Abstract Labour

The essays gathered in this volume share a fundamental commitment: to reconceptualise human cognition, consciousness, and knowledge through the lens of a materialist dialectic grounded in labour, language, and activity. Across varying contexts and emphases, these texts argue that knowledge-production is not an abstract or neutral process, but one fundamentally embedded in—and conditioned by—the historically specific social form of production. Thinking, in the properly human sense, is not reducible to neurological or formal-linguistic mechanisms; it is a social activity, mediated by concepts, tools, and practices, and realised through historically evolving conceptual systems. This demands a critical investigation into how both spontaneous and scientific cognition arise, transform, and become institutionalised.

The essays gathered in this volume share a fundamental commitment: to reconceptualise human cognition, consciousness, and knowledge through the lens of a materialist dialectic grounded in labour, language, and activity. Across varying contexts and emphases, these texts argue that knowledge-production is not an abstract or neutral process, but one fundamentally embedded in—and conditioned by—the historically specific social form of production. Thinking, in the properly human sense, is not reducible to neurological or formal-linguistic mechanisms; it is a social activity, mediated by concepts, tools, and practices, and realised through historically evolving conceptual systems. This demands a critical investigation into how both spontaneous and scientific cognition arise, transform, and become institutionalised.

Objetivou-se apresentar alguns elementos sobre a categoria do trabalho abstrato dentro da análise econômica de Karl Marx, em O Capital, tendo por base a análise crítica desenvolvida por Isaak Rubin na obra Teoria Marxista do Valor. Como resultado, destacase que um dos grandes méritos da obra do autor russo foi apresentar as principais mediações que consubstanciam a determinação dessa categoria a partir da vigência do valor dentro do capitalismo. Ressaltou-se que a análise realizada por Marx sobre a categoria do trabalho abstrato refletiu um grande avanço do autor alemão em relação à economia política, assim como lhe serviu para apreender a forma específica de exploração do capitalismo. (The aim of this article is to present some elements of the category of abstract labour within Karl Marx’s economic analysis in Capital, based on the critical analysis developed by Isaak Rubin in his work Marxist Theory of Value. As a result, it is highlighted that one of the great merits of the Russian author’s work was to present the main mediations that substantiate the determination of this category based on the validity of value within capitalism. It is emphasized that Marx’s analysis of the category of abstract labour reflected a significant advance for the German author in relation to political economy, as well as serving to understand the specific form of exploitation within capitalism.)

Marx defines religion not as the source but the expression of human misery under capitalism, where individuals become automatons—personifications of capital. The critique of religion as critique of “God-capital,” the substance-subject of capitalist society, forms the foundation of all criticism. Religion, in this view, takes not only Biblical but also contemporary forms, including conspiracy theories. These theories perversely grant significance to the otherwise immiserated masses, who, feeling ineffectual, imagine themselves as central targets of grand conspiracies—thus reproducing their own powerlessness under a mystical guise.

Commodities are economic and symbolic objects, two aspects that merge in Marx's analysis of commodity fetishism, where two ontological and phenomenological planes operate. Their subject is the twofold social objectivity of the commodity as the product of labor and the object of exchange deriving from the dual nature of capitalist social relations as the real subsumption of labor under the command of capital in production and as market reciprocity in circulation. The reconstruction of the logical structure of Marx's analysis of the commodity allows for grasping the form of value and the fetishistic character of capitalist society. Value emerges as the objective abstract form of capitalist class relations acting as an automatic social code of equivalence between abstract labor in production and solvent social needs in market exchange. The disjunctive synthesis between labor exploitation and the formal equality of exchange constitutes value as a real abstraction in capitalism.

Socialism has traditionally been identified with central, top-down planning, which is seen as impossible and irrational. The only alternative is "the market," identified with capitalism. The 20th-century socialist experience, by contrast, put forward a multilevel (central-local) model, in which enterprises form their own detailed plans, under incentives to plan both ambitiously and realistically. The incentive design literature in Western economics has suggested an "impossibility" result: there is no way to incentivize local agents to tell the truth about their actual possibilities and therefore to contribute to efficient central plans. However, under modern conditions, a Collective Morale Function operates: planning requires activist mobilization of, and critical understanding among, workers. If an enterprise is to organize production successfully, it must attain high levels of morale, which in turn requires truth-telling and ambitious planning. This constitutes a path toward mature socialism, breaking the one-dimensional binary: either authoritarian planning, or the "market."

This article explores the work and family life of dual-earner parents, how they manage these commitments and how they respond to competing demands on their daily life. The analysis of qualitative data suggests that parents manage the work-family boundaries according to the specific meaning that they attach to these spheres of daily life, but it also points to employment structures informing parents’ ‘focus’ on work and family and equally shaping these boundaries. Hence, this article assesses the relevance of these boundaries and how families mediate work and home. This mediating position is analysed through an approach whereby social and economic constraints become parameters informing parents’ sense of self and the meanings used in the work and home articulation. Then, the symbolic side of the work-family interface becomes crucial to understand issues concerning the meaningful order of daily life and the emotional attachments of families to these domains. On this point, I argue tha...

