{"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":131,"pdf_page":135,"physical_index":135,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"4b7ca19e220643eeefa7c1474009799e9cc90b20be11f73c9bc917181a774dc4"},"chapter":"Marx and the Concept of Historical Time","content":"Yet the full importance of this passage only comes to light when it is read in conjunction with, and against, the following passage in Theories of Surplus-Value:\n\nLabour-time, even if exchange-value is sublated, always remains the creative substance of wealth and the measure of the cost of its production. But free time, disposable time, is wealth itself, partly for the enjoyment of the product, and partly for free activity which – unlike labour – is not dominated by the pressure of an extraneous purpose which must be fulfilled, and the fulfilment of which is regarded as a natural necessity or a social duty, according to one’s will. It is self-evident that if labour-time is restricted to a normal amount [Maß] and, moreover, labour is no longer performed for someone else, but for oneself, and, together with the sublation of the social contradictions between master and men, etc., it acquires a quite different, a free character, it becomes real social labour, and finally the basis of disposable time – the labour-time of men who also have disposable time, must be of a much higher quality than that of working animals [Arbeitstiers].<sup>147</sup>\n\nThe relation between labour-time and free/disposable time is as essential to the comprehension of communism as it is to capitalism. If there is a ‘communist ontology’ in Marx, if he provides us with an outline of a ‘communist mode of production’, then this relation – which should be understood as the relation between freedom and necessity more broadly – constitutes the basis of the ‘ontological difference’<sup>148</sup> between communism and capitalism. There is still a dialectic of freedom and necessity in communism. The difference, however, between this dialectic and its capitalist counterpart is that, in communism, it is freedom – not necessity – that constitutes the measure of wealth. In communism, ‘the measure of wealth is…not any longer, in any way, labour-time, but rather disposable time.’<sup>149</sup> As the passage above puts it, labour-time ‘always remains the creative substance of wealth and the measure of the cost of its production’, but if exchange-value – and with it abstract labour – is actually sublated, then this time is no longer the measure of wealth itself, simply because wealth no longer assumes the form of value. The dialectic of freedom and necessity in communism is a non-antagonistic dialectic – in Maoist terms, it expresses a ‘non-antagonistic contradiction’ – insofar as ‘the realm of freedom really begins only where labour determined by necessity and external expediency ends’, as well as the fact that ‘the true realm of freedom, the development of human powers as an end in itself… can only flourish with [the] realm of necessity as its basis.’<sup>150</sup> In this way, the conflict between labour-time and free/disposable time disappears, not because their difference disappears, but because surplus-labour-time disappears. Communism sublates the ‘socially necessary labourtime’ of capitalism because it abolishes the surplus-labour within this time. This is the manner in which communism is the consciously collective, thus rational, recognition of the qualitative identity between the labour-time necessary to reproduce labour-capacity and the labour-time necessary to produce every other product, whereas capitalism represents the structural refusal to recognise this identity (despite the fact that it depends on it). At the same time, this sublation not only preserves but enhances the productive power of ‘socially necessary labour-time’, but only insofar as it yields an entirely different quality of social labour-time, and thus an entirely different quality of product, than capitalism. In short, communism allows no place for surplustime within labour. ‘Free activity’ becomes the exclusive domain of this time, such that labour – ‘life’s first need’ – is the basis, but not the measure, of wealth.<sup>151</sup>\n\n<sup>146</sup> Osborne, ‘Marx and the philosophy of time’, 21. Crucially, Osborne’s citation of this passage omits the sentence stating that the increase of free time ‘can be regarded as the production of fixed capital, this fixed capital being man himself.’ See ibid. 20.\n\n<sup>147</sup> Karl Marx, Theorien über den Mehrwert, in Marx and Engels, MEW, Band 26, Dritter Teil (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1968), 253 (Theories of Surplus-Value, Part 3, 257).\n\n<sup>148</sup> Recall that the Heideggerian notion of ‘ontological difference’ (the difference between being and entity) must in Marx be based in the difference between one mode of production and another.\n\n131","previous_page":130,"next_page":132}