Value as an abstraction only rules societies built on commodified exchange

Evidence

This interdependence of production and circulation orients Marx’s foundational insight that “value” is an abstraction that can only be concretized retroactively. Attention to this actualization of abstraction distinguishes Marxism from a flat-footed labor theory of value à la classical economist David Ricardo since it is, rather, a systematic theory of value as a cardinal abstraction realized in concrete practices of both production and circulation. Labor makes things useful, while exchange and its hypostasis in the concept of value and the medium of money is the activity that generates value qua value. This is why, for Marx, value as such only becomes the ruling idea in a society of widespread commoditization. Barter economies have concepts of “need” and of “use,” while commodity economies, where production is undertaken for the purpose of exchange and accumulation, have concepts of “value.” — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 58

Categorization

• DEFINE: Positioning Marx against Ricardo’s flat-footed labor theory, Kornbluh defines value as retroactively concretized abstraction tied to exchange, not production.
• XREF: Directly relevant to judging Kornbluh’s structural debt to Jameson’s Marxism; this framing of retroactive concretization undergirds her mediational aesthetics.