Karl Marx - Capital pg. 169

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

If I state that coats or boots stand in relation to linen because the latter is the incarnation of human labour, the absurdity ("Verrücktheit"*= madness) of the statement is self-evident. Nevertheless, when the producers of coats and boots bring these commodities into a relation with linen, or with gold or silver ... as the universal equivalent, the relation between their own private labour and the labour of society appears to them in exactly, this absurd ("verrückt"*= crazy) form. The categories of political economy consist precisely of forms of this kind. They are forms of thought which are socially valid (gültig), and therefore objective, for the relations of production belonging to this historically determined mode of social production.
What does Marx mean by 'the latter is the incarnation of human labour' with regards to linen? The other commodities mentioned are not referred to in this way.

(Feel free to add additional interpretations of the text)

[Five Year Plan]

I'm not sure I understand the question. An "incarnation of human labor" is a visible form that the substance labor might take. Surely you've heard the term "reincarnation" before, where some human "spirit" in the abstract supposedly assumes a new human form. Well, it's the same concept here, where human labor in the abstract assumes a definite form.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

A commodity is an incarnation of human labour, as aufheben points out, in the sense that it embodies a certain quantity of socially-necessary labour time that has been expended to create it.

It is "absurd" to place boots, for example, in relation to linen as incarnations of human labour because that means treating them as the same thing. But they are not the same. Linen, as a particular use-value, is not the same as a boot. I can't replace a bale of linen with a boot, when I use them.

But for the capitalist, these two are the same - what matters is their labour-value. The "absurdity" of treating different objects as the same, because they embody the same amount of socially-necessary labour time, is in fact the objective law of the capitalist mode of development, which underlies the M-C-M' cycle, the markets, and capitalist production in general (which produces commodities as exchange - labour - values).

This law is objective because it describes the motion of society, but it is not universal - objects only appear as commodities, as exchange-values, in the capitalist mode of production.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

Thank you both for responding. I was trying to determine why the quote implied that boots were not incarnations but that linen is. You'll notice that only the 'latter' is explicitly referred to as an incarnation.

[Five Year Plan]

Thank you both for responding. I was trying to determine why the quote implied that boots were not incarnations but that linen is. You'll notice that only the 'latter' is explicitly referred to as an incarnation.

The quote does not imply that coats or boots are not incarnations of human labor. The whole point that Marx makes throughout that chapter is that coats or boots can be compared to linen only because all of them share some 'third thing' on which basis they can be compared despite their qualitatively different use values. (Marx earlier says: "As the coat and the linen are two qualitatively different use values, so also are the two forms of labour that produce them, tailoring and weaving.")

That third thing, of course, is that they are the products of human labor expended over some certain period of time.

The reason he says "latter" in the passage you mention has to do with Marx's discussion of the relative and the equivalent forms of value that are talked about in that chapter, where one commodity is used only as a symbolic measure of the value/labor of the other commodities it confronts in an exchange, such that only one commodity has its value really "expressed." (On the relative form of value: "But the two commodities whose identity of quality is thus assumed, do not play the same part. It is only the value of the linen that is expressed.")

[RedMaterialist]

Thank you both for responding. I was trying to determine why the quote implied that boots were not incarnations but that linen is. You'll notice that only the 'latter' is explicitly referred to as an incarnation.


First, the quote is that it is absurd to claim that linen (or boots or coats) are the universal incarnation of abstract human labor. I think the use of the words "universal" and "abstract" is essential for Marx's meaning. No one would say that a Ram Truck is the real, universal embodiment of abstract human labor. It is no abstraction of anything, it is a real, physical thing. (However, IMO, when it becomes the emotional expression of "going big or going home," or when the driver of a Mustang becomes a free, rogue, Western outlaw, then both become fetishes.)

On the other hand when gold becomes the universal commodity, it develops in the minds of people the character of pure, embodied value.

