Is Labor the Foundation of Marx’s Critique of Capitalism?

In contemporary academic perspectives, the concept of labor is often understood as the cornerstone of Marx’s social theory. That is to say, on the one hand, people regard labor as the general foundation for Marx’s analysis of human society; on the other hand, they take labor as the theoretical fulcrum for Marx’s critique of capitalist society. Regarding the former aspect, labor is endowed with an ontological status, so that Marx’s social theory takes on the aspect of a labor ontology. Regarding the latter aspect, labor is seen not only as the basis for Marx’s various factual judgments about capitalist society, but also as the premise for his various value judgments about this society. These two aspects are in fact unified: precisely because Marx’s social theory is tacitly assumed to be a labor ontology, Marx’s critique of capitalism is given labor as its theoretical fulcrum; conversely, precisely because Marx’s critique of capitalism is understood as a critique with labor as its fulcrum, Marx’s labor ontology seems to acquire a typical exemplar.

在当代学术视野中，劳动概念常被理解为马克思社会理论的基石。这就是说，人们一方面将劳动视为马克思分析人类社会的一般基础，另一方面把劳动作为马克思批判资本主义社会的理论支点。就前一方面来说，劳动被赋予一种本体论地位，如此马克思的社会理论就具有了劳动本体论的面相；而就后一方面来说，劳动不仅被视为马克思关于资本主义社会的各种事实判断的根据，更被当作马克思对这种社会所做的各种价值判断的前提。这两个方面实际上又是统一的：正是由于将马克思的社会理论默认为劳动本体论，马克思的资本主义批判才被赋予劳动这一理论支点；反过来说，正是由于将马克思对资本主义的批判理解为以劳动为支点的批判，马克思的劳动本体论似乎才具有了一种典型范例。

The Effort to Reconstruct the Historical Dimension

重建历史性维度的努力

This theoretical position has been challenged by the late American left-wing thinker Moishe Postone. In his most influential work published during his lifetime, *Time, Labor, and Social Domination*, Postone put forward the well-known view that “in Marx’s mature critique, the notion that labor constitutes the social world and is the source of all wealth does not refer to society in general, but only to capitalist society, or modern society.” [1]1 Moishe Postone, *Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 5. The uniqueness of this view lies in the fact that here the connection between Marx’s concept of labor and society in general is severed. This means not only that “labor” is no longer regarded as the foundation of “all” societies, but only as the foundation of a specific society, namely capitalist society; it also means that what is linked to capitalist society is no longer general labor existing in all societies, but “capitalist labor.” What Postone emphasizes is that the reason capitalist labor is foundational relative to the social structure is that capitalist labor possesses a unique “objectivity” characteristic (i.e., this labor can, by objectifying itself into products, directly establish value relations among commodities on the basis of abstract labor). In Postone’s view, this “objectivity” characteristic of capitalist labor provides the constructive foundation for the capitalist social structure, so that capitalist social relations acquire an “abstract” character in the sense of objectivity and “non-sociality,” and individuals in the capitalist era are primarily subjected to the abstract domination of the social structure. If one proceeds from this standpoint, saying that “labor itself” is the foundation of “society in general” clearly expresses a sweeping and empty judgment, because we cannot find a “general mediation” between the two; it is only between “capitalist labor” with specific characteristics and “capitalist society” with a specific form that we can truly find this mediation, namely the “objectivity” of labor.

