Marx would not have worked out a theory of mental and manual labour, which would however be important because abolishing the division of labour is a ‘precondition of a classless society’ (21).
6.2.1. Real Abstraction
Commodity abstraction means that for Marx, value-generating labour (abstract labour) abstracts from single use-values and exchange ‘excludes use’ (28). Human minds in such exchange are however concretely reflecting on what they are doing. ‘The abstractness of their action will […] escape the minds of the people performing it. In exchange, the action is social, the minds are private (29). Sohn-Rethel terms the abstraction that can be found in the capitalist process itself a real abstraction (20). Speaking of a real abstraction also implies that this kind of abstraction is distinct from what Sohn-Rethel terms the ‘thought abstraction in the theory of knowledge’ (21).
Sohn-Rethel distinguishes communication ‘by signs’ from commodity exchange (40). Commodity exchange would be practical solipsism:
commodity exchange does not depend on language, on what we communicate to each other. Nothing regarding the essence of things need be communicated. Some semantics for ‘yes’ and ‘no’, for pointing to this or that, and to indicate quantity, is suficient to the essentials of a transaction of exchange whether it is carried on between two village gossips or between two strangers who do not speak each other’s language’ (41).
Commodity exchange ‘impels solipsism’ (41–42).
6.2.2. Conceptual Abstraction
For Sohn-Rethel, the equivalent to exchange abstraction in the world of knowledge is abstract thinking (58) and conceptual thought (67). The separation between head and hand would in the thought world have found its first manifestation in Greek philosophy (66). Abstract conceptual thinking would find its typical expression in mechanistic, quantifying, mathematical reasoning that for Sohn-Rethel consists of ‘concepts deriving from exchange abstraction’ and is based on the ‘logic of intellectual labour divided from manual labour’ (73). The separation of intellectual and manual activities would be a consequence of class-based societies (4).
According to Sohn-Rethel, twentieth-century capitalism’s abstract thought in the form of the separation of manual and mental labour found its expression in Taylorism and automation. The ‘unity of mental and manual work’ (181), the abolition of the division of labour, would be a precondition for the establishment of socialism.
Beyond Habermas: Rethinking Critical Theories of Communication
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