-**Links to**: [[Desire]], [[Desire and Capital]], [[05 Prediction]], [[Domination]], [[Resistance]], [[Marx]], [[Abstraction]], [[Abstract machine]], [[Real and imaginary]], [[Virtual]], [[Reification]], [[Thing-in-itself]], etc. ### [[Question]]: What are _real abstractions_? ### [[Postulate]]: They are concepts which often maladaptively track a predictive social space, because they take too much for granted and cannot accommodate the complexity of what they aim to track. If the categories of what can be understood as _political economy_ are necessarily social and necessarily false (too general, and too loaded with ideological assumptions: nature; population; etc.), and what “presents itself {in these} to thought as concrete is an incomplete abstraction” (Brassier 2023, p. 118)—its incompleteness being a symptom; the very alienation which sustains its reification—then this is precisely why these categories, as concepts which predict sociality, need ideological critique (Ibid.). Brassier argues that because totalities—such as real abstractions—can _by definition_ only be accessed in (speculative) thought; their effects can only be corroborated; verified in social practice (“rather than in experience or thought” p. 120): >”… Marx’s point is that while thought can adequately represent the structure of practice, there is no similarity … between the structure of thought (what is concrete-in-thought) and that of practice (concrete-in-reality) {… : the latter} is a practical act whose nature does not reveal itself either to those executing it or to the theoretical consciousness…” (p. 121). In our terms: thought _predictively tracks incoming reality_, but given that this predictive act includes active offloading onto the environment (leading to the aforementioned incompleteness), it necessarily remains ignorant of much of what it offloads (the rest of the system: social practice). This is why it is both necessary to bring awareness of thought-as-thought (metacognition and learning) and of the necessarily historicomaterial, social character of all the predictive offloading onto the context. %% Here do Marx pp118-9 quote in predictive terms. And use representation versus non as brassier frames it, in predictive terms. “Population is an abstraction, if we leave out e. g. the classes of which it consists. These classes, again, are but an empty word, unless we know what are the elements on which they are based, such as wage-labor, capital, etc. Those imply, in their turn, exchange, division of labor, prices, etc. Capital, e. g. does not mean anything without wage-labor, value, money, price, etc. If we start out, therefore, with population, we do so with a chaotic conception of the whole, and by closer analysis we will gradually arrive at simpler ideas; thus we shall proceed from the imaginary concrete to loss and less complex abstractions, until we get at the simplest conception. This once attained, we might start on our return journey until we would finally come back to population, but this time not as a chaotic notion of an integral whole, but as a rich aggregate of many conceptions and relations. The former method is the one which political economy had adopted in the past at its inception. The economists of the seventeenth century, e. g., always started out with the living aggregate: population, nation, state, several states, etc., but in the end they invariably arrived, by means of analysis, at certain leading, abstract general principles, such as division of labor, money, value, etc. As soon as these separate elements had been more or less established by abstract reasoning, there arose the systems of political economy which start from simple conceptions, such as labor, division of labor, demand, exchange value, and conclude with state, international exchange and world market. The latter is manifestly the scientifically correct method. The concrete is concrete, because it is a combination of many objects with different destinations, i. e. a unity of diverse elements. In our thought, it therefore appears as a process of synthesis, as a result, and not as a starting point, although it is the real starting point and, therefore, also the starting point of observation and conception. By the former method the complete conception passes into an abstract definition; by the latter, the abstract definitions lead to the reproduction of the concrete subject in the course of reasoning. Hegel fell into the error, therefore, of considering the real as the result of self-coordinating, self-absorbed, and spontaneously operating thought, while the method of advancing from the abstract to the concrete is but a way of thinking by which the concrete is grasped and is reproduced in our mind as a concrete. It is by no means, however, the process which itself generates the concrete. The simplest economic category, say, exchange value, implies the existence of population, population that is engaged in production under certain conditions; it also implies the existence of certain types of family, clan, or state, etc. It can have no other existence except as an abstract one-sided relation of an already given concrete and living aggregate.” Cr pol ec, pp 293-4, Gutenberg online version Concrete-in-thought, concrete-in-act Ray Brassier “Marx’s is a materialism of abstraction. Capitalism is a system of real abstractions: commodity, value, labour, money, exchange, et al. In contrast to thought abstractions generated through intellection (such as humanity, right, justice, beauty, etc.), real abstractions are generated through social practices. Where the unity of thought abstractions defies spatiotemporal localization because it is that of transcendent generality, the unity of real abstractions defies localization because it is spread out across space and time. Real abstractions are immanent without being particular, abstract without being transcendent. Thus money, for example, is represented by ostensible particulars (whether coins, notes, or digital encryptions) but is not itself an ostensible particular. Yet it is not a conceptual artifact; its attributes and functioning do not depend on intellection. It is concrete but not ostensible.” P. 111 What i would point out here is that _real abstractions_ span shorter lightcones than thought abstractions. In reality, they are on a continuum, not (diametrically) opposed, but tracking different aspects of reality. Thought abstractions tend to infinity (to the mind’s ”…”, leaving things where others can pick them up and vice versa), while real abstractions tend towards a more, indeed, _concrete_ encounter with reality because they are imagined to be localizable: tokens of real abstractions exist (coins). Tokens of “beauty” are open-ended because concepts such as beauty, truth, etc. function as explorative concepts, when they are not reductive or simplistic (which is what we often tend to criticize in all humanisms, aestheticisms, etc.): these transcendentals are transcendental precisely because they should always encompass more: they are “virtual”, in the Deleuzian sense, they are open-ended, they track the not-yet-exploited. Thus, in the sense of being oppressive, being biological strategies, and being something which can be put to use in various ways, real abstractions are _exploitative_. Take Marx quote from p. 118-9 and translate predictively. Maybe also the theses, as summarized by Brassier. “… the practical reality of commodity exchange is not experienced _as_ practice … Consciousness is necessarily false: it does not _express_ the social relation (the system of impersonal practices) that is its essence; it _represses_ it.” P. 118. Basically, text summary: Life is social. The commodity, money, etc (real abstractions) turn the social, whatever can be made consciously accessible and intelligible, into an impersonal network of false reified value structures. In the extension of things as they actually take place (in total praxis), in the unconscious (what is cognitively inaccessible), as well as in the yet-uintelligible (what has not been theorized/represented and socialized), we do not know this is happening. Reification, false consciousness about the workings of production, leads to alienation. ____ Read into Sohn Rethel. “Sohn-Reth­el as­serts that “real ab­strac­tion arises in ex­change from the re­cip­roc­al re­la­tion­ship between two com­mod­ity-own­ers and it ap­plies only to this in­ter­re­la­tion­ship” (Sohn-Reth­el, _In­tel­lec­tu­al and Manu­al Labor_, pg. 69).” https://thecharnelhouse.org/2014/04/21/real-abstraction-on-the-use-and-abuse-of-an-idea/ reddit: “Marx claims that certain abstractions arise due to changes in material relations, meaning that there are categories of thought that are directly brought about by socio-economic changes. For example, the concept of "labor" involves abstracting from the many different kinds of labor and forming a concept of labor in general. Yet this abstraction, Marx claims, has a real basis insofar as wage labor under capitalism has stripped labor of its individual character, if that makes sense. This is likely what the author means by "real abstraction." I'll quote some of the relevant passages below: > As a rule, the most general abstractions arise only in the midst of the richest possible concrete development, where one thing appears as common to many, to all. Then it ceases to be thinkable in a particular form alone. On the other side, this abstraction of labour as such is not merely the mental product of a concrete totality of labours. Indifference towards specific labours corresponds to a form of society in which individuals can with ease transfer from one labour to another, and where the specific kind is a matter of chance for them, hence of indifference. Not only the category, labour, but labour in reality has here become the means of creating wealth in general, and has ceased to be organically linked with particular individuals in any specific form. Such a state of affairs is at its most developed in the most modern form of existence of bourgeois society—in the United States. Here, then, for the first time, the point of departure of modern economics, namely the abstraction of the category 'labour', 'labour as such', labour pure and simple, becomes true in practice. The simplest abstraction, then, which modern economics places at the head of its discussions, and which expresses an immeasurably ancient relation valid in all forms of society, nevertheless achieves practical truth as an abstraction only as a category of the most modern society ... > ... This example of labour shows strikingly how even the most abstract categories, despite their validity—precisely because of their abstractness—for all epochs, are nevertheless, in the specific character of this abstraction, themselves likewise a product of historic relations, and possess their full validity only for and within these relations. > Bourgeois society is the most developed and the most complex historic organization of production. The categories which express its relations, the comprehension of its structure, thereby also allows insights into the structure and the relations of production of all the vanished social formations out of whose ruins and elements it built itself up, whose partly still unconquered remnants are carried along within it, whose mere nuances have developed explicit significance within it, etc. Human anatomy contains a key to the anatomy of the ape. The intimations of higher development among the subordinate animal species, however, can be understood only after the higher development is already known. The bourgeois economy thus supplies the key to the ancient, etc. But not at all in the manner of those economists who smudge over all historical differences and see bourgeois relations in all forms of society. [https://www.marxists.org/subject/dialectics/marx-engels/grundisse.htm](https://www.marxists.org/subject/dialectics/marx-engels/grundisse.htm)" https://www.connexions.org/CxLibrary/CX6255.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/rubin/abstract-labour.htm file:///Users/soniadejager/Downloads/Tom%20Bottomore%20(ed.)%20-%20A%20Dictionary%20of%20Marxist%20Thought-Blackwell%20(2001).pdf file:///Users/soniadejager/Downloads/David%20Harvey%20-%20A%20Companion%20to%20Marx's%20Grundrisse-Verso%20Books%20(2023).pdf Real abstraction refers to the process by which abstract concepts become real, material forces in capitalist society. Unlike mental abstractions, which exist only in thought, real abstractions have concrete effects on social and economic relations. Key points: 1. Commodity exchange: The primary example of real abstraction is the exchange of commodities. When goods are exchanged, their specific qualities are abstracted away, reduced to their exchange value. 2. Social relations: These abstractions shape how people relate to each other and to their labor, often in ways that obscure the true nature of social relations. 3. Concrete effects: Although abstract, these concepts have real-world consequences, influencing economic structures and human behavior. 4. Contrast with idealism: Unlike Hegel's idealism, Marx argues these abstractions arise from material conditions, not just ideas. 5. Critique of capitalism: Marx uses this concept to critique how capitalism reduces complex social relations to abstract, quantifiable forms like money and value.