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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 new, quasi-objective form of social interdependence. Abstract labor is a historically specific mediating function; it is the content or 'substance' of value. Labor ...
What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it.
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.
Thus, things have an "economic value" simply and only because it takes human labour-time to make them. This value exists and persists quite independently of fluctuating prices in markets. Although they are connected, the value relationships between labour-products and price relationships can vary independently of each other, within certain limits.
G.A. Cohen 'The Labour Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation', in his History Labour and Freedom. Duncan, Colin A.M. 1996. The Centrality of Agriculture: Between Humankind and The Rest of Nature. McGill–Queen's University Press, Montreal. ——2000. The Centrality of Agriculture: History, Ecology and Feasible Socialism.
The value of labour power is thus a historical norm, which is the outcome of a combination of factors: productivity; the supply and demand for labour; the assertion of human needs; the costs of acquiring skills; state laws stipulating minimum or maximum wages, the balance of power between social classes, etc.
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 ...
In regard to labor, economic rent can be created by the existence of mass education, labor laws, state social reproduction supports, democracy, guilds, and labor unions (e.g., higher pay for some workers, where collective action creates a scarcity of such workers, as opposed to an ideal condition where labor competes with other factors of ...