Value Form and Abstract Labor in Marx: A Critical Review of Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s Notion of ‘Real Abstraction’

Abstract

In Marx’s theory, the essential feature of the ‘market economy’ (of capitalism) is not simply commodity exchange but monetary circulation and money. In capitalism, each commodity is produced not as a mere useful thing, that is a use value, but as a bearer of value, a thing carrying a price. Even before entering the market, each ‘product’ potentially carries a price, which though will be realized (‘validated’) in the exchange process. Prices are thus determined in the process of capitalist production, that is in a historically unique process of (capitalist) production-for-the-exchange-and-for-profit, a process which unites immediate production with circulation. Every commodity attains the social form of general exchangeability, in abstraction from its specific utility or any other characteristic, expressing its value in monetary units. This is the main point of what Alfred Sohn-Rethel defined as the “real abstraction” of the value form. In other words, Sohn-Rethel’s notion of real abstraction constitutes an important contribution to Marxist theory of value and the value form. However, its generalization to cover ‘ages of commodity production from their beginnings in ancient Greece …’ partly deprives it of its hermeneutic accuracy.