| This question <13|26> overall <16|18> Hans: <16|22>. |
| Question 51: The value of a commodity does not increase if it is made by a slow or inept laborer. Explain carefully why not. |
| [17] Hans: Why should a slow or inept laborer get as much as a fast one? The answers of Rollingrock and Orvee to Question 51 arrived within 2 minutes of each other. Fortunately there was not much overlap between them; otherwise the later submission would have been penalized for duplicating the earlier one. If it happens that you work on an answer and just before you submit it someone else submits an answer to the same Question, please contact me at Hans.Ehrbar@m.cc.utah.edu, and you will be able to do a different answer instead if there is too much overlap. |
| Of the two answers, I liked number [13] better. It gives a good restatement, in the author's own words, of the thesis that the value does not increase if it is made by a slow laborer. I also like the subject heading, which is almost a Marx quote: Marx distinguishes between social value and individual value and says that the social value is the “real” value. But it is necessary to say something about the last sentence, which reads: |
| The goal then of the social society is to increase the average, make the laborer better. |
| I am not sure what the author means by a “social” society. We all understand that “social” is not the same as “socialist”, don't we, and that Marx is not talking about some ideal society, but about the laws which he claims are valid here in capitalism. But it is one thing to describe those laws and another to assign a goal to them. Marx would certainly not think that these laws have the goal to make the laborer “better” (better off or work harder?). He would probably say that they have no goal, they are some automatic and quite destructive tendencies. They may have certain effects, but i would argue that they have also considerable downsides, they cannot be summarized as “making the laborer better.” |
| But neither [12] nor [13] was an answer to Question 51. Restating Marx's assertions is not the same thing as “carefully” explaining why these assertions hold. Who (if anyone) decides how much value the slow laborer makes, and how is it enforced? This Question is not yet closed, you can still make a contribution and get some good points for it, if you answer this correctly. |
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