Abstract labour and concrete labour
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Abstract labour and concrete labour refer to a distinction made by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. This distinction is introduced in chapter 1 of Capital, where Marx writes:
"On the one hand all labour is, speaking physiologically, an expenditure of human labour power, and in its character of identical abstract human labour, it creates and forms the value of commodities. On the other hand, all labour is the expenditure of human labour power in a special form and with a definite aim, and in this, its character of concrete useful labour, it produces use values." [1]
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[edit] Abstract treatment of labour-time
In order to make this distinction, it must be possible to think abstractly about human work, and consider it separately from any particular worker performing it. Only on that basis, it is possible to conceive of quantities of labour (X amount of labour hours, or Y amount of workers) and work tasks (the kinds of jobs which need to be done, or functions which must be performed, irrespective of who actually does it).
In statistical reports, for example, reference is made to "the labour force" and quantities of total hours worked are calculated. This is an abstract way of viewing human work, and the workers that perform it. Or, if we take the concept of an output/labour ratio (the ratio of the value of output and the number of hours worked or the number of workers), this is again an abstract way to view labour.
Another example is the concept of unit labour costs, i.e. the cost in labour per product unit, expressible in hours or in money-prices. In time use surveys, a statistical attempt is made to quantify and average out the different types of activities people normally spend their time on.
In official economics, workers do not exist anymore; they are just an abstract "factor of production" or a "labour input" or a "consumer". Workers enter into the analysis only in management theory. Managers of course often have to estimate the number of paid working hours that a job will take to do, and keep track of the number of paid hours worked.
[edit] Abstract labour and exchange
Marx himself considered that all economising reduced to the economical use of human labour-time; "to economise" ultimately meant saving on human energy and effort.
However, according to Marx, the achievement of abstract thinking about human labour, and the ability to quantify it, is closely related to the historical development of economic exchange in general, and more specifically commodity trade.
In fact, he argues the abstraction in thought is the reflex of a real process, in which commercial trade not only alters the way labour is viewed, but also how it is practically treated.
If different products are exchanged in market trade, Marx argues, the exchange process at the same time relates and commensurates the quantities of labour expended to produce those products, regardless of whether the traders are consciously aware of that.
Therefore, the exchange process itself involves the making of a real abstraction, namely abstraction from the particular characteristics of concrete (specific) labour that produced the commodities whose value is equated in trade. Closely related to this, is the growth of a cash economy, and Marx makes the historical observation that:
"In proportion as exchange bursts its local bonds, and the value of commodities more and more expands into an embodiment of human labour in the abstract, in the same proportion the character of money attaches itself to commodities that are by Nature fitted to perform the social function of a universal equivalent. Those commodities are the precious metals." [2]
In a more complex division of labour, it becomes difficult or even impossible to equate the value of all different labour-efforts directly. But money enables us to express and compare the value of all different labour-efforts - more or less accurately - in money-units (initially, quantities of gold, silver, or bronze). This is illustrated by the popular saying, "time is money". Marx then argues that labour viewed concretely in its specifics creates useful things, but labour-in-the-abstract is value-forming labour, which conserves, transfers and/or creates economic value.
[edit] Abstract labour and capitalism
If the production process itself becomes organised as a specifically capitalist production process, then the abstraction process is deepened, because production labour itself becomes directly treated and organised in terms of its commercial exchange value, and in terms of its capacity to create new value for the buyer of that labour.
Quite simply, in this case, a quantity of labour-time is equal to a quantity of money, and it can be calculated that X hours of labour - regardless of who in particular performs them - create, or are worth, Y amounts of new product value. In this way, labour is practically rendered abstract.
The abstraction is completed when a labour market is established which very exactly quantifies the money-price applying to all kinds of different occupational functions, permitting equations such as:
x amount of qualified labor = y amounts of unskilled labour.