And, the workers who produce coats, boots, Ram Trucks, or Ford Mustangs, when they bring their products into relation with each others' products of labor they make the same absurd and crazy statement. In other words, their labor and the products of their labor are social, but they exchange the products as though their own product is the universal abstraction of human labor. They treat their own products as universal, essential expressions of abstract human labor. Or, at least, they used to.

When, in fact, it is abstract social labor which gives value to the commodity. Which, I think, is what leads to the fetishism of commodities. Also, as division of labor becomes more intense, workers begin to see themselves as a class rather than as individual producers. An auto worker, for instance, doesn't see themselves as somehow essentially, abstractly different from a worker in a steel factory. They both now work for an hourly wage, rather than for the production of some essential, universal thing. The problem is for workers to take the next step and act in their own interests as a class.

[Noa Rodman]

The bodily form of the linen is now the form assumed in common by the values of all commodities; it therefore becomes directly exchangeable with all and every of them. The substance linen becomes the visible incarnation, the social chrysalis state of every kind of human labour. Weaving, which is the labour of certain private individuals producing a particular article, linen, acquires in consequence a social character, the character of equality with all other kinds of labour. The innumerable equations of which the general form of value is composed, equate in turn the labour embodied in the linen to that embodied in every other commodity, and they thus convert weaving into the general form of manifestation of undifferentiated human labour.


It is, however, just this ultimate money form of the world of commodities that actually conceals, instead of disclosing, the social character of private labour, and the social relations between the individual producers. When I state that coats or boots stand in a relation to linen, because it is the universal incarnation of abstract human labour, the absurdity of the statement is self-evident. Nevertheless, when the producers of coats and boots compare those articles with linen, or, what is the same thing, with gold or silver, as the universal equivalent, they express the relation between their own private labour and the collective labour of society in the same absurd form.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm


For all other commodities, although they are products of the most different sorts of labour, the linen counts as the form of appearance of the labours contained in them, hence as the embodiment of homogenous undifferentiated human labour. Weaving – this particular concrete type of labour – counts now by virtue of the value-relation of the world of commodities to linen as the general and immediately exhaustive form of realisation of abstract human labour, i.e. of the expenditure of human labour-power as such.
For precisely this reason the private labour contained in linen also counts as labour which is immediately in general social form or in the form of equality with all other labours. If a commodity thus possesses the general equivalent-form or functions as general equivalent, its natural or bodily form counts as the visible incarnation, the general social chrysalis of all human labour.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/appendix.htm

I like also to better explain the part about why this is absurd (how Marx exposes the absurdity), but a more "technical" aspect is given in the following text:


one can establish, at least, four different meanings of the expression: gold is the incarnation of universal labor

http://libcom.org/library/international-exchange-law-value-conclusion-isaak-dashkovskij

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

Thank you Noa for your response, it certainly aided my understanding.

The section quoted in the OP was a standalone quote from another text. So to all those who gave additional context, it really helped. I guess I should'nt try to read extracts from Capital without additional information.

[Thirsty Crow]

What does Marx mean by 'the latter is the incarnation of human labour' with regards to linen? The other commodities mentioned are not referred to in this way.

(Feel free to add additional interpretations of the text)
Marx here accounts for the real process of leveling concrete forms of labor. It makes no difference what particular thing he refers to, as the argument flows like this:

1) the substance of value is socially necessary labor, or "abstract" labor

The key is that Marx presupposes this here and doesn't make it explicit. The second step is the question

2) how in the name of fuck are these concrete forms of labor brought together under a common criterion

The answer being

3)
Nevertheless, when the producers of coats and boots bring these commodities into a relation with linen, or with gold or silver ... as the universal equivalent, the relation between their own private labour and the labour of society appears to them in exactly, this absurd ("verrückt"*= crazy) form. The categories of political economy consist precisely of forms of this kind. They are forms of thought which are socially valid (gültig), and therefore objective, for the relations of production belonging to this historically determined mode of social production.

...with the further qualification that they do it precisely through real acts of exchange, historically speaking.

The whole point to this is to stress the real process of leveling, of the formation of abstract labor.