Volume 10, Issue 1, 2007
Mario Sáenz
Pages 1-31
Living Labor in Marx
The concept of living labor in Marx’s Grundrisse represents the key notion that conceptually ties his early theory of alienation with the drafts of Capital of the 1860s. Through a critique of the formalism that opened space for Marx’s economic writings, I explore living labor, not only as alienated within the capital–labor
relation, but as an absolute, metahistorical exteriority. Furthermore, the interpretive writings of Enrique Dussel on the Grundrisse are contrasted with the reading of
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri to show how living labor can be understood as ethical excess within the framework of biopolitical production.