Labor is purposive imagination realized in matter, giving workers authorship over process

Evidence

A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 141

Categorization

• DEFINE: Marx’s canonical definition of labor as imagination-before-erection — the template against which speculative imagination will later be measured.
• XREF: Provides the Marxian basfinition the book contrasts with financialized speculation; connects to exchange-value, the antinomic fiction, and production of culture chapter claims.
• SEED: Contrast the architect’s purposive imagination with the trader’s speculative imagination: the latter forms communities precisely by never erecting stable structures.