[OPE-L:7232] [OPE-L:757] Re: Re: Re: abstract labour

Massimo De Angelis (M.Deangelis@UEL.AC.UK)
Thu, 25 Mar 1999 16:10:13 GMT0BST

> Labor by its very nature does not produce value; only abstract labor does.

I agree

> The latter is not reducible to quanta of energy either.

Agree

>Abstract labor produces value only due to the social reason of determinate class
> contradictions, viz. production for private profit, such that the the value
> of a commodity or the social labor that it represents can only be
> represented by way of or in the use value of another commodity.

Partially agree. Abstract labour produces value. Both abstract
labour and value are historically specific (and contradictory) form. A
transhistorical concept of labour has nothing to do with abstract
labour as substance of labour.

>There would
> be no value if production were directly social; the value form of the
> commodity is thus the stamp of a historically specific mode of
> production--Marx makes clear that the classical economists had no sense of
> this.

agree

Massimo