Three: T h e C o m m o d i t y A b s t r ac t i on
The form of commodity is abstract and abstractness governs its
whole orbit. To begin with, exchange-value is itself abstract
value in contrast to the use-value of commodities. The exchange-
value is subject only to quantitative differentiation, and this
quantification is again abstract compared with the quantity
which measures use-values. Marx points out with particular
emphasis that even labour-, when determining the magnitude
land substance of value, becomes 'abstract human labour',
human labour purely as such. The form in which commodity-
value takes on its concrete appearance as money -- be it as
coinage or bank-notes is an abstract thing which, strictly
speaking, is a contradiction in terms. In the form of money riches
become abstract riches and, as owner of such riches, man himself
becomes an abstract man, a private property-owner. Lastly a
society in which commodity exchange forms the nexus rerum is a
purely abstract set of relations where everything concrete is in
private hands.
The essence of commodity abstraction, however, is that it is not
thought-induced; it does not originate in men's minds but in their
actions. And yet this does not give 'abstraction' a merely
metaphorical meaning. It is abstraction in its precise, literal
sense. The economic concept of value resulting from it i
characterised by a complete absence of quality, a differentiation
purely by quantity and by applicability to every kind n
commodity and service which can occur on the market. These
qualities of the economic value abstraction indeed display a
striking similarity with fundamental categories of quantifying
natural science without, admittedly, the slightest inner re-
lationship between these heterogeneous spheres being as ye
recognisable. While the concepts of natural science are thought
abstractions, the economic concept of value is a real one. It exists
nowhere other than in the human mind but it does not spring
from it. Rather it is purely social in character, arising in the
spatio-temporal sphere of human interrelations. It is not people
who originate these abstractions but their actions. 'They do this
without being aware of it.'
In order to do justice to Marx's Critique of Political Economy the
commodity or value abstraction revealed in his analysis must be
viewed as a real abstraction resulting from spatio-temporal
activity. Understood in this way, Marx)s discovery stands in
irreconcilable contradiction to the entire tradition of theoretical
philosophy and this contradiction must be brought into the open
by critical confrontation of the two conflicting standpoints. But such
a confrontation does not form part of` the Marxian analysis.
I agree with Louis Althusser that in the theoretical foundations
of Capital more fundamental issues are at stake than those
showing in the purely economic argument. Althusser believes
that Capital is the answer to a question implied but not
formulated by Marx. Althusser defeats the purpose of his search
for this question by insisting 'que la production de la
connaissance ... constitue un processus qui se passe tout entier
dans la pensee'. He understands Marx on the commodity abstrac-
tion metaphorically, whereas it should be taken literally and its
epistemological implications pursued so as to grasp how Marx's
method turns Hegel's dialectic 'right side up'. The unproclaimed
theme of Capital and of the commodity analysis is in fact the real
abstraction uncovered there. Its scope reaches further than
economics - indeed it concerns the heritage of philosophy far
more directly than it concerns political economy.
Some people go further and accuse Marx of having ignored the
epistemological implications of his own mode of thinking. Here I
agree that, if one takes up these implications and pursues them
consistently, epistemology itself undergoes a radical transfor-
mation and indeed merges into a theory of society. However I
believe that the fallacies of the epistemological and idealistic
tradition are more effectively eliminated if one does not talk of
'the theory of knowledge' but the division of mental and manual
labour instead. For then the practical significance of the whole
enquiry becomes apparent.
If the contradiction between the real abstraction in Marx and
the thought abstraction in the theory of knowledge is not brought
to any critical confrontation, one must acquiesce with the total
lack of connection between the scientific form of thought and the
historical social process. Mental and manual labour must remain
divided. This means, however, that one must also acquiesce with
the persistence of social class division, even if this assumes the
form of socialist bureaucratic rule. Marx's omission of the theory
of knowledge results in the lack of a theory of mental and manual
labour; it is, in other words, the theoretical omission of a
precondition of a classless society which was seen by Marx
himself to be fundamental.
The political implication heightens its theoretical importance.
For not only must the conception of history be broadened to
include science, but also its method must be a consistently critical
one. For Marx arrives at the correct understanding of things only
by critically tracing the causes that give rise to the false
consciousness operating in class society.
Thus, to the conditions of a classless society we must add, in
agreement with Marx, the unity of mental and manual labour, or
as he puts it, the disappearance of their division. And the present
study maintains that an adequate insight can only be gained into
the conditions of a classless society by investigating the origin of
the division of head and hand.
