{"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":113,"pdf_page":117,"physical_index":117,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"4dec03b5449939cab59725dd532d42a98d14c92249966965f5399800f815c78e"},"chapter":"Marx and the Concept of Historical Time","content":"Labour-time itself exists as such only subjectively, only in the form of activity. In so far as it is exchangeable (itself a commodity) as such, it is defined and differentiated not only quantitatively but also qualitatively, and is by no means general, selfequivalent labour-time; rather, labour-time as subject corresponds as little to the general labour-time which determines exchange-values as the particular commodities and products correspond to it as object.<sup>72</sup>\n\nYet unlike the labour-time in this passage (which should be read as concrete labour-time), the vast majority of Marx’s critique of political economy depicts concrete labour as a time already outside of and opposed to itself, as a time which concrete labour is compelled to embody. The secondary literature on abstract labour – one that is still governed by the position that abstract labour is extrinsic, rather than internal, to historical time – registers this. The issue here is not this fidelity to Marx, but the lack of a concept of concrete labour-time within this literature, a concept accountable to abstract labour as a distinct form of social time specific to capitalism. There are statements to the effect that concrete labour ‘has a concrete temporality’<sup>73</sup>, that its time ‘has a particular content…that is experienced subjectively’<sup>74</sup>, but there has been (to date) no systematic attempt to conceptualise concrete labour as a social form of time simultaneously internal and external to abstract labour. There are numerous possible explanations for this, but one in particular stands out: this literature remains internal to Marx’s philosophy of time (such that it exists).<sup>75</sup> In other words, this literature (Bensaïd, Bonefeld, Postone, Tomba, Tombazos, etc.) does not adequately confront the fact that Marx offers us a concept of abstract labour but not of concrete labour. It thus maximises, yet stays within the limits of, the concept of abstract labour, such that this concept constitutes a historical ontology of ‘ordinary time’ which, to be sure, Heidegger and Sartre do not offer, but which also must account for the idea that the time of concrete labour – a time which abstract labour produces and upon which it depends – is not immediately reducible to abstract labour.\n\n<sup>70</sup> Osborne, ‘Marx and the philosophy of time’, 18.\n\n<sup>71</sup> Marx, Grundrisse, 361.\n\n<sup>72</sup> Ibid. 171.\n\n<sup>73</sup> Bonefeld, ‘Abstract labour: Against its nature and on its time’, 267.\n\n<sup>74</sup> Tombazos, Time in Marx, 18.\n\n<sup>75</sup> More often than not, a condition of this interiority is a certain exteriority – indifference – towards Marx’s philosophy of history.\n\n113","previous_page":112,"next_page":114}