Socially created categories ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ JN [new]: We fully recognize Marx's insistence on the socially created nature of all capitalist categories, including abstract labor. In our view, this is one of his greatest merits. But as noted, we also think he got entangled (a) in supposing, perhaps under the influence of the chemical revolution, that the qualities of concrete labor could indeed be reduced to some quantitative elementary unit (abstract labor), and (b) that this unit indeed was the building block underlying the process of accumulation.
^^^^^^ CB: Naahhh :>) I don't think so :>) That'd be the ultimate vulgar materialism. Although there is a kind of pun joke here I was going to tell. You know in the old cosmology of Newtonian physics "power" is the " ability to do work" hahahaha. ^^^^^^^ CB: Another point here is that if Marx was "entangled" in the way you say above, then he _would_ be maintaining that capitialism is a natural order of things. Capitalist political economy would be based in physics. Marx is famous for arguing against the idea that capitalism is a natural order, that society is reducible to physics.