This involves a critique of philosophical epistemology which is
the false consciousness arising from this division. The Marxian
concept of critique owes its parentage to Kant in his Critique of
Pure Reason. We now apply in full circle the principle of critique in
this sense to the Kantian epistemology. This is the classic
manifestation of the bourgeois fetishism embodied in the mental
labour of science. We must trace the division of mental an
manual labour back to its earliest occurrence in history. Th
origin we date from the beginnings of Greek philosophy because
its antecedents in Egypt and Mesopotamia are prescientific.
Our task, now, amounts to the critical demonstration of th
commodity abstraction. 'This is only a reformulation of what was
previously referred to as 'critical confrontation'. We have to
prove that the exchange abstraction is, first, a real historical
occurrence in time and space, and, second, that it is a
abstraction in the strict sense acknowledged in epistemology.
This enquiry must be preceded by a description of the phenom-
enon under investigation.
Four: T h e P h e n o m e n o n o f t h e
E x c h a n g e A b s t r a c t i o n
The Marxist concept of commodity abstraction refers to the
labour which is embodied in the commodities and which:
determines the magnitude of their value. The value-creating
labour is termed 'abstract human labour' to differentiate it from
concrete labour which creates use-values. Our main concern is to
clarify this 'commodity abstraction" and to trace its origin to its
roots.
It must be stated from the outset that our analysis of exchange
and value differs in certain respects from that of Marx in the
opening of volume I of Capital without, for that matter,
contradicting his analysis. Marx was concerned with the 'critique
of political economy', while our subject is the theory of scientific
knowledge and its historical-materialist critique. However.
Marx himself has defined the aspect of exchange as it concerns
our purpose:
"...However long a series of periodical reproductions and preced-
ing accumulations the capital functioning today may have
passed through, it always preserves its original virginity. So
long as the laws of exchange are observed in every single act of
exchange taken in isolation - the mode of appropriation [of.
the surplus - S.-R.] can be completely revolutionised without
in any way affecting the property rights which correspond to
commodity production. The same rights remain in force
both at the outset, when the product belongs to its producer,
who, exchanging equivalent for equivalent, can enrich himself
only by his own labour, and in the period of capitalism, when
social wealth becomes to an ever-increasing degree the
property of those who are in a position to appropriate the
unpaid labour of others over and over again..."
Hence the formal structure of commodity exchange, in every
single act, remains the same throughout the various stages of
commodity production. I am concerned exclusively with this
formal structure, which takes no account of the relationship of
value to labour. Indeed where labour is taken into consideration
we are in the field of economics. Our interest is confined to the
abstraction contained in exchange which we shall find de-
termines the conceptual mode of thinking peculiar to societies
based on commodity production.
In order to pursue our particular purpose of tracing to its
origin the abstraction permeating commodity exchange we
slightly modify the starting base of the analysis. Marx begins by
distinguishing use-value and exchange-value as the major con-
trasting aspects of every commodity. We trace these aspects to the
different human activities to which they correspond, the actions
of use and the action of exchange. The relationship between these
two contrasting kinds of activity, use and exchange, is the basis of
the contrast and relationship between use-value and exchange-
value. The explanation of the abstraction of exchange is
contained in this relationship.
The point is that use and exchange are not only different and
contrasting by description, but are mutually exclusive in time.
They must take place separately at different times. This is
because exchange serves only a change of ownership, a change
that is, in terms of a purely social status of the commodities a!
owned property. In order to make this change possible on a basis
of negotiated agreement the physical condition of the com-
modities, their material status, must remain unchanged, or at any
fate must he assumed to remain unchanged. Commodity
exchange cannot take place as a recognised social institution
-unless this separation of exchange from use is stringently
observed. This is a truth which need only be uttered to be
convincing, and I regard it as a firm basis on which to build far-
reaching conclusions.
First, therefore, let us be clear as to the specific nature of this
particular restriction of` use. For there are, of course, countless
situations apart from exchange where the use of things is stopped,
hindered, interrupted or otherwise disputed. None of these have
the same significance as exchange. Things may be stored for later
use, others put on one side for the children, wine may be kept in
the cellar to mature, injured bodies be ordered a rest, and so on.
