By: N Pepperell

N Pepperell — Sun, 03 May 2009 10:42:52 +0000

If I can confuse you even more: I would say that the argument is more that it is abstract labour that “makes” labour power… Or, at least, the argument is interested in speaking about what drives an ongoing process whereby the concrete social division of labour is reconfigured over time. My read is that Marx is trying to explore the implications of a process by which – in the absence of any sort of conscious planning and/or overt custom that aims to achieve some particular division of labour – social labour power is nevertheless gradually displaced from its existing uses, and reallocated to others, on an aggregate level, and over time, through unintentional collective processes. Categories like “abstract labour” and “value” – categories of “essence”, rather than “appearance” – are categories that, for Marx, capture unintentional processes that nevertheless arise from human practice – but in ways that confront their creators as a coercive force. It is this unintentional coercion that then reacts back on the concrete division of labour – forcing constant revolution and transformation in the specific forms in which human labour power can be expressed – that Marx is trying to understand and locate in determinate forms of collective practice. This analysis is difficult specifically because the result is not directly intended by anyone – instead, it “emerges” as a byproduct of practices aimed at very different immediate ends.

This is not, however, necessarily a standard read of the relation between these categories – it’s more common to try to understand the argument as flowing the other way – to argue that, in spite of overt appearances, labour power, or the costs of production of labour, or some potentially quantifiable existent of this sort, is determining of a macrosociological trend that people don’t realise is determined in this way.

So in terms of what you present… that might be a difficult choice to make

What chapter(s) are you presenting on?

By: Bis

Bis — Sat, 02 May 2009 15:49:52 +0000

Dear N

Thank you for the enriching and enlightening journey you have taken us through.

I am doing a presentation to my Capital Reading Group of Part 2 of Volume 1. At the risk of sounding glib and anti-climactic, what exactly is the relationship between the categories of abstract labour and labour power? If capital is the process of value/abstract labour assuming the successive forms of commodities and money in order to augment itself, and labour power is the commodity whose consumption creates value/abstract labour, then does that make labour power the source of abstract labour?

Sorry if I appear confused – I am!

Thanks

Bis

Comments on: Thesis Workshop: What a Piece of Work Is Man

By: N Pepperell

By: Bis