But have not these simple categories also an independent historical or natural existence preceding that of the more concrete ones?This depends.Hegel,for example,correctly takes ownership --the simplest legal relation of the subject --as the point of departure of the philosophy of law.No ownership exists,however,before the family or the relations of master and servant are evolved,and these are much more concrete relations.It would,on the other hand,be correct to say that families and entire tribes exist which have as yet only possessionsand not property.The simpler category appears,thus,as a relation of simple family or tribal communities to property.In societies which have reached a higher stage,the category appears as a comparatively simple relation existing in a more advanced community.The concrete substratum underlying the relation of ownership is,however,always presupposed.One can conceive an individual savage who has possessions;possession in this case,however,is not a legal relation.It is incorrect that in the course of historical development possession gave rise to the family.On the contrary,possession always presupposes this "more concrete category".One may,nevertheless,conclude that the simple categories represent relations or conditions which may reflect the immature concrete situation without as yet positing the more complex relation or condition which is conceptually expressed in the more concrete category;on the other hand,the same category may be retained as a subordinate relation in more developed concrete circumstances.
Money may exist and has existed in historical time before capital,banks,wage-labor,etc.came into being.In this respect,it can be said that the simpler category expresses relations in a more advanced entity;relations which already existed historically before the entity had developed the aspects expressed in a more concrete category.The procedure of abstract reasoning which advances from the simplest to more complex concepts to that extent conforms to actual historical development.
It is true,on the other hand,that there are certain highly-developed (but nevertheless historically immature)social formations which employ some of the most advanced economic forms --e.g.cooperation,developed division of labor,etc.--without having developed any money at all --for instance,Peru.In Slavonic communities,too,money --and it's precondition,exchange --is of little or no importance within the individual community,but is used on the borders where commerce with other communities takes place;and it is altogether wrong to assume that exchange within the community is an original constituent element.On the contrary,in the beginning exchange tends to arise in the intercourse of different communities with one another,rather than among members of the same community.Moreover,although money begins to play a considerable role very early and in diverse ways,it is known to have been a dominant factor in antiquity only among nations developed in a particular direction --i.e.merchant nations.Even among Greeks and Romans (the most advanced nations of antiquity)money reaches its full development,which is presupposed in modern bourgeois society,only in the period of their disintegration.The full potential of this quite simple category thus emerges historically not in the most advanced phases of society,and it certainly does not penetrate into all economic relations.For example:taxes in kind and deliveries in kind remained the basis of the Roman empire even at the height of its development;indeed,a completely-evolved monetary system existed in Rome only in the army,and it never permeated the whole complex of labor.Although the simpler category,therefore,may have existed historically before the more concrete category,its complete intensive and extensive development can nevertheless occur in a complex social formation,whereas the more concrete category may have been fully evolved in a more primitive social formation.
Labor seems to be a very simple category.The notion of labor in this universal form (as labor in general)is also extremely old.
Nevertheless,"labor"in this simplicity is economically considered just as modern a category as the relations which give rise to this simple abstraction.The Monetary System,for example,still regards wealth quite objectively as a thing existing independently in the shape of money.Compared with this standpoint,it was a substantial advance when the manufacturing or Mercantile system transferred the source of wealth from the object to the subjective activity --mercantile or industrial labor --but it still considered that only this circumscribed activity itself produced money.In contrast to this system,the Physiocrats assume that a specific for of labor --agriculture --creates wealth,and they see the object no longer in the guise of money,but as a product in general,as the universal result of labor.In accordance with the still circumscribed activity,the product remains a naturally developed product,an agricultural product,a product of the land par excellence.