These are stoppages or delays of use decided upon by the users
themselves and done in the service of their use. Whether they
happen in a private household or on the wider basis of production
carried on in common with other people, cases of this kind are nor
on a level comparable with exchange, because use here is not
forbidden by social command or necessity. But social interference
occurs wherever there is exploitation without for that reason
alone being necessarily similar to exchange. Long before there
was commodity production exploitation assumed one of the
many forms of what Marx has termed 'direct lordship and
bondage'. This is exploitation based on unilateral appropriation
as opposed to the reciprocity of exchange. In ancient Bronze Age
Egypt, for instance, priests and scribes and other servants of the
Pharaoh were engaged co collect surplus produce from the
Nilotic peasants and put it into storage. Once the produce was
collected neither the peasant producers nor the collectors had
access to these goods for their own use, for the power and
authority for the collection emanated from the Pharaoh. There
was a transference of property, but a public, not a private, one,
and there was the same immutability of the material status of the
products held in store for disposal by the ruling authorities which
applies in the case of commodities in exchange. There were
significant formal similarities between Bronze Age Egypt or
Babylonia and Iron Age Greece, and we shall find in the second
part of this study that the proto-science which emerged in the
ancient oriental civilisations can be accounted for on these
grounds. But the great difference is that the social power
imposing this control over the use of things was in the nature of
the personal authority of the Pharaoh obeyed by every member
of the ruling set-up. In an exchange society based on commodity
production, however, the social power has lost this personal
character and in its place is an anonymous necessity which forces
itself upon every individual commodity owner. The whole of the
hierarchical superstructure of the Egyptian society has disap-
peared, and the control over the use and disposal of things is now
exercised anarchically by the mechanism of the market in
accordance with the laws of private property, which are in fact
the laws of the separation of exchange and use.
Thus the salient feature of the act of exchange is that its
separation from use has assumed the compelling necessity of an
objective social law. Wherever commodity exchange takes place,
it does so in effective 'abstraction' from use. This is an abstraction
not in mind, but in fact. It is a state of affairs prevailing at a
definite place and lasting a definite time. It is the state of affairs
which reigns on the market.
There, in the market-place and in shop windows, things stand
still. They are under the spell of one activity only; to change
owners. They stand there waiting to be sold. While they are there
for exchange they are there not for use. A commodity marked out
at a definite price, for instance, is looked upon as being frozen to
absolute immutability throughout the time during which its
price remains unaltered. And the spell does not only bind the
doings of` man. Even Nature herself is supposed to abstain from
any ravages in the body of` this commodity and to hold her
breath, as it were, for the sake of this social business of man.
Evidently, even the aspect of non-human nature is affected by the
banishment of use from the sphere of exchange.
The abstraction from use in no way implies, however, that the
use-value of the commodities is of no concern in the marker.
Quite the contrary. While exchange banishes use from the
actions of marketing people, it does not banish it from their
minds. However, it must remain confined to their minds,
occupying them in their imagination and thoughts only. This is
not to say that their thoughts need lack reality. Customers have
the right to ascertain the use-value of the commodities on offer.
They may examine them at close quarters, touch them, try them
out, or try them on, ask to have them demonstrated if the case
arises. And the demonstration should be identically like the use
for which the commodity is (or is not) acquired. On standards
empiricism no difference should prevail between the use on show
and the use in practice. This, however, is the difference that
matters on the business standards which rule in the market. 0f a
commodity ;n the market the empirical data come under
reservations like those argued in subjective idealism; material
reality accrues to them when the object is out of the market and
passes, by virtue of the money paid, into the private sphere of the
acquiring customer.
It is certain that the customers think of commodities as objects
of use, or nobody would bother to exchange them (and
confidence tricksters would be out of business) . The banishment
of use during exchange is entirely independent of what the
specific use may be and can be kept ;II the private minds of the
exchanging agents (buyers and sellers of sodium chlorate might
have gardening in mind or bomb-making).
Thus, in speaking of the abstractness of exchange we must be
careful not to apply the term to the consciousness of the
exchanging agents. They are supposed to be occupied with the
use of the commodities they see, but occupied in their imagin-
ation only. It is the action of exchange, and the action alone
that is abstract. The consciousness and the action of the people
part company in exchange and go different ways. We have to
trace their ways separately, and also their interconnection.
