Origin
Marx first advanced this distinction in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) and it is discussed in more detail in chapter 1 of Capital, where Marx writes:
"On the one hand all labour is, speaking physiologically, an expenditure of human labour power, and in its character of identical abstract human labour, it creates and forms the value of commodities. On the other hand, all labour is the expenditure of human labour power in a special form and with a definite aim, and in this, its character of concrete useful labour, it produces use values. At first sight a commodity presented itself to us as a complex of two things – use value and exchange value. Later on, we saw also that labour, too, possesses the same twofold nature; for, so far as it finds expression in value, it does not possess the same characteristics that belong to it as a creator of use values. I was the first to point out and to examine critically this twofold nature of the labour contained in commodities. this point is the pivot on which a clear comprehension of political economy turns"
The origin of the distinction between abstract and concrete labour can be traced back to Marx's 1857 Grundrisse manuscript, in which he already distinguished between "particular labour" and "general labour", contrasting communal production with production for exchange (see Karl Marx, Grundrisse, Pelican edition 1973, pp. 171-172).
Read more about this topic: Abstract Labour And Concrete Labour
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