system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Foucault on labour and economics in The Order of Things

I have a good understanding of Foucault's later works, but I have never been able to wrap my head around this book.  Here is a very quick summary of how I understand the argument:  In the classical episteme, representation was a closed system without any resemblance to an external object, then a major shift occurs when (with Kant, Ricardo, etc.) knowledge comes to depend on some transcendental object (life, labour, language). The analysis of wealth no longer consists of desires, but of measurements of labour-time, which serves as both the object of representation and its condition of possibility.  This shift allows for the development of economics as an empirical science with absolute values and formalized rules.

Coming at this from a Marxist angle, whats the take away?  Is the problem that 'labour' becomes a defining characteristic of human beings, or that this labour can be formalized into 'science' that has normalizing effects?  What would he say about the idea of commodity fetishism?
gpt
Yes, you are close. What Foucault is arguing is that Marx's understanding of labor is not some kind of measurement that holds throughout time, but a product of his contemporary discourse. As such, if Marx talks about labor in other periods, he is misapplying a concept that is only relevant to his own discourse.