Abstraction in ads draws on two kinds of logic

The logic of photographic decontextualization.

The logic of the commodity form.

The commodity form detaches human characteristics from people and treats them as if they are exchangeable entities. Abstracted social relations then, are those removed from their actual organic context.

Abstraction has one set of roots in the separation of use value and exchange value made necessary by the commodity form. When something is turned into a commodity it "splits into quality and quantity, matter and form, use value and exchange value" (Lefebvre, 1971:95). As a result, "qualitatively different objects become what they are not: equal" (Balbus, 1977:573).

Likewise, when labor becomes a commodity, a distinction must be made between abstract labor and concrete labor, because in order to efficiently buy and sell labor power, the fiction that all kinds of labor have an axis of commensurability must be established. Qualitatively different kinds of labor are treated as if they can be plugged into an equation. Whereas concrete labor is the specific act of labor that I might perform, and it is the specific act that produces value, abstract labor is a measure like "number of hour units per task."

Although commodity abstraction has its roots in wage labor, it is not confined to the sphere of production. It is present wherever social relations have been split into quality and quantity, form and content. lt is present wherever social relations are detached from the personal biographies of those who constitute them. It is present wherever we are encouraged to refer exclusively to the abstract quality of things and people "to a neglect of relating oneself to their concreteness and uniqueness" (Fromm, 1955:106).