Mike L (457) has misunderstood me--I was not arguing that "abstract
labor" in the sense of substance of value can be applied in the
analysis of all societies--in fact, I said expressly the
opposite--but that the category of "labor", first developed in
capitalism, can be used to think about other social systems, to which
it cannot be applied directly. (Thus we can classify "labor" in Greek
society as slave and free--something which one can't do in classical
Greek.) Paul M.