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Abstract labour and concrete labour refer to a distinction made by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. It refers to the difference between human labour in general as economically valuable worktime versus human labour as a particular activity that has a specific useful effect within the (capitalist) mode of production .
Socially necessary labour time in Marx's critique of political economy is what regulates the exchange value of commodities in trade.In short, socially necessary labour time refers to the average quantity of labour time that must be performed under currently prevailing conditions to produce a commodity.
The authors argue that, according to Marx, the value of a commodity indicates the abstract labor time required for its production; however Marxists have been unable to identify a way to measure a unit (elementary particle) of abstract labor (indeed the authors argue that most have given up and little progress has been made beyond Marx's ...
It is important to note that Marx rejects, contra-classical political economy, any notions of the "value of labor" or "price of labor". Instead, it is labor itself (more specifically, abstract labor or general human labor) which is constitutive of value, the substance of value.
Marx's analysis of the commodity shows that labor in capitalist society has a dual nature: it is concrete labor on the one hand and Abstract labor on the other. Postone examines the fact that abstract labor is not (concrete) labor in general but has a unique social dimension that cannot be derived from (concrete) labor as such: it mediates a ...
Marx separates it into two different types: concrete and abstract labor. [15] Concrete labor can be thought of as the unique characteristics of labor such as the work of a farmer versus a tailor. Abstract labor, on the other hand, is the general conceptualization of human labor. [16] It represents the expenditure of simple human labor power. [15]
According to Marx, the substance and regulator of relative product-values is human labour-time in general, labour-in-the-abstract or "abstract labour". This value (an average current replacement cost in labour-time, based on the normal productivity of producers existing at the time) exists as an attribute of the products of human labour quite ...
Marx concludes that as value is determined by labour, and as profit is the appropriated surplus value remaining after paying wages, that the maximum profit is set by the minimum wage necessary to sustain labour, but is in turn adjusted by the overall productive powers of labour using given tools and machines, the length of the workday, the ...