{"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":39,"pdf_page":43,"physical_index":43,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"9dfcabea46dc720e89a0c46b0ce39b5946e1997f67ad4ea25a20ec9c4dbde78b"},"chapter":"Marx and the Concept of Historical Time","content":"We should, however, raise two points of caution here. First, whilst the division of labour and class can be understood as ‘chief forces of history’ (to date), they should not be understood as ontologically originary forces of history in the same way that labour and need can and must. The importance of the division of labour and class is unquestionable, but from the standpoint of the basic intelligibility of ‘history’, they are both logically and ontologically ‘down the line from labour and need.<sup>86</sup> Second, we should be quite careful about how the division of labour and class are figured transhistorically. Whereas it is possible to consider the division of labour as truly transhistorical, from an original sexual division of labour implied by the third moment of history to some kind of technical division of labour under the conscious and rational control of the producers after capitalism, the same cannot be said of class: the social production of the means of life within communism cannot, of course, be conceived of as a ‘class act’.<sup>87</sup> We also need to be careful about over-ontologising the division of labour and class, which is to say not extending their meaning at the level of a specific mode of production (particularly capitalism) to history as a whole (for example, the ‘exclusive ownership of the means of production’ is a specifically capitalist feature of class formation, whereas something like ‘the differentiation and grouping of humans in relation to the surplus product’ might be understood as valid within all history to date). However – and this point guides us into Chapter 2 – the division of labour and class register a fundamental question that this thesis cannot ignore, but that Marx does not provide us with the means of answering. Simply put: how do we comprehend the relationship between individual, social and historical temporalities? The division of labour and class may be the historical expressions of the sociality of human individuation (‘the individual’ may first actualise itself through the division of labour and classes), but this does not explain how an individual act temporalises, nor does it explain how the temporalities thereby produced relate to social and historical temporalities. Stated differently, The German Ideology establishes the ontological primacy of social and historical being through the categories of labour and need, but it does not address the complicated relationship between individual, social and historical temporalities that these categories implicitly register. This is a question that a temporal reading of the materialist concept of history cannot avoid. It is a question that cuts to the heart of what, as previously argued, Kant and Hegel do not provide: the philosophical ground of this reading, which is to say an account of why and how the act itself temporalises. This question not only compels us to look beyond Marx. It also introduces something without which the concept of historical time cannot be thought: historical totalisation.\n\n<sup>85</sup> Balibar, The Philosophy of Marx, 46, 44.\n\n<sup>86</sup> There is a material basis to history that is structured by human need and the labour that creates the means of satisfying this need. It is because of this basis that the division of labour and classes become intelligible.\n\n<sup>87</sup> Marx and Engels never develop a conceptual relationship between class and the first historical act in The German Ideology, and for good reason: whilst it might be suggested that the first historical act has, on some level, been structured by class relations until now, class cannot have a conceptual place within this act, even if it is (to date) a condition of thinking this act.\n\n39","previous_page":38,"next_page":40}