这一理论立场受到了已故美国左翼思想家普舒同的挑战。普舒同在生前出版的最有影响的著作《时间、劳动与社会统治》中提出的著名观点是，“在马克思成熟期的批判中，劳动创造了社会世界并且是所有财富的来源，这一观念并非意指社会一般，而仅仅意指资本主义社会，或曰现代社会”。这一观点的独特性在于：在此马克思的劳动概念与社会一般的联系被切断了。这不仅意味着，“劳动”不再被视为“一切”社会的基础，而只是被视为特定社会即资本主义社会的基础；更意味着，与资本主义社会相连的，也不再是存在于一切社会中的一般劳动，而是“资本主义劳动”。普舒同所强调的是，资本主义劳动之所以相对于社会结构而言具有基础性，乃是由于资本主义劳动具有独特的“对象性”特征（即这种劳动能够通过将自身对象化为产品而直接以抽象劳动为基础建立商品间的价值关系）。在普舒同看来，资本主义劳动的这种“对象性”特征为资本主义社会结构提供了建构基础，因而资本主义社会关系就具有客观性和“非社会性”意义上的“抽象”特征，而资本主义时代的个人受到的统治主要是社会结构的抽象统治。如果从这种立场来看，说“劳动本身”是“社会一般”的基础，显然就是在表达一个大而无当的判断，因为我们无法找到这二者之间的“一般中介”；而只有在具有特定特征的“资本主义劳动”与具有特定形式的“资本主义社会”之间，我们才能真切地找到这种中介即劳动的“对象性”。

Postone’s understanding of the labor issue in Marx’s thought fundamentally reflects an effort to reconstruct the historical dimension of the labor issue in Marx. Postone’s distinction between labor in general (or “transhistorical labor”) and capitalist labor, as well as his emphasis on the intrinsic connection between capitalist labor and the capitalist social structure, is not only important but also timely for the field of Marx studies. It is important because, in contemporary interpretations of Marx’s thought, “labor” increasingly seems to be endowed with a “natural” ontological status and is constantly entangled with various seemingly concrete but often abstractly treated concepts (such as “practice,” “sensuousness,” “life,” etc.), thereby increasingly acquiring a metaphysical character, to the point that the basic feature of Marx’s thought, namely historicity, seems to have disappeared in this domain; and if the historical dimension of Marx’s concept of labor cannot be restored, then the basic perspective and basic method of historical materialism risk being metaphysicalized, and the contemporary significance of Marx’s thought will become blurred. It is timely because, today, with the rapid development of science and technology and the significant changes in the basic forms of social production, historically grasping the objectivity of contemporary real movements in the manner of Marx has become an internal requirement of Marxist research. Against this background, the theoretical task of directly confronting the specificity of contemporary labor, and re-understanding the position and role of labor in contemporary social life on the basis of understanding and grasping the historical characteristics of contemporary labor, has become increasingly prominent before us.

普舒同对于马克思思想中的劳动问题的这种理解，从根本上说，体现了在马克思劳动问题上重建历史性维度的努力。普舒同关于劳动一般（或“超历史的劳动”）和资本主义劳动的区分，以及关于资本主义劳动和资本主义社会结构之间内在关联的强调，对于马克思思想研究界来说，不仅重要，而且及时。说其重要，是由于在当代关于马克思思想的解读中，“劳动”似乎越来越多地被赋予某种“天然”的本体论地位，并不断被各种看似具体实则往往被抽象对待的概念（如“实践”“感性”“生活”等）所缠绕，从而越来越多地具有形而上学性质，以至于马克思思想的基本特征，即历史性在这一领域似乎不复存在；而如果马克思劳动概念的历史性维度不能恢复的话，那么历史唯物主义的基本视野和基本方法就有被形而上学化的危险，从而马克思思想的当代意义也将变得模糊。说其及时，则是由于，在科技迅猛发展、社会生产基本形态发生显著变化的今天，像马克思那样历史性地把握当代现实运动的客观性已成为马克思主义研究的内在要求，而在此背景下，直面当代劳动的特殊性、以对于当代劳动的历史性特征的理解和把握为基础重新理解劳动在当代社会生活中的地位和作用这一理论任务，已愈益突出地摆在我们面前。

Problems in Postone’s Understanding of “Abstract Labor”

普舒同对“抽象劳动”理解的问题

However, raising the question is one thing; how to solve it is another. Although Postone, with keen insight, raised the issue of the historicity of Marx’s concept of labor, he did not convincingly clarify this issue.

