Allin's quotes are precisely what I had in mind in raising the question of
the interpretation of "abstract labor". It's helpful to have them out on
the table.
I'm not sure I believe that Marx was strictly consistent throughout his
very long writing career in using technical terms, so I tend to look for
the narrower sense (as being more helpful in making distinctions). I take
the quotes to support an interpretation that there is something (which
Marx sometimes called "abstract labor") specific to commodity production,
even if he also used the phrase "abstract labor" in other contexts in its
more relaxed meaning of "labor in the abstract".
Yours,
Duncan