We are living in an era characterised by the repercussions of recession and austerity, and the fields of work and family are directly affected by historical changes, making the need for reformulating concepts used in the sociology of work and family quite apparent. In order to do so, this article proposes an approach inspired by Open Marxism and critical theory that will assess the contribution of specialised literature in the work-family articulation to advance original analyses and investigate relevant issues around social reproduction under capitalism. The tension between capitalism and contemporary forms of family will be framed through the concept of the dual nature of labour and family life, insofar as they entail both sensuous and abstract forms of human involvement-most notably abstract labour. Issues around the emotional patterns of family life and the mediation that families operate between 'home' and 'work' spheres will take centre stage. One of the main points is that the development of labour as abstract labour under capitalism marginalises family forms in terms of the mediation between the private and the public spheres, because it relies on a more direct social integration (or 'synthesis') of its subjects. However, members of families, as active subjects, create social forms and resist disruptions caused by socioeconomic changes. In that sense, 'subjectivity' is thought to be a key concept to avoid thinking work and family as reified structures.

Resumo: O presente trabalho discute o importante texto de Georg Simmel “As grandes cidades e a vida do espirito”, escrito em 1903, trazendo seus pontos principais para pensar a experiencia de liberdade no espaco urbano nos dias atuais. Desde sua publicacao, esse texto se tornou uma referencia na area das Ciencias Sociais para o estudo da Modernidade, do individualismo e da subjetivacao no cotidiano das metropoles. Entendendo que esses assuntos constituem a base para a discussao de temas como a liberdade, a independencia e a autonomia, articulamos os argumentos de Simmel com essas questoes, trazendo tambem outros comentadores de seu texto. (Apoio: CAPES) Palavras-chave: Liberdade. Metropoles. Modernidade. Individualismo. Abstract: The present work discusses “The metropolis and the mental life”, Georg Simmel's seminal 1903 text, using its main points to underline contemporary experiences of freedom in urban spaces. From its release, Simmel's text has become a reference in the ...

Stadial (stage-based) theory clarifies the relation between the evolving conception of mature socialism, on the one hand, and historical experiences of central planning and "market socialism," on the other. The core of mature socialism is a system of multilevel democratic iterative coordination (MDIC), involving mutually supportive and mutually defining roles for a central authority and enterprises. This conception clarifies the relations between the socialist core and various precursor forms in existing transitional societies.

Marx posits a vision of socialism in which mass-produced items are priced via computation of embodied labour-time with remuneration such that one hour of actual labour is exchanged for items produced in one hour. But implementing Marx’s scheme today would incentivize increased individual labour time and drive a tendency to ecologically harmful “growth.” As pushing beyond capitalism remains indispensable, we must assess newer models of socialist planning and distribution providing alternatives to capitalism and market socialism

Art’s primary function, at least for a certain tradition of thinking, is to criticize capitalist society. But what in capitalism should be criticized? And how can art perform such a critique? Taking these questions as its staring point this article argues for three things mainly. First, by expanding on Frankfurt School thinker Theodor Adorno’s form theory, that art primarily should criticize capitalism through its form, understood as “sedimented content.” Secondly, taking Marx’s term abstract labour and the way it has been further theorized by contemporary thinkers such as Moishe Postone and Chris Arthur, that abstract labour is the main mediating social form of capitalism and therefore should be the main focus for critique. Finally that art can only negate the social form of abstract labour though its own form. These arguments are being discussed through American choreographer Yvonne Rainer’s (1934-) work, which can be categorised as “task-dance”, an artistic strategy that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s by choreographers Anna Halprin, Simone Forti and Rainer. Through Adorno’s understanding of form, I argue that Rainer’s early task-dance works criticise capitalism at the level of form rather than at the level of representation.

Resumo É incontestável o desenvolvimento vertiginoso do fenômeno urbano que com todo seu corolário repercute decisivamente nas formas modernas de sociabilidade. A vida urbana ascende ao mesmo tempo em que o projeto moderno ganha robustez. Modernidade e urbanidade carregam consigo um conjunto de ambiguidades. Estas, por suas vezes, produzem um modo de vida especificamente moderno, especificamente urbano. A maneira de "Ser" na cidade implica um conjunto de disposições psíquicas em consonância com as profundas transformações estruturais inscritas na moderna vida urbana. Neste artigo, irei apresentar alguns dos elementos centrais do texto simmeliano A metrópole e a vida do espírito, bem como sua influência sobre o trabalho de Louis Wirth em O urbanismo como modo de vida. Ambos os ensaios representam pontos de partida fundamentais para a sociologia e a antropologia urbanas. Palavras-chave: Sociologia urbana; modo de vida urbano; teoria social; modernidade. Abstract The dizzying development of the urban phenomenon, which with all its corollary has a decisive impact on modern forms of sociability, is indisputable. Urban life rises at the same time that modern design gains robustness. Modernity and urbanity carry with them a set of ambiguities. Which in turn produce a specifically modern, specifically urban way of life. The way of "Being" in the city implies a set of psychic dispositions in line with the profound structural transformations inscribed in modern urban life. In this paper, I will present some of the central elements of the Simmelian text The metropolis and the life of the spirit, as well as its influence on the work of Louis Wirth in Urbanism as a way of life. Both essays represent fundamental starting points for sociology and anthropology urban.

