{"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":115,"pdf_page":119,"physical_index":119,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"b2a64067bee3772f588cc21cd3b921d40d65537d453d1f614ee14c97c53e2ff9"},"chapter":"Marx and the Concept of Historical Time","content":"If Postone’s attempt to ‘temporalise’ concrete labour is a failed attempt, it nevertheless reminds us that concrete labour-time is only intelligible in its dialectical relation with abstract labour-time. This much is evident: there is no such thing as concrete labour as such: ‘concrete labour’ is only ever particular concrete labours, a social form of labour which in its concretion is necessarily multiple. Nor can we state that concrete labour produces value (this is as much to say that concrete labour is not immediately reducible to abstract labour). The production of value is the sole purview of abstract labour. In Marx, therefore, it is impossible to conceive of concrete labour at a level of generality equal to that of abstract labour. Yet this does not mean that concrete labour cannot be examined as a form of temporalisation itself, that there is not, we might say, a temporalising structure common to each and every instance of concrete labour. A crucial problem that the concept of concrete labour produces is how to negotiate its explicit empirical basis (one which restricts most analyses of concrete labour to a time that must ‘occur within “homogenous time”…is compelled to occur within the time of its abstract measure’<sup>86</sup>) with its implicit existential basis (one shared by each and every social individual), while at the same time maintaining its historical basis (one secured by its relation to abstract labour). Put differently, the empirical temporality of shipbuilding is not the same as that of writing a thesis, but it is still possible to assign a shared existential basis to each, the generality of which is not the same as that represented by abstract labour (but is no less historically specific to capitalism because of this). However, we must insist on this point: if this basis is a ‘measure’ of concrete labour, it is only because it is internal to – it is an existential condition of – the social measure constituted by abstract labour and expressed by money.\n\n<sup>84</sup> This puts Postone squarely in line with Sohn-Rethel: see footnote 8 in this chapter.\n\n<sup>85</sup> Postone maintains that Sartre’s Critique ‘presuppose[s] the concepts of “moment” and “totality” ontologically.’ Postone, Time, Labor and Social Domination, 152, ft. 86. He goes on to argue that, as against Sartre and Althusser alike, his work ‘treats the relation of moment and totality as historically constituted, a function of the peculiar properties of the social forms analysed by Marx with his categories of value, abstract labor, commodity, and capital.’ Ibid. Assuming that ‘ontologically’ means ‘ahistorically’ here, we can state that Postone’s concepts of ‘abstract time’ and ‘concrete time’, as well as the relation he establishes between them, can be subjected to the same critique.\n\n<sup>86</sup> Bonefeld, ‘Abstract labour: Against its nature and on its time’, 267-68. Most analyses of concrete labour-time are in this sense Kantian: they accord to the schematism of the categories, in particular the schemas of magnitude and substance. See Kant, CPR, A143-44/B182-84, 274-75.\n\n115","previous_page":114,"next_page":116}