RESUMEN
This chapter provides a comprehensive discussion of the notion of labour in Marxian social theory, with the aim of offering a systematic reconstruction of the ‘unity of its many determinations’ which appear scattered in Marx’s own writings. In order to do so, it addresses the multiple dimensions and aspects associated with this essential concept, both as they were originally formulated by Marx and in some of the main subsequent debates outside and within Marxism to which the former gave rise. The guiding thread that knits together the argument is the discussion of a series of determinations of labour, and it examines the way in which they initially appear in Marx’s early writings and how their meaning evolves and crystallizes into their definitive conceptualization in his mature works, such as the Grundrisse and Capital. Taking as its point of departure the simplest determination of human labour as conscious life-activity, this chapter probes further into the different, more concrete determinations which comprise the material character of production and its changing historical modes of existence. Through this close scrutiny of the concept of labour, the chapter makes two fundamental points. In the first place, and substantively, it brings out the centrality of the material determinations of human productive subjectivity for the comprehension of the content and historical trajectory of society. Secondly, and formally, it shows that it is possible to find an underlying ‘systematic’ unity which articulates those different determinations of the Marxian concept of labour into a ‘concrete whole’.
PALABRAS CLAVE: Labour; Marx; Consciousness; Productive subjectivity