As commodity production develops and becomes the typical
form of production, man's imagination grows more and more
separate from his actions and becomes increasingly
individualised, eventually assuming the dimensions of a private
consciousness. This is a phenomenon deriving its origin, not from
the private sphere of use, but precisely from the public one of the
market. The individualised consciousness also is beset by ab-
stractness, but this is not the abstractness of the act of exchange at
its source. For the abstractness of that action cannot be noted
when it happens, since it only happens because the consciousness
of its agents is taken up with their business and with the empirical
appearance of things which pertains to their use. One could say
that the abstractness of their action is beyond realisation by the
actors because their very consciousness stands in the way. Were
the abstractness to catch their minds their action would cease to
be exchange and the abstraction would not arise. Nevertheless
the abstractness of exchange *does* enter their minds, but only after
the event, when they are faced with the completed result of the
circulation of the commodities. The chief result is money in
which the abstractness assumes a separate embodiment. Then,
however, 'the movement through which the process has been
mediated vanishes in its own result, leaving no trace behind'.
This will occupy us more fully later on. Here we want to return
once more to the separation of exchange from use and to its basic
nature.
When looking at use and exchange as kinds of human practice
it becomes plain to see in what manner they exclude each other.
Either can take place only while the other does not. The practice
of 'use' covers a well-nigh unlimited field of human activities; in
fact it embraces all the material processes by which we live as
bodily beings on the bosom of mother earth, so to speak,
comprising the entirety of what Marx terms 'man's interchange
with nature' in his labour of` production and his enjoyment of
consumption. This material practice of man is at a standstill, or
assumed to be at a standstill, while the other practice, that of
exchange, holds sway. This practice has no meaning in terms of
nature: it is purely social by its constitution and scope. 'Not an
atom of matter enters into the objectivity of commodities as
values; in this it is the direct opposite of the coarsely sensuous
objectivity of commodities as physical bodies.'" The point is that
notwithstanding the negation that exchange implies of the
physical realities of use and use-value, the transfer of possession
negotiated under property laws in no way lacks physical reality
itself. Exchange involves the movement of the commodities in
time and space from owner to owner and constitutes events of no
less physical reality than the activities of use which it rules out. It
is indeed precisely because their physical reality is on a par that
both kinds of practice, exchange and use, are mutually exclusive
in time. It is in its capacity of a real event in time and space that
the abstraction applies to exchange, it is in its precise meaning
real abstraction and the 'use' from which the abstraction is made
encompasses the entire range of sense reality.
Thus we have, on the basis of commodity production, two
spheres of spatio-temporal reality side by side, yet mutually
exclusive and of sharply contrasting description. It would help us
to have names by which we could designate them. In German the
world of 'use' is often called 'the first or primary nature', material
in substance, while the sphere of exchange is termed a 'second,
purely social nature' entirely abstract in make-up. They are
both called 'nature' to point to the fact that they constitute
worlds equally spatio-temporal by reality and inextricably
interwoven in our social life. The ancient legend of King Midas,
who wished for everything he touched to turn to gold and died
upon having his wish fulfilled, vividly illustrates how contrasting
in reality and yet how closely associated in our minds both these
natures are.
This, in the briefest way, is the foundation on which I shall
base my historical and logical explanation of the birth of
philosophy in Greek society of slave-labour, and of the birth of
modern science in European society based on wage-labour. To
substantiate my views three points have to be established:
(a) that commodity exchange is an original source of abstrac-
tion; (b) that this abstraction contains the formal elements
essential for the cognitive faculty of conceptual thinking; (c) that
the real abstraction operating in exchange engenders the
ideal abstraction basic to Greek philosophy and to modern
science.
On the first point, it is necessary to recapitulate the points
made so far: commodity exchange is abstract because it excludes
use; that is to say, the action of exchange excludes the action of
use. But while exchange banishes use from the actions of people
it does not banish it from their minds. The minds of the
exchanging agents must be occupied with the purposes which
prompt them to perform their deal of exchange. Therefore while
it is necessary that their action of exchange should be abstract
from use, there is also necessity that their minds should not be.
The action alone is abstract. The abstractness of their action
will, as a consequence, escape the minds of the people performing
it. In exchange, the action is social, the minds are private. Thus, the
action and the thinking of people part company in exchange and
go different ways. In pursuing point (b) of our theses we shall take
the way of the action of exchange, and this will occupy the next
two chapters. For point (c) we shall turn to the thinking of the
commodity owners and of their philosophical spokesmen, in Part
II of the book.
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