fail without it. That is, labour may be very necessary to maintain capital value, although it does not actually add value to capital, and does not directly add to net profit. So, the employer also buys the "unproductive labour", because it reduces his costs. His labour costs will be lower than the loss of value that would occur, if he did not employ unproductive labour to maintain capital value, and to prevent loss of capital value. For example, cleaning work might seem a very menial and low-value activity. But if business equipment fails, customers stay away, and the staff get sick or injured, it costs the business a lot of extra money.
== Origin ==
In the introduction to his Grundrisse manuscript, Marx argued that the category of abstract labour "expresses an ancient relation existing in all social formations"; but, he continued, only in modern bourgeois society (exemplified by the United States) is abstract labour fully realized in practice. Because only there does a system of price-equations exist within a universal market, which can practically reduce the value of all forms and quantities of labour uniformly to sums of money, so that any kind of labour becomes an interchangeable, tradeable good or "input" with a known price tag – and is also practically treated as such. In the Grundrisse, Marx also distinguished between "particular labour" and "general labour", contrasting communal production with production for exchange. Marx published about the categories of abstract and concrete labour for the first time in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) and they are discussed in more detail in chapter 1 of Capital, Volume I, where Marx writes: