"Ruled by abstractions": Abstract labour, and the labour of abstraction in Marx’s critique of political economy

In his Grundrisse manuscripts from 1857, Karl Marx (1818–1883) writes that individuals in the bourgeois society are ”von Abstraktionen beherrscht” – ruled by abstractions. In Das Kapital from 1867 Marx writes that for the analysis of economic forms our only available tool is ”Abstraktionskraft” – the force of abstraction. How are these two notions of abstraction to be understood and related? Taking its point of departure in the category abstract labour, this thesis reconstructs the premises for Marx’s theory and situates his critique of political economy in its historical and scientific context, primarily in relation to Ricardo and Hegel. Marxian scholarship is divided over Marx’s notion of abstract labour with one side stressing the abstraction of labour as the reduction of human labour to the expenditure of labour power in its physiological sense, and the other side stressing the purely social character of the abstract labour constituting commodities as objects of value. Within the latter camp it is commonly argued that Marx’s understanding of abstract labour is nevertheless ambivalent, if not inconsistent, and that two definitions of abstract labour can be found in the text of Das Kapital: one social and one physiological. The implication of this analysis is that Marx’s critique, and overthrow, of political economy is incomplete. By way of textual analysis of Das Kapital and related manuscripts, drafts, and letters, this thesis reconstructs the premises for Marx’s method, while showing how even though inconsistencies are to be found in Marx’s textual corpus, the category of abstract labour is not one of those instances; his critique and overthrow of political economy is essentially consistent. This thesis argues that abstract labour is a purely social form and that Marx’s ’physiological definition’ is but one moment of the determination of this category. Abstract labour as the social essence of value and capital is to be considered as a determinate abstraction pertaining only in capitalist relations. The physicalist abstraction in its turn constitutes a general abstraction to be found in human social existence per se. As the abstract social substance of value, abstract labour constitutes a Realabstraktion, dominating individuals in bourgeois society