ABSTRACT
The building of serious theories of the working class and the workers’ movement proceeded along two competing paths. One was the liberal tradition, which reconstructed the development of labour movements as the history of the civil emancipation – and consequently the integration – of the working class within capitalism. The other was the socialist approach that interpreted labour history as a history of attempts to transcend capitalism. This chapter focuses on a second approach – a perspective that is not the umpteenth proclamation of Marxism’s ‘death’ but searches Karl Marx’s own work for clues to a different historical location of the working class and the labour movement. Its point of departure is the distinction between concrete and abstract labour, which Marx uses to show that labour in general acquires a specific form in capitalism that is both particular and socially general, an abstract activity to be performed as a means of obtaining other commodities.
