{"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":122,"pdf_page":126,"physical_index":126,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"d06c746716d64d28f0365f3af5cc304339860c263564dda1e27ca85e2fedfe79"},"chapter":"Marx and the Concept of Historical Time","content":"3.2 Necessary and Surplus-Labour\n\nThe concepts of surplus-labour and surplus-value add a new dimension to the complex lineage of, and relationship between, concepts within Marx’s critique of political economy. Unlike the concepts of labour-power, abstract labour and concrete labour, surplus-labour and surplusvalue feature prominently from the start of this critique (on the assumption that the Grundrisse constitutes this start). In the Grundrisse, the exposition of surplus-labour and surplus-value is far more developed than that of labour-power, even as it already registers the extent to which surplus-labour, surplus-value and labour-power are conceptually inseparable. Of even greater consequence, however, is the fact that this exposition is not mediated by a dialectic of abstract and concrete labour. The lack of a concept of abstract labour in the Grundrisse is particularly important. If, as Osborne maintains, ‘the concepts of abstract labour and labour-power are indissociable’, such that ‘ontologically, both are actual only as ideal objectivities’<sup>107</sup>, the same must be said of the concept of surplus-labour (i.e. surplus-labour must be added to this list of indissociable concepts). Surplus-labour is not identical to abstract labour. It is, rather, abstract labour from the standpoint of the difference between the value of labour-power and every other commodity. Once more, the logic of retroactivity emerges here, insofar as surplus-labour and surplus-value function as developed concepts in the Grundrisse, but only on the condition that they are refigured through abstract labour and its dialectical relation with concrete labour. This is important, because the Grundrisse – not the 1861-63 Manuscripts nor Capital, each of which dedicate significant attention to surplus-labour and surplus-value<sup>108</sup> – arguably contains the most philosophically constructive passages on surplus-labour and surplus-value, primarily because they critically appropriate the difference and relation between the barrier [Schranke] and the limit [Grenze] in Hegel’s Logic.<sup>109</sup> Hence we might say – not without irony – that the Grundrisse offers some of the most philosophically constructive passages on abstract labour as well. The point here (one which extends across Marx’s critique of political economy, if not his entire corpus) is that the logic of retroactivity is at once a logic of mutual constitution. In other words, it is fair to state that the Grundrisse offers as much to Capital as Capital does to the Grundrisse.\n\nSurplus-value constitutes ‘the hidden time of the commodity’, as Tombazos depicts it, because it emerges from the difference between the labour-time necessary for the production of a commodity and the labour-time necessary for the reproduction of the labour-power whose use produces this commodity.<sup>110</sup> This difference is a purely quantitative difference, in terms of both substance and measure. There are not two different kinds of socially necessary labourtime at work here: the labour-time necessary for the reproduction of labour-power is the same type of labour-time necessary for the production of all commodities (labour-power is the same as every other commodity in that it can only be reproduced through every other commodity). Nevertheless – and this is crucial – this difference sets into motion a single ‘necessary labour (and with it a singular concept of need) internally opposed to itself, such that necessary labour divides itself, within itself, into the labour-time necessary to reproduce labour-power and that necessary to produce every other commodity.<sup>111</sup> Surplus-value thus not only sets labour-power against every other commodity (labour-power is not ‘peculiar’ because it has no ‘hidden time’, but because its ‘hidden time’ is the absence of this time<sup>112</sup>), but sets abstract labour and value against themselves more generally. A contradiction – in fact a dialectic – is thereby produced between labour-power and every other commodity, including the labour necessary to produce each (this despite the fact that each derive from the same kind of labour-time). Surplus-value does this for a very simple reason: its existence, which is to say the existence of capital, hinges on creating an excess out of a relationship of equivalence. And as Capital makes clear, there is precisely one commodity which has the capacity to yield an excess from the inviolable ‘law of commodity exchange’. Labour-power, and labour-power alone, yields the surplus-labour that yields surplus-value, and it is for this reason commodified. This is the context from which the practical relationship between abstract and surplus-labour must be understood. Surpluslabour depends on abstract labour for its temporal intelligibility, but abstract labour-time only exists because ‘necessary labour’ simultaneously contains and does not contain surplus-labour within itself. The homogeneity, quantifiability and divisibility of abstract labour-time – a time, we must recall, which is originarily not a quantity but a social relation – is not fundamentally based on any difference which manifests itself in it, but on the difference between the labourtime necessary to produce labour-power and every other commodity. Abstract labour-time is ‘socially necessary labour-time’, but only on the condition the latter is grasped as both separate and opposed to surplus-labour, and as containing surplus-labour within itself.\n\n<sup>107</sup> Osborne, ‘Marx and the philosophy of time’, 19.\n\n<sup>108</sup> Surplus-labour and surplus-value do not feature in the Contribution, which is essentially a draft of the first three chapters of the first volume of Capital.\n\n<sup>109</sup> See, in particular, Marx, Grundrisse, 415-16 and 420-23.\n\n122","previous_page":121,"next_page":123}