Abstract Labor

Corresponding to “concrete labor”. The labor that produces commodities has a twofold character, both concrete labor and abstract labor. In addition to its concrete forms with different qualities, labor also has a common and homogeneous aspect. That is to say, no matter how different the concrete forms of human labor may be, from the point of view of the substance of its connotation, it is all the expenditure of human labor-power (mental and physical faculties), and it is all undifferentiated human labor. They are all undifferentiated human labor. As Marx said, if we disregard the specificity of the productive activity and therefore the useful character of the labor, then nothing remains of it but that it is an expenditure of human labor-power. Tailoring and weaving, though qualitatively different productive activities, are both the productive expenditures of human brains, nerves, and muscles, and in this sense are both human labor… They are but two different forms of expending human labor-power. Abstract labor is this undifferentiated human labor abstracted from its concrete form or called labor in general. In summarizing the relation between the twofold character of labor and the two factors of a commodity, Marx said: “On the one hand, all labor is an expenditure, in the physiological sense, of human labor-power, and in this quality of being equal human labor or abstract human labor, it forms the value of commodities. On the other hand, all labor is an expenditure of human labor-power in a particular form and with a specific aim, and in this quality of being concrete useful labor, it produces use-values.” Concrete labor and abstract labor are the dual aspects of the same labor, and the twofold character of commodity production determines the two factors of a commodity: concrete labor forms the use value of a commodity and abstract labor forms the value of a commodity. The abstract labor contained in different commodities differs only in quantity, not in quality. The doctrine of the twofold character of labor was founded by Marx, and has for the first time scientifically answered the question of what kind of labor forms value, and solved the core problem of the theory of surplus-value, which the pivot for understanding of political economy and the basis of Marx’s scientific labor theory of value and theory of surplus-value.