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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract and concrete labour | 4/6 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_and_concrete_labour | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T15:40:03.138517+00:00 | kb-cron |
"...only under capitalism is concrete labor in general metamorphosed into abstract labor, and only under capitalism is this necessary in order to bring about the reproduction of class relations." The logical implication of this ultraleftist interpretation is, that if capitalism is destroyed (by the revolutionary Marxist Party and the working class), then abstract labour is also destroyed and eradicated. Other Marx-scholars, such as Makoto Itoh, take a more evolutionary view (like Marx did and archaeologists do). They argue that the abstract treatment of human labour-time is something that evolved and developed in the course of the whole history of trade, or even precedes it, to the extent that primitive agriculture already involves attempts to economise labour, by calculating the comparative quantities of labour-time involved in producing different kinds of outputs. In this sense, Marx already argued in his book A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) that
"This abstraction, human labour in general, exists in the form of average labour which, in a given society, the average person can perform, productive expenditure of a certain amount of human muscles, nerves, brain, etc. It is simple labour [English economists call it "unskilled labour"] which any average individual can be trained to do and which in one way or another he has to perform. The characteristics of this average labour are different in different countries and different historical epochs, but in any particular society it appears as something given." In the same text, Marx comments that
"Steuart knew very well that in pre-bourgeois eras also products assumed the form of commodities and commodities that of money; but he shows in great detail that the commodity as the elementary and primary unit of wealth and alienation [i.e. transfer of property or transfer of command over resources] as the predominant form of appropriation are characteristic only of the bourgeois period of production, and that accordingly labour which creates exchange-value is a specifically bourgeois feature." Originally, in ancient society and medieval society ("premodern" or "pre-bourgeois" society), commodity production co-existed with subsistence production, a situation of "partial commodity production" (see also simple commodity production). When Marx discusses the origin and evolution of exchange, he notes that:
"This division of the product into a useful thing and a thing possessing value appears in practice only when exchange has already acquired a sufficient extension and importance to allow useful things to be produced for the purpose of being exchanged, so that their character as values has already to be taken into consideration during production. From this moment on, the labour of the individual producer acquires a twofold social character." Such a division of labour featuring partial commodity production is already achieved in many different precapitalist societies, and consequently the category of abstract labour already existed in precapitalist societies. However, only under conditions of generalized commodity production in a capitalist society does abstract labour become a truly "universal" characteristic of production - because the vast majority of inputs and outputs of production are tradeable goods and services regulated by values and price-levels in competitive markets. The category of abstract labour is fully realized because it becomes an objectified quantity.
=== Skilled labour === Another controversy concerns the differences between unskilled (simple) and skilled (qualified) labour. Skilled labour costs more to produce than unskilled labour, and can be more productive. Generally Marx assumed that—irrespective of the price for which it is sold—skilled labour power had a higher value (it costs more to produce, in money, time, energy and resources), and that skilled work could produce a product with a higher value in the same amount of time, compared to unskilled labour. This was reflected in a skill hierarchy, and a hierarchy of wage-levels. In this sense, Friedrich Engels comments in Anti-Duhring: