{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181","title":"Marx and the Concept of Historical Time","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181","id":"cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181","uuid":"cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181","title":"Marx and the Concept of Historical Time","normalized_title":"marxandtheconceptofhistoricaltime","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"isbns":[],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":216,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Marx%20and%20the%20Concept%20of%20Historical%20Time","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181/search"},"page":{"printed_page":109,"pdf_page":113,"physical_index":113,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"ec810f56fc2604aca65af3b2e1fd3925a917ba92dc8f27547150cac3c1980d38"},"chapter":"Marx and the Concept of Historical Time","content":"we must ‘move beyond the physiological definition of abstract human labour’ and yet, at the same time, uncover why Marx presents the value-forming substance as physiological; that is, as ‘transhistorical, natural, and thus historically empty.’<sup>46</sup> The answer, for Postone, is Marx’s analysis of commodity fetishism: the expenditure of brains, muscles, etc. is the necessary form of appearance [Erscheinung] of abstract labour as a general social mediation, and is thus ‘the fundamental core of the fetish of capitalism.’<sup>47</sup> Yet there is a fundamental flaw to this position, the identification of which sheds light on a problem shared by each of these commentators. ‘The discovery of abstract labour-time leads ineluctably to that of commodity fetishism’<sup>48</sup>, as Daniel Bensaïd is right to declare, but this is not because physiological labour amounts to the form of appearance of abstract labour, but because, from the standpoint of capital, the human body is completely reducible to abstract labour, to purely social brains, muscles, nerves, hands etc., the expenditure of which satisfies purely social needs.<sup>49</sup> This is what Marx calls ‘simple average labour’, and this labour is precisely what is both expressed and veiled by the valueform (namely money). The ‘labour’ that capital (and political economy) would like us to think creates value, that labour which is transhistorical and natural, etc., is not the atomised form of physiological labour which Marx presents, but the labour of qualitatively distinct and unified human beings and bodies, labour which ‘has value itself’ and which ‘appears as paid labou r.’<sup>50</sup> In short, the physiological dimension of Marx’s concept of abstract labour does not vitiate its historical specificity or purely social character, but registers it. As Alfred Schmidt reminds us, in Marx, ‘history itself projects into the physiological structure of the human being,’<sup>51</sup> and one (but by no means the only) aspect of this, specific to capitalism, is the reduction of the human body to the same ‘phantom-like objectivity’<sup>52</sup> which exemplifies value.\n\ninto a purely social form of labour specific to capitalism, but both of these forms of labour at the same time.\n\n<sup>46</sup> Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination, 145. This passage reflects the fact that, for Postone, the ‘ontological’ and the ‘transhistorical’ are synonymous. In other words, he systematically dissociates ontology and history, and thus refuses the possibility of a historical ontology.\n\n<sup>47</sup> Ibid. 170. For Postone, the physiological definition of abstract labour is accordingly central to Marx’s immanent critique, because it is a ‘part of an analysis of capitalism in its own terms, that is, as the forms present themselves.’ Ibid.\n\n<sup>48</sup> Daniel Bensaïd, Marx for Our Times: Adventures and Misadventures of a Critique [1995], trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2002), 118.\n\n<sup>49</sup> To put this another way: from the standpoint of capital, the use-value of labour-power, a usefulness which ‘is conditioned by the properties of the bodies of commodities’, is purely social brains, muscles, nerves, hands, etc. Marx, Kapital 1, 50 (Capital 1, 126). I owe this reference and translation to C.E. McMenamin.\n\n<sup>50</sup> Marx, Capital 1, 677, 680.\n\n<sup>51</sup> Alfred Schmidt, The Concept of Nature in Marx [1962], trans. Ben Fowkes (London and Brooklyn: Verso, 2014), 84.\n\n<sup>52</sup> Marx, Capital 1, 128.\n\n109","previous_page":108,"next_page":110}