不过，提出问题是一回事，如何解决问题则是另一回事。尽管普舒同以敏锐的洞察力提出了马克思劳动概念的历史性问题，却并未令人信服地阐明这一问题。

Postone’s understanding that capitalist labor is the foundation of Marx’s critique of capitalism is based on his understanding of Marx’s concept of “abstract labor,” and the problem lies precisely in the fact that this understanding of “abstract labor” is problematic. Although Postone highlights the importance of Marx’s idea of the dual character of labor, i.e., the distinction between “concrete labor” and “abstract labor,” and insightfully reveals the capitalist presuppositions contained in the concept of “abstract labor,” when he interprets the meaning of abstract labor as “the function of labor as a social mediating activity,” [2]2 Postone, *Time, Labor, and Social Domination*, p. 150. this reflects a deviation in his understanding of the issue: for Marx, abstract labor (or more precisely, “abstract human labor”) embodies the equalization of different concrete labors in the capitalist era, not the mediating nature of labor that Postone emphasizes.

普舒同关于资本主义劳动是马克思资本主义批判的基础的认识，是以他对于马克思“抽象劳动”概念的理解为基础的，而问题恰恰在于，他关于“抽象劳动”的这种理解是存在问题的。尽管普舒同凸显了马克思关于劳动二重性思想即对于“具体劳动”和“抽象劳动”的区分的重要性，并富有洞见地揭示了“抽象劳动”概念所蕴含的资本主义前提，但当他将抽象劳动的含义理解为“劳动作为一种社会中介活动所具有的功能”的时候，就体现了他在这一问题上的理解偏差：对马克思来说，抽象劳动（或确切地说，“抽象的人类劳动”）所体现的是资本主义时代不同具体劳动的等同化，而不是普舒同所强调的劳动的中介性质。

Specifically, the basic context in which Marx introduces abstract labor is the issue of the exchangeability of products from various concrete labor processes that differ qualitatively from one another. Here, Marx is concerned with exploring the potential formal presuppositions of the classical political economy labor theory of value, which insists on an intrinsic relationship between labor and value. If, according to the latter theory, labor really has an intrinsic correlation with value (i.e., the exchangeability of commodities), then what is the direct presupposition that makes it possible for the two to be linked? Marx attempts to answer this question through the concept of “abstract human labor”: various concrete useful labors are treated as abstract human labor that can be compared in terms of magnitude, thereby achieving the equalization of labor. But the problem is that concrete labor accompanies the entire process of human history’s emergence and development, while abstract labor is the historical presupposition for the necessary exchangeability of commodities. Therefore, abstract labor cannot be a function inherent in concrete labor itself; rather, some force intrinsically related to the capitalist era must have created the existence of abstract labor. Postone acknowledges the historicity of abstract labor, i.e., its connection with the capitalist era itself, but he treats abstract labor as the mediating nature of the concrete labor process, which fails to clearly explain the connotation and character of abstract labor. In fact, if we proceed from the specific narrative method of Marx’s *Capital*, just as “abstract labor” is introduced to solve the direct presupposition of the labor theory of value (how labor can serve as the commensurable basis for commodity exchangeability), the presuppositions of abstract labor itself must also be interrogated in the later discussion of the “form of value”: the presupposition that makes it possible to treat the labor producing commodity A and the labor producing commodity B as equalized, so that political economists can directly analyze the value of individual commodities, is not the different natural properties of these commodities themselves, but the existence of a holistic “world of commodities” (the formal presupposition of this holistic “world of commodities” requires further revelation). In this sense, so-called “abstract labor” is not actually a “form of labor,” but rather an equalizing effect produced by the entire capitalist production mechanism among various concrete labor processes. This effect cannot be determined by the concrete labor processes themselves; it is, rather, a “social effect.”

