{"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":38,"pdf_page":42,"physical_index":42,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"5e03e8dc17895b210b16d0587e4123443736708eed7ca8ce461bf987ef3ffb5c"},"chapter":"Marx and the Concept of Historical Time","content":"What about the division of labour and class? This question clearly intersects with the dialectic of the forces and relations of production, but it must also be explored in its own right. In The German Ideology, there are certainly passages that register the idea that the division of labour and the resultant creation of classes is ‘one of the chief forces of history up till now.’<sup>80</sup> Indeed, as previously argued, if need constitutes the ontological basis of the sociality of human individuation, then we might follow this up by stating that the division of labour and class are the (to date) fundamental historical expressions of this. Ontologically this is true because this individuation first manifests itself through the division of labour<sup>81</sup>, and epistemologically this is true because the very thought of this as ‘historical’ – in fact the very thought of ‘history’ as opposed to its ‘actual act of genesis’<sup>82</sup> – relies on the existence of a ruling class, without which ‘the division between material and spiritual labour’ cannot appear.<sup>83</sup> It is crucial to note here that this is a division between material [materiellen] and spiritual (or ‘intellectual’) [geistigen] labour, not a division between manual and mental labour. In The German Ideology (or for that matter anywhere else), Marx does not speak of ‘a division between manual and mental labour’. Material labour – the ‘actual basis’ of history – is not reducible to manual labour [manuelle Arbeit], nor is mental labour the same thing as spiritual/intellectual labour, since mental labour is inseparable from material labour (even the harshest manual drudgery still involves cognitive activity). However, as regards spiritual/intellectual labour, it is precisely the opposite: it must be dissociated from material labour, in order for history to be thought. It is thus misleading to translate ‘materiellen und geistigen Arbeit’ as ‘manual and mental labour’: to do so closes the door on the ongoing constitution of the open relationship between history and materiality. To take a contemporary example: the service industries in so-called ‘cognitive capitalism’ would not be material labour were this translation to capture the meaning of the division between materiellen und geistigen Arbeit. Service labour – which like all labour necessarily has some manual dimension – is material labour. Within capitalism, there is no such thing as ‘immaterial labour’<sup>84</sup> except that which is spiritual labour, and only the bourgeoisie can be comprehended as ‘immaterial labourers’ because they personify the thought (they are not the actual genesis) of history. Hence class is of vital importance to the materialist concept of history: it is a central condition of its thought. As Balibar puts it, ‘Marx…[extends] the scheme of the division of labour to its fullest extent…’, whereby he ‘accord[s] existence to classes on the dual plane of the division of labour and consciousness, and therefore also [makes]…the division of society into classes a condition or a structure of thought.’<sup>85</sup>\n\n<sup>80</sup> Marx and Engels, GI, 65.\n\n<sup>81</sup> What else but the social division of labour first differentiates one ‘individual’ from another?\n\n<sup>82</sup> ‘The entire movement of history is, therefore, both its actual act of genesis (the birth act of its empirical existence) and also for its thinking consciousness the comprehended and known process of its becoming.’ Marx, EPM, 135. Chapter 4 will problematise the transhistoricality of this argument.\n\n<sup>83</sup> The ‘division of labour only becomes truly such from the moment when a division between material and spiritual labour appears.’ Marx and Engels, DI, 31 (GI, 51). Emphasis added. The German reads as follows: ‘Die Teilung der Arbeit wird erst wirklich Teilung von dem Augenblicke an, wo eine Teilung der materiellen und geistigen Arbeit eintritt.\n\n<sup>84</sup> For Negri, ‘we live today in a society increasingly characterised by the hegemony of immaterial labour.’ Quoted in Tomba, Marx’s Temporalities, 145, ft. 243. More often than not, assertions such as these (thus the concept of ‘immaterial labour’) points to a basic misunderstanding of Marx, whereby matter, not sensuous human activity or labour, is the assumed ground of Marx’s concept of materialism.\n\n38","previous_page":37,"next_page":39}