Recent debates on abstract labour have highlighted Marx’s ambivalent conception of this important term. This article criticises current physiological definitions of the term, and against the background of earlier debates in Capital & Class, develops abstract labour as a specifically capitalist form of labour which entails a specific conception of social labour time—a time made abstract. The political implications of these rival accounts are formidable.
Alliez E. ( 1996) Capital Times. London: University of Minnesota Press.
2.
Arthur C. ( 2001) Value, labour, and negativity. Capital & Class75.
3.
Arthur C. ( 2004) The New Dialectic. Leiden: Brill.
4.
Arthur C. ( 2010, forthcoming) The practical truth of abstract labour. Historical Materialism.
5.
Bellofiore R. ( 2009) A ghost turning into a vampire. In Bellofiore R, Fenischi R (eds.) Re-reading Marx. London: Palgrave .
6.
Benjamin W. ( 1968) Theses on the philosophy of history. In Illuminations. New York: Brace & World.
7.
Bensaid D. ( 2002) Marx For Our Time. London: Verso.
8.
Bonefeld W. ( 1996) Money, equality and exploitation. In Bonefeld W, Holloway J (eds.) Global Capital, National State and the Politics of Money. London: Palgrave.
9.
Bonefeld W. ( 2004) On Postone’s courageous but unsuccessful attempt to banish the class antagonism. Historical Materialism12(3).
10.
Bonefeld W. ( 2009a) Emancipatory praxis and conceptuality in Adorno. In Holloway J, Matamoros F, Tischer S (eds.) Negativity and Revolution. London: Pluto.
11.
Bonefeld W. ( 2009b) Naturalisation versus critique of economic categories . Critique37(1). Braverman H. (1974) Labour and Monopoly Capital . New York: Monthly Review Press .
12.
Carchedi G. ( 2009) The fallacies of ‘new dialectics’ and value-form theory. Historical Materialism17(1).
13.
De Angelis M. ( 1995) Beyond the technological and the social paradigms: A political reading of abstract labour as the substance of value. Capital and Class57.
14.
De Angelis M. ( 1996) Social relations, commodity-fetishism and Marx’s Critique of Political Economy. Review of Radical Political Economics28(4).
15.
Debord G. ( 1992) Society of the Spectacle. London: Rebel Press.
16.
De Vroey M. ( 1982) On the obsolescence of the Marxian theory of value. Capital & Class17.
17.
Dobb M. ( 1940) Political Economy and Capitalism. London: Routledge.
18.
Eldret M., Hanlon M. ( 1981) Reconstructing value-form analysis. Capital & Class13.
19.
Engels F. ( 1983 {1877}) Anti-Dühring. In MEW 20. Berlin: Dietz.
20.
Fracchia J. ( 2004) On transhistorical abstractions and the intersection of historical theory and social critique. Historical Materialism12(3).
21.
Fracchia J. ( 2010, forthcoming) Wert, Werte, und Entwertung. In Bonefeld W, Heinrich M (eds.) Kapital & Kritik. Hamburg: VSA.
22.
Gambino F. ( 2003) A critique of the Fordism of the Regulation School. In Bonefeld W (ed.) Revolutionary Writing. New York: Autonomedia.
23.
Gunn R. ( 1991) Marxism, metatheory and critique. In Bonefeld W, Holloway J (eds.) Post-Fordism and Social Form. London: Palgrave.
24.
Gunn R. ( 1992) Against historical materialism. In Bonefeld W, Gunn R and Psychopedis K (eds.) Open Marxism, Vol. 2 . London: Pluto.
25.
Haug FW ( 2005) Vorlesungen zur Einführung ins ‘Kapital’ , 6th edition. Hamburg: Argument Verlag.
26.
Heinrich M. ( 1999) Die Wissenschaft vom Wert. Münster : Dampfboot.
27.
Heinrich M. ( 2004) Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Stuttgard: Schmetterling.
28.
Heinrich M. ( 2009) Reconstruction or deconstruction. In Bellofiore R, Fineschi R (eds.) Re-reading Marx: New Perspectives after the Critical Edition. London: Palgrave.