具体说来，马克思提出抽象劳动的基本语境，是彼此间具有质的差异的各种具体劳动过程的产品的可交换性问题，在此马克思所着意的，是为坚持劳动与价值之间内在关系的古典政治经济学劳动价值论探寻其潜在形式前提。如果按照后者的理论，劳动真的和价值（即商品的可交换性）之间有一种内在相关性，那么使得二者有可能联系在一起的直接前提是什么呢？马克思试图通过“抽象的人类劳动”这一概念回答这一问题：各种具体的有用劳动被作为可以进行量的大小的比较的抽象的人类劳动对待，从而实现了劳动的等同化。但问题是，具体劳动伴随着人类历史发生与发展的全过程，而抽象劳动则是商品必然具有可交换性的历史性前提，因而抽象劳动不可能是具体劳动本身所具有的功能，而必定是某种与资本主义时代内在相关的力量造就了抽象劳动的存在。普舒同认可抽象劳动的历史性，也即抽象劳动与资本主义时代本身的联系，却将抽象劳动视为具体劳动过程所具有的中介性，这就无法清晰地说明抽象劳动的内涵与性质。事实上，如果从马克思《资本论》的特殊叙述方式来看，正如“抽象劳动”的提出是为了解决劳动价值论的直接前提（劳动何以可能作为商品可交换性的公度基础）那样，抽象劳动本身的前提也要在后文关于“价值形式”的讨论中予以追问：使得生产商品A的劳动与生产商品B的劳动能够被等同化处理，从而使政治经济学家可以直接对个别商品的价值展开分析的前提，并不是这些商品各自具有的不同自然属性，而在于一个整全性的“商品世界”的存在（而这一整全性“商品世界”的形式前提则需另加揭示）。在此意义上，所谓“抽象劳动”，其实并不是一种“劳动形式”，而是整个资本主义生产机制在各种具体劳动过程之间所产生的等同化效果，这种效果无法由具体劳动过程自身决定，毋宁说是一种“社会效果”。

In this way, “abstract labor” is actually an important signpost in the formal-analytical process of Marx’s critique of political economy, rather than a final conclusion about labor in the capitalist era. Through this signpost, Marx sets the direction of his critique of political economy as an inquiry into the capitalist production mechanism that enables different kinds of labor to be treated as equivalent, thereby allowing political economists to establish a necessary connection between labor and value in the manner of the “labor theory of value.” Thus, Postone’s understanding of Marx’s concept of “abstract labor” not only misidentifies the concept’s content (mistakenly replacing “the equalization of labor” with “the mediating character of labor”), thereby failing to explain how capitalist labor, which shares the dimension of concrete labor with pre-capitalist labor, could directly possess a mediating character related to commodity value; it also confuses the analytical direction indicated by this concept (replacing Marx’s revelation of the capitalist production mechanism as the result of the complicity between people and things in the capitalist era, along with its self-negation, with the revelation of the domination of people by abstract relations independent of them), thereby denying the class domination workers suffer from the bourgeoisie, while ignoring the incoherence this understanding creates in the interpretation of Marx’s thought.

这样，“抽象劳动”实际上就是马克思政治经济学批判形式分析进程的一个重要路标，而不是一个关于资本主义时代的劳动的最终结论。通过这一路标，马克思将自己的政治经济学批判的方向设定为对于使得不同劳动被等同化处理，从而使得政治经济学家可以按照“劳动价值论”的方式在劳动与价值之间建立必然联系的资本主义生产机制。这样，普舒同对于马克思“抽象劳动”概念的理解，就不仅搞错了这一概念的内涵（错以“劳动的中介性质”取代了“劳动的等同化”），从而无法解释与前资本主义时代的劳动一样具有具体劳动维度的资本主义劳动，何以可能直接具有与商品价值相关的中介性，而且混淆了这一概念所指引的分析方向（以对于独立于人的抽象关系对人的统治的揭示取代了马克思关于作为资本主义时代的人与物的共谋关系的结果的资本主义生产机制及其自否性的揭示），从而否认工人所受到的来自资产阶级的阶级统治，而无视这种理解在马克思思想的阐释中所造成的不自洽。

