Intellectual and Manual Labor:
A Critique of Epistemology

Alfred Sohn-Rethel

Contents
 
  Translator's Foreword  ix
 
  Preface xi
 
  Introduction 1
 
PART I  Critique of Philosophical Epistemology
 
1 The Fetishism of Intellectual Labour 13
2 Can there be Abstraction other than by Thought? 17
3 The Commodity Abstraction 19
4 The Phenomenon of the Exchange Abstraction 22
5 Economics and Knowledge 29
6 The Analysis of the Exchange Abstraction 35
  (a) Stating the Question 35
  (b) Practical Solipsism 39
  (c) The Form of Exchangeability of Commodities 43
  (d) Abstract Quantity and the Postulate of the Exchange Equation 46
  (e) Abstract Time and Space 48
  (f) The Concept of Value 49
  (g) Substance and Accidents 52
  (h) Atomicity 53
  (i ) Abstract Movement 53
  (j) Strict Causality 54
  (k) Concluding Remarks to the Analysis 56
7 The Evolution of Coined Money 58
8 Conversion of the Real Abstraction into the Conceptual Abstraction 60
9 The Independent Intellect 67
  (a) Self‑alienation and Self‑direction 67
  (b) The Relational Shift 68
  (c) Conversion post festum of Exchange 70
  (d) Division of Society and Nature 71
  (e) Reification at the Root of the Intellect 71
  (f) Knowledge from Sources other than Manual Labour 73
  (g) Laws of Nature 74
  (h) The Guide‑line of Historical Materialism 75
  (i) Money as a Mirror of Reflection 76
  (j) The Social Form of Thinking 76
  (k) The Social Synthesis as the Foundation of Science 78
 
PART II  Social Synthesis and Production
 
10  Societies of Production and Societies of Appropriation 83
11  Head and Hand in Labour 84
12  The Beginnings of Surplus Production and Exploitation 86
13  Head and Hand in the Bronze Age 88
14  The Classical Society of Appropriation 94
15 Mathematics, the Dividing‑line of Intellectual and Manual Labour 101
16 Head and Hand in Medieval Peasant and Artisan Production 104
17 The Forms of Transition from Artisanry to Science 111
18 The Capitalist Relations of Production 117
19 Galilean Science and the Dynamic Concept of Inertia 123
20 Bourgeois Science 132
 
PART III  The Dual Economics of Advanced Capitalism
 
21 From De‑socialised to Re‑socialised Labour 139
22 A Third Stage of the Capitalist Mode of Production? 140
23 The Turn to Monopoly Capitalism 144
24 Imperialism and Scientific Management 145
25 The Economy of Time and 'Scientific Management' 148
26 The Essentials of Taylorism 149
27 Critique of Taylorism 153
28 The Foundation of Flow Production 159
29 The Unity of Measurement of Man and Machine 161
30 The Dual Economics of Monopoly Capitalism 163
31 The Necessity for a Commensuration of Labour 166
32 The Commensuration of Labour in Action 170
33 The Way to Automation 172
34 The Curse of the Second‑Nature 175
35 The Epoch of Transition 178
36 Logic of Appropriation and Logic of Production 180
 
PART IV Historical Materialism as Methodological Postulate
 
37 The Theory of Reflection and its Incompatibilities as a Theory of Science 189
38 Materialism versus Empiricism 193
39 Marx's Own Object Lesson 194
40 Necessary False Consciousness 196
41 The Philosophical Issue 199
42 The Essentially Critical Power of Historical Materialism 201
 
  Notes and References 205
 
  Books and Articles by Alfred Sohn‑Rethel 213
 
  Index 215


SOURCE: Sohn-Rethel, Alfred. Intellectual and Manual Labor: A Critique of Epistemology. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1977.


Intellectual and Manual Labor: Extracts
by Alfred Sohn-Rethel

Historical Materialist Theory of Knowledge (1965)
by Alfred Sohn-Rethel

Science as Alienated Consciousness
by Alfred Sohn-Rethel (with Introductions)

The First Philosophers: Studies in Ancient Greek Society (Contents & Prefaces)
by George Thomson

The Thunderbolt, Interpenetration and Heraclitus
by David H. DeGrood

Book Review, Rudolf Wolfgang Müller, Geld und Geist
by Pasi Falk

Geoffrey Clark reviews Heads or Tails: The Poetics of Money by Jochen Hörisch

"Theories of Knowledge: A Dialectical, Historical Critique"
by Howard L. Parsons

Towards a Socio‑Historical Interpretation of the Scientific Revolution
by Paul Piccone

Philosophy and the Division of Labor: Selected Bibliography

Literature, Race, & Money: Selected Bibliography

Offsite:

Intellectual and Manual Labor: Preface - Chapter 4
by Alfred Sohn-Rethel

Outlines of a Critique of Technology
edited by Phil Slater


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