Edition #4
Circuit of (Re-)Production (Dishcloth), 2024

Half of the proceeds go to Collection and Archive and the other half to the  Association Wiener Frauenhäuser.

Circuit of (Re-)Production (Dishcloth) was developed for the issue No. 73 of FKW – Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle Kultur and produced in cooperation with Collection and Archive at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

The term “real abstraction” was coined by the national economist and Marxist philosopher Alfred Sohn-Rethel, who uses it to refer to the moment “in the exchange process” when “doing and thinking diverge on the part of the participants.” He importantly emphasizes that for him, this abstraction is not merely conceptual, but actually takes on a real social form.

Circuit of (Re-)Production (dishcloth) depicts two economic circuits: the production circuit, and the circuit of re-production. An Egyptian wall painting from Thebes illustrates the weighing of cattle for ring money, depicting a person bending over in the middle of the scales between the object to be exchanged (the cattle) and the corresponding abstract equivalent value (ring money). The negotiation of the (counter) value and the exchange based on it, the “real abstraction,” takes place in precisely this intermediate space.

M – C (MP, LP) – P – C` – M`

Money (M) is exchanged for commodities (C): that is, a com-bination of means of production (MP) and labor power (LP). The two elements combine through capitalist production (P) to produce new commodities and surplus value (C`), which are then exchanged for a greater amount of money

(M`). M – AC – P – LP – M

Money (M) in the worker’s hands is exchanged for articles of consumption (AC), which are then consumed in a similar process of production (P). But now what is produced in this “production process” is a unique commodity –   the worker’s labor power (LP). Once produced (or reproduced), it is then sold to the capitalist in exchange for wages.