Value, Labour and Negativity

Abstract

The concepts of the first chapter of Capital are there presented abstractly. At a more concrete level ‘value’, ‘abstract labour’, and ‘socially necessary Labour time’ must be situated in the capital relation; e.g. the time that is ‘socially necessary’ is that in which capital ‘pumps out’ labour. The essentially contested expropriation of the workers' powers by capital leads to a new understanding of the labour theory of value as a dialectic of negativity. Value is the shape of reified labour, the outcome of class struggle in production.