Producing Material Abstractions: Marx’s View of Hegel’s Concrete Universality

Abstract

Hegel’s concept of concrete universality is substantially relevant to contemporary theories that explore the level of realisation of the concept as a unity between the universal and the particular. This article will characterise the concept of the concrete universal and explain how the notion of real abstraction proposed by the German theorist Alfred Sohn-Rethel has similar implications to Marx’s concept. Sohn-Rethel’s theory aims to explain the conditions of abstraction of epistemological determinations in Marx. However, this work holds that Hegel’s concept of concrete universality has greater explanatory power when accounting for the determinations of Marx’s critique of political economy. To this end, the presentation set out here will consist of the following steps: i) a brief characterisation of the concept of the concrete universal based on the Hegelian notion; ii) a brief profile of the concept of real abstraction and its epistemic function; and iii) a comparison of the relative advantages of the former in explaining the various modes of abstraction in Marx’s critical exposition of capital.