Intellectual and Manual Labour

A Critique of Epistemology

Series: 

Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s Intellectual and Manual Labour is one of the major texts of post-war Marxist theory. A tremendous influence on the major writers of the Frankfurt School, with ongoing relevance to current debates about value, abstraction, and domination, Sohn-Rethel’s ideas are here presented at their fullest scope and with their greatest theoretical clarity.

Out of print for many years, this new Historical Materialism edition contains a new introduction by Chris O’Kane, an afterword by Chris Arthur, and a compilation of the responses to Intellectual and Manual Labour published in the Italian journal Lotta Continua, including a substantial article by Antonio Negri.

Prices from (excl. shipping):

$188.00
Add to Cart
Alfred Sohn-Rethel was born in 1899. Forced to flee Germany during World War II, he settled in the United Kingdom, where he continued to work on the ideas that he would present in his magnum opus, Intellectual and Manual Labour.
“The republication of Intellectual and Manual Labour is a gift to Marxist scholars and finally makes Sohn-Rethel’s work available to the wider public. With its additional material and contextual essay, the new edition of Intellectual and Manual Labour is likely to reinvigorate an interest in Sohn-Rethel’s work.” – Fabian van Onzen, Lone Star College, in: Marx and Philosophy Review of Books (18 June 2021) [ Full review]
Introduction to the Historical Materialism Edition
Chris O’Kane
Translator’s Foreword
Preface

Introduction

Part 1 Critique of Philosophical Epistemology



 1  The Fetishism of Intellectual Labour
 2  Can There Be Abstraction Other Than by Thought?
 3  The Commodity Abstraction
 4  The Phenomenon of the Exchange Abstraction
 5  Economics and Knowledge
 6  The Analysis of the Exchange Abstraction
 7  The Evolution of Coined Money
 8  Conversion of the Real Abstraction into the Conceptual Abstraction
 9  The Independent Intellect

Part 2 Social Synthesis and Production



 10  Societies of Production and Societies of Appropriation
 11  Head and Hand in Labour
 12  The Beginnings of Surplus Production and Exploitation
 13  Head and Hand in the Bronze Age
 14  The Classical Society of Appropriation
 15  Mathematics, the Dividing-Line of Intellectual and Manual Labour
 16  Head and Hand in Medieval Peasant and Artisan Production
 17  The Forms of Transition from Artisanry to Science
 18  The Capitalist Relations of Production
 19  Galilean Science and the Dynamic Concept of Inertia
 20  Bourgeois Science

Part 3 The Dual Economics of Advanced Capitalism



 21  From De-socialised to Re-socialised Labour
 22  A Third Stage of the Capitalist Mode of Production?
 23  The Turn to Monopoly Capitalism
 24  Imperialism and Scientific Management
 25  The Economy of Time and ‘Scientific Management’
 26  The Essentials of Taylorism
 27  Critique of Taylorism
 28  The Foundation of Flow Production
 29  The Unity of Measurement of Man and Machine
 30  The Dual Economics of Monopoly Capitalism
 31  The Necessity for a Commensuration of Labour
 32  The Commensuration of Labour in Action
 33  The Way to Automation
 34  The Curse of the Second-Nature
 35  The Epoch of Transition
 36  Logic of Appropriation and Logic of Production

Part 4 Historical Materialism as Methodological Postulate



 37  The Theory of Reflection and Its Incompatibilities as a Theory of Science
 38  Materialism Versus Empiricism
 39  Marx’s Own Object Lesson
 40  Necessary False Consciousness
 41  The Philosophical Issue
 42  The Essentially Critical Power of Historical Materialism

Afterword
Chris Arthur

Materials from Lotta Continua on Alfred Sohn-Rethel
Translated by Richard Braude
References
Index
Marxists, authors interested in debates around real abstraction, the value-form, and social domination, students of Kant, economic anthropology, social epistemology and historical materialism.
  • Collapse
  • Expand

Manufacturer information:
Koninklijke Brill B.V. 
Plantijnstraat 2
2321 JC
Leiden / The Netherlands
productsafety@degruyterbrill.com