The issue of abstract and concrete labour is relatively simple. The two concepts are dealt with in a few very clear paragraphs at the beginning of Capital. But unfortunately it has, over the last couple of decades, been mystified by some Marxists. Misleading claims have been put about to the effect that :

  • Abstract labour only exists under capitalism
  • In socialist economies there is only concrete labour
  • That there is no division of labour in non capitalist economies


Marx uses the concept on the second page of Capital where he writes:


So he is saying that each type of commodity has its own special physical qualities, and that these qualities are given to it by the special actions of the different types of labour : spinning, joinery, masonry. But if we consider commodities in general, bearing in mind that they exchange with one another, it can not be the specific character of labour the labour that made them that is important. It is the fact that they are all made by human labour. He says human labour in the abstract to emphasise that it is people doing it, whatever these people were doing.

It is a unique ability of our species, shared by no other species currently alive on this planet, to be able to apply ourselves readily to a vast variety of tasks. The combination of hands with large brains gives us this adaptability. It was only human labour that Marx considered as important in commodities.

At the time Marx was writing, we were not the only species working.  There was a lot of horse labour going on in the English economy. In terms of physical effort probably more was done by horses than by people. I have seen figures for the horse population of late Victorian England as being 3.3 million, the human population was 21 million. A human male is hard put to sustain  75 watts of output, women and children considerably less. A horse power is 735 watts, so we can estimate that horses were delivering around twice as much work as people in Marx’s England. 

But this work by our equine sisters was all traction. Horses were not spinning, engaging in cabinet making or bricklaying. There was no horse labour in the abstract;  all they did was pull or carry riders.

The important thing to understand about commodities is that they were all produced by people working, irrespective of what kind of work people were doing. And because we are not concerned with exactly what they were doing, we can measure labour in units of time:


Clearly if we are measuring labour in units of time, we are ignoring what the person was doing, and only taking into account that they were working at something.

The argument  in Capital is in the context of commodities whose value, he says, comes from the division of labour. If we think about the division of labour, it is obviously human labour in general that is being divided between specific trades or professions. But the claim of some Marxists that abstract labour and the division of labour are something specific to capitalism does not follow. Just because Marx is writing about the division of labour under capitalism here, does not imply that capitalism is necessary for a division of labour. Indeed he explicitly makes this point: 


So the argument goes that the division of human labour between different activities gives rise to the exchange value of commodities, but this only occurs if the division of labour occurs in a society of private individuals producing independently. In other social organisations, there can be a division of labour without commodities.

So there is every reason to suppose that a division of labour and therefore human work in the abstract will also exist in communist societies – even if there was no commodity production in them. We may hope that communist societies will tend to free people from a narrow subordination to this division of labour, so that people may vary their tasks either during the week or from year to year. This is what Marx was getting at when, many years earlier, he wrote


The fact that one person may do different concrete tasks at different times abolishes neither the division of labour nor abstract labour as Marx points out in Capital :


I am not quite sure where this prejudice about the abstract labour only existing under capitalism, and ceasing to exist in a future economy comes from. It clearly does not come from a straightforward reading of Capital. I suspect there exists a substantial number of Marxists who put off reading Capital for a while. In that period they ‘prepared themselves’ by reading commentators on Capital. Perhaps they read Heinrich, Rubin etc. But this means that by the time they read Marx, they already have certain ideas about what they should expect to find there. They read Marx through lenses they have borrowed. And these introduce a certain confirmation bias.

I always encourage people to read great thinkers in their own words first. Whether it is Einstein, Darwin or Marx you want to study, read them in the original first. Only read commentators afterwards. If you have read the original you are in a position to critically assess the commentators. If not, you may give excessive weight to the commentary.