29.
Himmelweit S., Mohun S. ( 1978) The anomalies of Capital. Capital & Class6.
30.
Kay G. ( 1999) Abstract labour and capital. Historical Materialism5, Winter.
31.
Kay G., Mott J. ( 2004) Concept and method in Postone’s Time Labour and Social Domination. Historical Materialism12(3).
32.
Kicillof A., Starosta G. ( 2007a) Value form and class struggle. Capital & Class92.
33.
Kicillof A., Starosta G. ( 2007b) On materiality and social form. Historical Materialism15(3).
34.
Krahl HJ ( 1984) Vom Ende der abstrakten Arbeit. Frankfurt : Materialis Verlag.
35.
Mandel E. ( 1971) The Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx. London: New Left Books.
36.
Marcuse H. ( 1958) Soviet Marxism. London: Routledge.
37.
Marx K. ( 1962 [1881]) Randglossen zu Adolph Wagners Lehrbuch der politischen Ökonomie. In MEW 19. Berlin: Dietz.
38.
Marx K. ( 1970 [1875]) Critique of the Gotha Programme. In MESW 3. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
39.
Marx K. ( 1973[1857]) Grundrisse. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
40.
Marx K. ( 1976 [1847]) The Poverty of Philosophy. In MECW 6. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
41.
Marx K. ( 1979 [1867]) Das Kapital, Vol. 1. Berlin: Dietz.
42.
Marx K. ( 1983 [1867]) Capital, Vol. I. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
43.
Marx K. ( 1987a [1859]) Contribution Toward a Critique of Political Economy. In MECW 29. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
44.
Marx K. ( 1987b [1867]) Letter of Marx to Engels, 24 August . In MECW 42. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
45.
Marx K. ( 1987c) From the preparatory materials. In MECW 29. London: Lawrence & Wishart .
46.
Marx K. ( 1987d) Ergänzungen und Veränderungen. In MEGA, II.6. Berlin: Dietz.
47.
Marx K. ( 1990 [1867]) Capital, Vol. 1. London: Penguin.
48.
Marx K. ( 1992 [1894]) Capital, Vol. 3. London: Penguin.
49.
Murray P. ( 2000) Marx’s ‘truly social’ labour theory of value. Historical Materialsm6, Summer.
50.
Murray P. ( 2005) The new giant’s staircase. Historical Materialism13(2).
51.
Murray P. ( 2009) The place of ‘the results of the immediate production process’ in Capital. In Bellofiore R , Fenischi R (eds.) Re-reading Marx. London: Palgrave .
52.
Postone M. ( 1996) Time, Labour and Social Domination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
53.
Reichelt H. ( 1995) Why did Marx conceal his dialectical method? In Bonefeld W, Gunn R, Holloway J, Psychopedis K (eds.) Emancipating Marx. London: Pluto.
54.
Reichelt H. ( 2005) Social reality as appearance. In Bonefeld W, Psychopedis K (eds.) Human Dignity. Aldershot: Ashgate .
55.
Reichelt H. ( 2008) Neue Marx-Lektüre. Hamburg: VSA.
56.
Rubin I. ( 1972) Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value. Detroit: Black & Red.
57.
Schmidt A. ( 1981) History and Structure. Cambridge MA : MIT.
58.
Schrader FE ( 1980) Restauration und Revolution. DieVora rbeiten zum „Kapital" von Karl Marx in seinen Studienheften 1850-1858. Gerstenberg: Hildesheim.
59.
Smith T. ( 1990) The Logic of Marx’s Capital. Albany: State University of New York Press.
60.
Starosta G. ( 2008) The commodity-form and the dialectical method. Science and Society72(3).
61.
Tischler S. ( 2005) Time of reification and time of insubordination. In Bonefeld W, Psychopedis K (eds.) Human Dignity. Aldershot: Ashgate.
62.
Vatin F. ( 2004) Trabajo, ciencias y sociedad: Ensayos de sociología y epistemología del trabajo. Buenos Aires: Lumen-Humanitas.