O objetivo desta comunicação é apresentar a influência decisiva da dialética hegeliana sobre a categoria marxiana de trabalho. Como é sabido, a distinção entre forma social e conteúdo material da produção (e da riqueza) é a trave-mestra do edifício teórico construído por Marx, organizando, em particular, toda a exposição do Livro Primeiro de O Capital. Assim, começarei por contrapor criticamente as noções de trabalho concreto e trabalho abstrato. Terei o cuidado especial de realçar que o trabalho abstrato não é uma generalização mental, mas uma redução prática efetuada pela matriz social apriorística do capital. Em segundo lugar, salientarei a relação dialética entre as esferas da produção e da circulação capitalista subjacente ao binómio trabalho abstrato/valor. Apesar de o valor só ser realizado no mercado, o trabalho criador de valor já é abstrato no momento da produção. Em terceiro lugar, mostrarei como as categorias hegelianas de posição e pressuposição permitem que o trabalho abstrato, na aceção marxiana, seja simultaneamente fisiológico e historicamente específico. Obviamente que o esforço físico estava pressuposto nas várias atividades irredutíveis e incomensuráveis das sociedades pré-capitalistas; porém, somente no modo de produção capitalista é que o puro dispêndio tautológico de energia é posto socialmente como trabalho abstrato. Finalmente, em quarto lugar, evidenciarei que a categoria marxiana de trabalho pode ser entendida como um universal concreto ou identidade-na-diferença em sentido hegeliano. Trata-se da unidade de universalidade e particularidade, porquanto o trabalho abstrato (universal) é a essência que se manifesta ou particulariza nos vários trabalhos concretos. Cada trabalho específico comporta os seus traços distintivos e, ao mesmo tempo, é o invólucro da substância homogénea que constitui a sua verdadeira essência. E vice-versa: a universalidade do trabalho abstrato permanece idêntica a si mesma em todas essas manifestações distintas. A (re)interpretação de Marx proposta será fundamentada nas contribuições de Lucio Colletti, Ruy Fausto, João Esteves da Silva, Mario Robles-Báez e Andrew Kliman.

Palavras-chave: Trabalho concreto, trabalho abstrato, redução, (pressu)posição, universalidade concreta.

Realizamos neste artigo um esforço de interpretação não essencializante e
crítico do fenômeno blasé, tomando-o como arquétipo ainda válido para
pensar a subjetividade urbana na contemporaneidade. Sem rejeitar a sua
leitura mais usual como uma reação de ensimesmamento do espírito – reserva
– diante do excesso de estímulos da metrópole – que se não passassem
por um processo radical de seleção levariam a um colapso da vida mental
–, buscamos enfatizar os condicionamentos sociais e psíquicos que fazem
do blasé menos um indiferente do que um antipático, uma subjetividade
onde a incapacidade de lidar com a alteridade, e o ódio pelo outro estão em
estado de latência. Dialogando com Richard Sennett buscamos demonstrar
a relação entre processos de segregação social e o processo de conformação
do corpo passivo tão afim ao fenômeno blasé. N’outra frente dialogamos
com a

One of the differences between knowledge-production activity of Modern science and pre-Modern science and other systems of belief is that the former attributes a universal character to its product. This unique aspect of modern scientific activity is related to its conceptuality. Modern natural science develops in response to the social needs that are determined by the continuous demand of capital for self-valorisation. The conceptual structure of modern natural sciences is the consequence of sciences’ subsumption to capital and their realisation through the mediation of abstract labour. The universality of scientific knowledge is the expression of this mediation.

Catalogue essay for Limitaction, Charlotte Warne Thomas, Window Space Gallery, London Metropolitan University (2015)

Charlotte Warne Thomas often uses gold in her work as a means through which to complicate concepts and measures of value. What happens to gold - as concept, sign and measure of value - within a speculative financial context, when markets pin value more to prospective future profits than to bullion in reserves? What happens to city spaces, and labour conditions, within such speculative contexts? Warne Thomas’ work, I argue, suggests the need for a theory of speculative labour to account for all of the work required, in our neoliberal moment, in order for people - and properties - to appear valuable as future assets.

Recent debates on abstract labour have highlighted Marx's ambivalent canception 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 labaur as a specifically capitalist form of labour v/hich entails a specific conception of social labour time-a time made abstract. The political implications of these rival accounts are formidable.