Rethinking the Position of the Labor Problem in Marx’s Thought

重新理解劳动问题在马克思思想中的位置

In a certain sense, it can be said that Postone’s deviation in understanding abstract labor is related to his “foundationalist” understanding of capitalist society. This foundationalism appears in Postone in two ways: on the one hand, it bases the totality of capitalist society on particularity; on the other hand, it seeks a homogeneous foundation for capitalist social relations. Postone understands capitalist society as a whole composed of heterogeneous particular processes, and this whole itself possesses a totality that transcends those particular processes. Therefore, in understanding this totality, he naturally seeks the foundation of totality among various heterogeneous particular processes. And because he understands this “foundation” as necessarily having the same nature as the totality of capitalist society in order to serve as the “mediation” that constructs the latter, it is not surprising that he ultimately regards what he understands as “abstract labor” as the foundation of Marx’s critique of capitalism. For Postone, “abstract labor” is a function possessed by every particular kind of labor, and the basic nature of this function is “universal,” that is, “abstracted from all material particularity and all overt social characteristics.” Thus, abstract labor is seen by Postone as “an individuated moment of a homogeneous, universal social mediation” and is understood as the constructive force of capitalist social relations.

在某种意义上可以说，普舒同对抽象劳动的理解之所以出现偏差，与他关于资本主义社会的“基础主义”理解有关。这种基础主义在普舒同那里表现为：一方面将资本主义社会的整体性奠基于个别性之上；另一方面为资本主义社会关系寻找同质性基础。普舒同将资本主义社会理解为由异质性个别过程组成的整体，而这一整体本身具有超越诸个别过程的整体性，因此在理解这种整体性时，他很自然地在各种异质性个别过程中寻找整体性的基础，而又因为他将这种“基础”理解为一定要与资本主义社会的整体性具有相同性质才能成为建构后者的“中介”，最终将他所理解的“抽象劳动”视为马克思资本主义批判的基础就不会让人感到意外。在普舒同那里，“抽象劳动”是每一种特殊劳动都具备的功能，而这种功能的基本性质又是“普遍的”，也就是“抽象于所有的物质特殊性以及所有的公开社会特性”，因此抽象劳动就被普舒同视为“一个均质的、普遍的社会中介的个体化环节”，并被理解为资本主义社会关系的建构力量。

But in fact, this kind of “foundationalism” of Postone’s does not hold for Marx’s critique of political economy. For Marx, the prior existence of the historical capitalist social structure is the basic premise that enables labor to appear as having a foundational role, not the reverse. In the *Grundrisse* (1857–1858), Marx explicitly states: “Production based on exchange value and the community based on the exchange of these exchange values—although, as we saw in the previous chapter on money, they create the appearance that property is merely the result of labor, that private ownership of one’s own product is the condition of labor—and labor as the general condition of wealth, all presuppose and produce the separation of labor from its objective conditions.” [3]3 Marx, *Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie* (1857–1858), Chinese translation. The passage cited corresponds to the *Grundrisse* discussion of the separation of labor from its objective conditions as a presupposition of capitalist production. This passage typically embodies Marx’s basic attitude toward the problem of labor in capitalism: Marx refuses to take “labor” as the basic fulcrum for understanding capitalist society, but instead regards the “foundational status of labor” as an “appearance” characteristic of the capitalist era. Rather, what Marx focuses on in the labor problem is, through the analysis and critique of this “appearance,” to reveal the objective dimension of the capitalist social structure or mode of production.

