Abstract Labour and Concrete Labour - Abstract Labour and Capitalism

Abstract Labour and Capitalism

If the production process itself becomes organised as a specifically capitalist production process, then the abstraction process is deepened, because production labour itself becomes directly treated and organised in terms of its commercial exchange value, and in terms of its capacity to create new value for the buyer of that labour.

Quite simply, in this case, a quantity of labour-time is equal to a quantity of money, and it can be calculated that X hours of labour - regardless of who in particular performs them - create, or are worth, Y amounts of new product value. In this way, labour is practically rendered abstract.

The abstraction is completed when a labour market is established which very exactly quantifies the money-price applying to all kinds of different occupational functions, permitting equations such as:

x amount of qualified labour = y amounts of unskilled labour = z amount of workers = p amount of money = q amount of goods.

This is what Marx calls a value relationship ("Wertverhältnis" in German). It can also be calculated that it costs a certain amount of time and money to train a worker to perform a certain task, and how much value that adds to the workers' labour, giving rise to the notion of human capital.

As a corollary, in these conditions workers will increasingly treat the paid work they do as something distinct or separate from their personality, a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Work becomes "just work", it no longer necessarily says anything at all about the identity, creativity or personality of the worker. With the development of an average skill level in the workforce, the same job can also be done by many different workers, and most workers can do many different jobs; nobody is necessarily tied to one type of work all his life anymore. Thus we can talk of "a job" as an abstract function that could be filled by anybody with the required skills. Managers can calculate that with a certain budget, a certain number of paid working hours are required or available to do the work, and then divide up the hours into different job functions to be filled by suitably qualified personnel.

Marx's theory of alienation considers the human and social implications of the abstraction and commercialization of labour. His concept of reification reflects about the inversions of object and subject, and of means and ends, which are involved in commodity trade.