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This edited volume brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars to explore the traces of the idea of "Real Abstraction" in Marx's thought from the early to late writings, as well as the theoretical and practical consequences of this notion in the capitalist social system. Divided into two main parts, Part One reconstructs Marx's notion of "Real Abstraction" and the influences of earlier thinkers (Berkley, Petty, Franklin, Feuerbach, Hegel) on his thoughts, as well as the further elaborations of this concept in later Marxist thinkers (Sohn-Rethel, Lukács, Lefebvre, Adorno and Postone). Part Two then considers the reverberations of the notion in the field of critical theory from a more abstract critique of capitalist social relations, to a more concrete understanding of historical movements. Taken together, the chapters in this volume offer a focused look at the concept of "Real Abstraction" in Marx.
List of contents
1. Introduction.- Part I: Reconstructing the Problem of Real Abstraction.- 2. Value Form and Abstract Labour in Marx: A Critical Review of Alfred Sohn-Rethel's Notion of 'Real Abstraction'.- 3. Money as a Practical Abstraction: From Feuerbach to Marx Through Hess (1841-1844).- 4. Real Abstraction: Philological Issues.- 5. Marx's Method and the Use of Abstraction.- 6. Method and Value: Engels Through Sohn-Rothel.- 7. Marx: The Method of Political Economy as an Ontological Critique.- 8. Marx, Berkeley, and Bad Abstractions.- 9. On Capital as Real Abstraction.- 10. The Lost Roads and the Steep Paths of 'Real Abstraction'.- 11. On Real Objects That Are Not Sensuous: Marx and abstraction in actu.- 12. The Concept of Form in the Critique of Political Economy.- 13. The Real Contradictions (Commodities as Coherence of Contradiction).- 14. Reification and Real Abstraction in Marx's Critique of Political Economy.- 15. The Critique of Real Abstraction: From the Critical Theory of Society to the Critique of Political Economy and Back Again.- 16. Real Abstraction in Light of the 'Practical Revolution in Epistemology' (Labriola). Considerations on the Uses and Limits of a Concept.- 17. Real Abstraction in the History of the Natural Sciences.- 18. Zapatista Autonomy: The Invention of Time as a Discontinuity and Untotaling Category.
About the author
Antonio Oliva is Professor of History at Rosario National University (UNR), Argentina. He is a researcher at the Institute of Regional Socio-historical Research from National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (ISHIR-CONICET) and a member of the Editorial Committee of ARCHIVOS.
Ivan Novara is Professor at the Rosario National University (UNR), Argentina. He is a researcher at National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) and a member of the Editorial Committee of Dialektica.
Angel Oliva is a Professor in both the School of Arts and Humanities and the Psychology School at Rosario National University (UNR), Argentina.
