"[V]alue is the product of wage labour in a capitalist system, and all the things that this entails. Value is not an ontologically distinct, ‘abstract’ substance, existing in some other plane of reality, birthed into that plane by the demonic machinations of capital. Value – like gravity – is a conceptual representation of a complex process that is difficult for all of us to comprehend.

To repeat: value is not an object, but a process. Many have said this, but the implication I emphasise here is this: if value is not an object, but a process (or set of processes) it cannot be a ‘real abstraction’, insofar as this term is commonly understood to refer to something immaterial. Everything that creates value happens here, in this world, and is explainable within it, without need for reference to a wicked Narnia where a white queen of value coordinates our realm through her interdimensional spyglass."

https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/on-the-bourgeois-concept-of-real-abstraction

#Marxism #CriticalTheory #RealAbstraction #Ontology #WertKritik