Chapter 1: Editors' Introduction (Antonio Oliva, Ivan Novara, Angel Oliva).
Part 1: Reconstructing the Problem of Real Abstraction
Chapter 2: Value Form and Abstract Labour in Marx. A critical review of Alfred Sohn-Rethel's notion of "real abstraction" (John Milios).
Chapter 3: Money as a practical abstraction: From Feuerbach to Marx through Hess (1841-1844) (Pablo Nocera).
Chapter 4: Real Abstraction: Philological Issues (Roberto Fineschi).
Chapter 5: Marx's method and the use of abstraction (Alfonso Maurizio Iacono).
Chapter 6: Method and Value: Engels through Seth-Rothel (Paul Blackledge).
Chapter 7: Marx: the method of political economy as an ontological critique (Mario Duayer).
Chapter 8: Marx, Berkeley, and Bad Abstractions (Patrick Murray).
Part 2: Repercussions in the Method and in the Critique of the Social System.
Chapter 9: On Capital as Real Abstraction (Werner Bonefield).
Chapter 10: The Lost Roads and the Steep Paths of "Real Abstraction" (Jacques Bidet).
Chapter 11: On real objects that are not sensuous: Marx and abstraction in actu (Mauricio Vieira Martins).
Chapter 12: The concept of form in the critique of political economy (Alberto Bonnet).
Chapter 13: The real contradictions (Commodities as coherence of contradiction) (Christian Sucksdorf).
Chapter 14: Reification and Real Abstraction in Marx's Critique of Political Economy (Ingo Elbe).
Chapter 15: The Critique of Real Abstraction: from the Critical Theory of Society to the Critique of Political Economy and Back Again (Chris O' Kane).
Chapter 16: Real Abstraction in Light of the "Practical Revolution in Epistemology" (Labriola). Considerations on the Uses and Limits of a Concept (Wolfgang Fritz Haug).
Chapter 17: Real Abstraction in the History of the Natural Sciences (Oliver Schlaudt and Peter Mclaughlin).
Chapter 18: Zapatista autonomythe invention of time as a discontinuity and untotaling category (Sergio Tischler).
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.
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.
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.