ABSTRACT
In the field of critical political economy, and in particular of Marxist political economy, the conception that abstract work constitutes a historically specific social form, proper only of the production of goods, has gained notable strength, until becoming dominant. The Essays on the Marxist theory of value of Isaak Rubin, are universally recognized as the original foundation of this conception. It would seem that any criticism of it should start from answering the elementary question of what is abstract work? On this basis, everything could be reduced to a question of definition, of the enunciation of a concept, of a category. But, in the dialectical method, the definitions, the concepts do not constitute the starting point. On the contrary, they constitute the point at which it is possible to synthesize, under one name, the development of the determinations that are carried out in the concrete in question. Classical political economy and neoclassical economics naturalize the appearance of the abstractly free consciousness of the commodity producer by identifying the specific social forms of commodity production with the materiality of the process of human life. Rubin achieves the same naturalization by resorting to a path that simulates starting from the recognition of the historical specificity of the consciousness of the mercantile producer. But already in its first step, it empties the free conscience of its determination as a necessary concrete form of the alienated conscience, emptying of materiality the socially necessary abstract work carried out in a private and independent way, and substituting this materiality for a purely ideal existence. The establishment of the relation of change does not emerge, then, as an expression of such materiality. On the contrary, it is established in a direct way without any material determination, other than to attribute the property of change to objects that have been materially reduced to having nothing in common, which are confronted with another material object that has the fantastic power to make abstract work pass from ideality to reality. In this world of investment, free consciousness and alienated consciousness are presented as splintered. The second becomes a social determination external to the being of the producer. What is this being, then? The mere fact of conceiving the alienated consciousness as something that imposes itself on it in an external way implies conceiving the pre-existence of the consciousness of this being as a non- alienated consciousness, that is, as a free consciousness. But this free consciousness cannot have its source in the fact that the organization of social work is done privately and independently, since Rubin only sees the alienated consciousness sprout from this mode of organization. It has to be, therefore, of an external conscience to the own determinations of the general social relation of the producers of merchandise. This inevitably means that it is conceived as a naturally free consciousness.
KEYWORDS: Rubin; Theory of Value; Free Consciousness; Alienated Consciousness