Yet even from the limited standpoint of the labour-process, this description of historical temporalisation is obviously inadequate. The use-values produced by concrete labour are only means of life – they only satisfy existing needs and create new needs for their producers – by virtue of the fact that they do not belong to these producers, that, in other words, they authorise the payment of the wage which is then exchanged for other means of life. Thanks to the wageform, the means of life are only actual as objects of exchange, as commodities, and hence their production has already been determined by abstract labour (the diverse metamorphoses of this at the level of historical totalisation and temporalisation will be developed in the next chapter). However, before we comment on this, we must address the character of this ‘already’. This is not a straightforward thing to do, if in fact:
Social labour-time exists in…commodities in a latent state…and becomes evident only in the course of their exchange. The point of departure is not the labour of individuals considered as social labour, but on the contrary the particular kinds of labour of private individuals, i.e. labour which proves that it is universal social labour only by the sublation of its original character in the exchange process. Universal social labour is consequently not a readymade presupposition but an emerging result. Thus a new difficulty arises: on the one hand, commodities must enter the exchange process as objectified universal labour-time, on the other hand, the labour-time of individuals becomes objectified universal labour-time only as a result of the exchange process.<sup>91</sup>
<sup>90</sup> In this regard, concrete labour represents a concrete form of ‘labour in general’, which is to say that it temporalises and historicalises as a kind of ‘labour in particular’.
<sup>91</sup> Marx, KPÖ, 31-2 (Contribution, 45).
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