Abstract
In Marx’s theory, the essential feature of the ‘market economy’ (of capitalism) is not simply commodity exchange but monetary circulation and money. In capitalism, each commodity is produced not as a mere useful thing, that is a use value, but as a bearer of value, a thing carrying a price. Even before entering the market, each ‘product’ potentially carries a price, which though will be realized (‘validated’) in the exchange process. Prices are thus determined in the process of capitalist production, that is in a historically unique process of (capitalist) production-for-the-exchange-and-for-profit, a process which unites immediate production with circulation. Every commodity attains the social form of general exchangeability, in abstraction from its specific utility or any other characteristic, expressing its value in monetary units. This is the main point of what Alfred Sohn-Rethel defined as the “real abstraction” of the value form. In other words, Sohn-Rethel’s notion of real abstraction constitutes an important contribution to Marxist theory of value and the value form. However, its generalization to cover ‘ages of commodity production from their beginnings in ancient Greece …’ partly deprives it of its hermeneutic accuracy.
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Notes
- 1.
‘The specific economic form in which unpaid surplus labour is pumped out of the direct producers determines the relationship of domination and servitude, as this grows directly out of production itself and reacts back on it in turn as a determinant’ (Marx 1991: 927).
- 2.
‘The concept of value is entirely peculiar to the most modern economy, since it is the most abstract expression of capital itself and of the production resting on it. In the concept of value, its secret is betrayed […]. The economic concept of value does not occur in antiquity’ (Marx 1993: 776 ff.).
- 3.
‘The value form of the product of labour is the most abstract, but also the most general form of the bourgeois mode of production as a particular kind of social production of a historical and transitory character’ (Marx 1990: 174).
- 4.
As Christopher Arthur writes: ‘What is extraordinary about Sohn-Rethel is that he shows that social abstraction occurs as a result of the practical action of exchangers and obtains with objective validity regardless of whether they are aware of it’ (Arthur 2010: 1).
- 5.
‘I was the first to point out and examine critically this twofold nature of the labour contained in commodities’ (Marx 1990: 132).
- 6.
A characteristic instance is that of Rosdolsky. In his book The Making of Marx’s Capital, which had a significant influence on post-World War II Marxist theoretical analysis, he maintains that decline from the ‘craftsmanship’ of the pre-capitalist artisan led to concrete labor becoming ‘abstract labor’. He writes: ‘Marx accepted the thesis of Ricardo, which is confirmed by the workings of the market, that what is involved is a reduction of specialised labour to unspecialised’ (Rosdolsky 1969: 609. Also see Rosdolsky 1977: 510 ff.).
- 7.
‘By the end of the fifth century, as we know from the Erechtheum accounts, wage rates of one drachma per day were common. The daily pay of sailors in the fleet was also between one drachma per day […] and half a drachma […] and the daily pay of dicasts was half a drachma from 425 onwards’ (de Ste. Croix 2004: 43). ‘The poorer women of Athens and, presumably, of other cities also worked for wages’ (Kyrtatas 2011: 105).
- 8.
In the Grundrisse Marx makes clear that he refers to economic forms which function ‘not as themselves forms of capital, but as earlier forms of wealth, as presuppositions for capital’ (Marx 1993: 504).
- 9.
In the antiquity, ‘no single statesman is known to have been a practising merchant, and no merchant is known to have played a prominent part in politics, even at Athens. The merchants were not all […] both non-citizens and men of little or no property; but […] their influence on politics, as merchants, was certainly infinitesimal’ (de Ste. Croix 2004: 356).
- 10.
Karl Marx has also stressed this view: ‘Do we never find in antiquity an inquiry into which form of landed property etc. is the most productive, creates the greatest wealth? Wealth does not appear as the aim of production, although Cato may well investigate which manner of cultivating a field brings the greatest rewards, and Brutus may even lend out his money at the best rates of interest. The question is always which mode of property creates the best citizens’ (Marx 1993: 487).
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Milios, J. (2020). Value Form and Abstract Labor in Marx: A Critical Review of Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s Notion of ‘Real Abstraction’. In: Oliva, A., Oliva, Á., Novara, I. (eds) Marx and Contemporary Critical Theory. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39954-2_2
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