What is meant by “concrete labor” and “abstract labor?
In Marx’s view, just as a commodity is “a complex of two things – use-value and exchange-value,” so labor has a two-fold nature under capitalism. Just as the physical properties of a commodity determine its use value, so concrete labor activities are required to produce commodities. Marx mentions the labor of the joiner, mason, and spinner, for example. The rate at which a coat and linen exchange in the market shows the coat and linen to be different quantities of some common substance. The coat and linen are qualitatively different use values, and so they are produced by qualitatively different kinds of concrete labor activities – tailoring and weaving: Just as, therefore, in viewing the coat and linen as values, we abstract from their different use-values, so it is with the labour represented by these values: we disregard the difference between its useful forms, weaving and tailoring. As the use-values, coat and linen, are combinations of special productive activities with cloth and
