1.2.10. Work and Labour
A contemporary critical theory should both avoid labour fetishism and cultural fetishism. This does however not mean that we have to read all of Marx’s categories as being limited to the historical specificity of capitalism. Marx elaborated a critique of capitalism simultaneously with a critical theory of society. The dialectic of his categories points out the specificity of capitalism and at the same time more general features of realities that point beyond capitalism. I have in this respect suggested a reading of Marx that distinguishes between work and labour (Fuchs 2014a, 2015a, 2016): work is a general feature of all societies. It is human social production that creates goods that satisfy human needs. In capitalism, work is value-generating abstract labour that abstracts from human needs and organises the economy based on the structural needs of capital as self-valorising value through the exploitation of labour. Capitalism’s value and commodity form entails an abstraction from human needs, concrete social relations and individuals, the social act of production, use-values, and from the immediate experience of violence (violence takes on the structural form immanent in the dull compulsion of exchange, although also direct forms of violence, such as slavery, continue to exist in capitalism) so that ‘society is governed by the movement of real economic abstractions’ (Bonefeld 2014, 24).
Whereas the etymological root of terms such as work and Werktätigkeit (German) is creating, acting, doing, the etymological root of words such as labour and Arbeit is toil, slavery and hardship (Fuchs 2015a, chapter 2). Arendt (1958, 80–81) confirms the etymological distinction between on the one hand ergazesthai (Greek)/facere and fabricari (Latin)/work (English)/werken (German)/ouvrer (French) and on the other hand ponein (Greek)/laborare (Latin)/ labour (English)/arbeiten (German)/travailler (French).
The point is that technological development allows us to demand the abolition of labour, value and class (i.e. of both capital and the proletariat) as the potential for the transformation of the entire economy and society. This does, however, not imply the abolition, but rather the transformation of the world of work towards a self-determined, self-managed, self-instituting, well-rounded and democratic economy free of toil and free to provide a good, pleasurable and fulfilling life for all. ‘Labor in capitalism, then, is both labor, as we transhistorically and commonsensically understand it, according to Marx, and a historically specific socially mediating activity’ (Postone 2015, 12). As it is confusing to use the term labour for both dimensions, the distinction between labour and work is more feasible.
Introduction: Critical Theory of Communication
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