但事实上，普舒同的这种“基础主义”对于马克思政治经济学批判来说并不成立。在马克思那里，历史性的资本主义社会结构的先行存在，是使得劳动能够表现为具有基础作用的基本前提，而不是相反。在《1857—1858年经济学手稿》中，马克思曾明确表示：“以交换价值为基础的生产和以这种交换价值的交换为基础的共同体，——尽管像我们在论货币的上一章中所看到的那样，它们会造成一种外观，仿佛财产仅仅是劳动的结果，对自己劳动产品的私有是［劳动的］条件，——以及作为财富的一般条件的劳动，都是以劳动与其客观条件相分离为前提的，并且产生出这种分离。” 这段话典型地体现了马克思关于资本主义劳动问题的基本态度：马克思拒绝将“劳动”作为理解资本主义社会的基本支点，而是将“劳动的基础地位”视为资本主义时代所具有的“外观”。毋宁说，马克思在劳动问题上所着眼于的，乃是通过对于这种“外观”的分析和批判，揭示资本主义社会结构或生产方式的客观性维度。

Specifically, for Marx, the problem is not whether labor “constructs” value (or, on this premise, “constructs” capitalist social relations), but why labor “appears” as value. To directly establish a causal connection between labor and value, or to understand value as the result of labor’s “construction,” precisely embodies the position of the labor theory of value in classical political economy that Marx criticizes. Marx does not simply affirm or negate the labor theory of value; that is, he does not make a simple “yes” or “no” judgment on whether labor is really the “substance” of value. Rather, for Marx, the labor theory of value, as the theoretical foundation of political economy, is a theoretical mediation for grasping the objective dimension of the real movement of the capitalist era: through questioning the historical premise of the formal determination of the labor theory of value (that labor “necessarily” appears as value), Marx reveals the “formal premise” of “universal exchange,” which is precisely the basic mode of appearance of the capitalist mode of production in the sphere of exchange.

具体说来，对于马克思来说，问题并不在于劳动是否“建构”价值（或以此为前提“建构”资本主义社会关系），而在于劳动为何“表现”为价值。在劳动与价值之间直接建立起因果联系，或者说，将价值理解为劳动“建构”的结果，所体现的恰好是马克思所批判的古典政治经济学劳动价值论的立场。马克思并没有对劳动价值论进行简单的肯定或否定，或者说，他并没有对劳动究竟是否是价值的“实体”进行简单的“是”或“否”的判断。毋宁说，作为政治经济学的理论基础的劳动价值论，对于马克思而言乃是把握资本主义时代现实运动的客观性维度的理论中介：马克思通过对劳动价值论的形式规定（劳动“必然”表现为价值）的历史性前提的追问，揭示了“普遍交换”这一“形式前提”，而这正是资本主义生产方式在交换领域的基本现身方式。

Thus, it can be seen that while Postone attempts to escape a “transhistorical” understanding of Marx’s concept of labor by determining the specific form of labor in the capitalist era, he mistakenly takes the emphasis on the foundational status of labor in classical political economy—which is precisely Marx’s object of critique—as Marx’s own theoretical position, thereby failing to reflect sufficiently clearly on the status of the labor problem in Marx’s thought. What contemporary social life demands of us is to face the changes of life itself in the manner of Marx, with historical materialism, and not to take some given or preconceived notion as the premise for theoretically grasping historical real movement.

这样，可以看到，普舒同固然试图通过确定资本主义时代的劳动的具体形式而摆脱对于马克思劳动概念的“超历史”理解，但他误将作为马克思的批判对象的古典政治经济学对于劳动的基础性地位的强调当作马克思自己的理论立场，从而未对劳动在马克思思想中的地位问题进行足够清晰的反思。而当代社会生活对我们提出的要求则是，像马克思那样以历史唯物主义的姿态直面生活本身的变迁，不以某种给定的或先入为主的观念作为对于历史性现实运动进行理论把握的前提。

Online editor: Paul

网络编辑：保罗