An artificial intelligence is called an "intelligence" because it can appear to be intelligent - in other words, something is defined as intelligent because it seems like it would be right to think of it as such. Thus, it shouldn't be too difficult to believe that the Abstractionists think that corporations, sub-cultures, Civilizations, and Societies all collectively represent their own form of abstract intelligence. Don't they interact like living things? If you could get the attention of a culture, wouldn't it pass a Touring test?
Abstractionists believe that each culture is a living organism no more bizarre than a temporally-dispersed artificial intelligent or an inorganic life form. They form their own social orders and they have their own ecologies (technically, economies). Their mouths are consumer goods (which are, indeed, the things that do the consuming), and their food is money. The people that compose them are their blood, and contracts and laws are their nervous systems.
Abstractionists will fight for the rights of these "abstract life forms". While this is actually beneficial for Patent Office workers (it makes them more dedicated to protecting the rights of a corporation if the corporation is actually a living entity), it can lead to some problems. In one noteworthy terrorist act, a group of Abstractionists transformed a group of Unionists into members of a Civilization that was in a rapid decline as a sort of "emergency organ transplant".
The Abstractionist symbol is a stylized version of an old-world paper scroll contract with an eye peering out from it. Although the Abstractionists rather like the Transcendentals, they have little to do with those worthies simply because everybody already knows they're intelligent - it's the resident intelligence in subcultures taken as a whole that lack recognition. Of all civilizations and societies, most Abstractionists believe that Unionists and Group-Minds aren't abstract life forms. Group-Minds aren't because they aren't abstract or social (this is an almost universal belief), and Unionists don't because they are functional group minds of their own (this idea spurs some controversy among Abstractionists).
Benefit: When you've spent your life doing what you can to carry on a conversation with patriotism, there's no form of life that will truly astonish you. While Abstractionists can be startled by unexpected traits in cultures and intelligences, they aren't easily fuddled. They do not suffer penalties when dealing with bizarre or esoteric cultures, traditions, practices, or ways of thinking. Although they aren't able to bypass the Heterolinguist's defense against memetics, they need only interact with the Heterolinguist for a while to know how do design memetic pathogens to affect the Heterolinguist. Unfortunately, this has drawbacks - Heterolinguists do not automatically lose on ties against Abstractionists.
When dealing with other alien minds, similar rules should be used, dependant on the circumstances.
Core Value: Free Thinking. An Abstractionist needs to think (get this) abstractly in order to recognize the intelligence in complex sociodynamics. In addition, in order for those sociodynamic intelligences to grow and develop, they must also be encouraged to think freely. In so doing, a cycle is made that will produce its own great advances, independantly of the Transcendentals.