Reification and Real Abstraction in Marx’s Critique of Political Economy

Abstract

The recovery of the concept of reification in Marx’s work claims a theoretical reordering of the concepts related to it, always under the frame of the real character of abstraction. Within this conceptual field, which is a problematic trope, the author stops at the semantic variations that were produced in Marx regarding the concept of alienation. While in his earlier works the concept of alienation appeared as the domination of the thing and wealth by an estranged power, in his later works it is further enriched from the point of view of abstract labor, the conditions of possibility of which are given by the process of autonomization and objectification of labor’s social form.