It can also be calculated that it costs a certain amount of time and money to train a worker to perform a certain task, and how much value that adds to the workers'labour.
As a corollary, in these conditions workers will increasingly treat the paid work they do as something distinct or separate from their personality. Work becomes "just work", it no longer necessarily says anything at all about the identity or personality of the worker. With the development of an average skill level in the workforce, the same job can also be done by many different workers, and most workers can do many different jobs; nobody is necessarily tied to one type of work all his life anymore. Thus we can talk of "a job" as an abstract function that could be filled by anybody with the required skills.
[edit] Controversies
Marx regarded the distinction between abstract and concrete labour as being among the most important innovations he contributed to the theory of economic value, and subsequently Marxian scholars have debated a great deal about its theoretical significance.
For some, abstract labour is an economic category which applies only to the capitalist mode of production, i.e. it applies only, when human labour power or work-capacity is universally treated as a commodity with a certain monetary cost or earnings potential.
Others however argue that the abstract treatment of human labour-time is something that evolved and developed in the course of the whole history of trade, or even precedes it, to the extent that primitive agriculture already involves attempts to economise labour, by calculating the comparative quantities of labour-time involved in producing different kinds of outputs.
In this sense, Marx argued in his book A contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) that
"This abstraction, human labour in general, exists in the form of average labour which, in a given society, the average person can perform, productive expenditure of a certain amount of human muscles, nerves, brain, etc. It is simple labour [English economists call it "unskilled labour"] which any average individual can be trained to do and which in one way or another he has to perform. The characteristics of this average labour are different in different countries and different historical epochs, but in any particular society it appears as something given." [3]
In that case, the equation of different quantities of labour-time through economic exchange is not a necessary prerequisite for the abstract treatment of labour-time; all that is required is that different labour-efforts in society are comparable, yielding averages indicating the "normal" labour-time associated with a task.
What a cash economy then adds, is a much more refined and sophisticated quantification of amounts of society's labour-time, expressed in money-prices - a further development of the abstraction of labour which, however, was already occurring prior to the advent of capitalist industry.
Thus, on this view, capitalism universalizes the abstract treatment of labour-time, clearly separating paid work from other activities; through the universal use of money, all forms of labour become comparable in value, and can be economised on that basis. But this economising occurs in a specific pattern: its capitalistic purpose is to maximise the yield of surplus value to private owners of capital.
Another controversy concerns the differences between unskilled (simple) and skilled (qualified) labour. Skilled labour costs more to produce than unskilled labour, and can be more productive. Generally Marx assumed that skilled labour power had a higher value, and that skilled work could produce a product with a higher value in the same amount of time, compared to unskilled labour. This was reflected in a skill hierarchy, and a hierarchy of wage-levels. Marx believed that the capitalist mode of production would over time replace people with machines, and encourage the easy replacement of one worker by another, and thus that most labour would tend to reduce to an average skill level. However he provided no specific calculus by which the value of skilled work could be expressed as a multiple of unskilled work, nor a theory of what regulates the valuation of skill differences. This has led to some debate among Marxian economists, but no definitive solution has yet been given.
[edit] References
- Karl Marx, Das Kapital.
- Isaac I. Rubin, Essays in Marx's Theory of Value.
- Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital.
- Roman Rosdolsky, The Making of Marx's 'Capital'.
- Kozo Uno, Principles of Political Economy.
- Makoto Itoh, The Basic Theory of Capitalism.
- Ulrich Krause, Abstract Labour and Money. In H.D. Kurz, N. Salvadori (eds.): The Elgar Companion to Classical Economics, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, 1998, 6-10.
- Ulrich Krause, Money and Abstract Labour : On the Analytical Foundations of Political Economy. Translated by Peter Burgess. Edited by Jon Rothschild. Verso.
- Jim Devine, "What Is 'Simple Labor": the Value-Creating Capacity of Skilled Labor", in: Capital & Class, #39 Winter 1989 [4]
