| This question <26|32> overall <27|29> Hans: <27|38>. |
| Question 51: The value of a commodity does not increase if it is made by a slow or inept laborer. Explain carefully why not. |
| [28] Hans: Answer to Question 51 Submissions [12] and [13] tried to answer Question 51, and I wrote a response in submission [17] saying: |
| 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. |
| Apparently Moo tried to take up the challenge in Submission [26]. Basically Moo's answer is that it is the employer who determines this and enforces it, and that these standards are also socially accepted. But there is a step missing: the employer can determine how hard he wants the employees to work, but it is not in his power to determine how much value his employees create, i.e., how much money his product will fetch. And it is this latter, more basic question, which we are interested in now. We are not even talking about employers and employees yet in Chapter One of Capital. |
| The one argument which I was looking for when I asked “who enforces it” is given in the Annotations on p. 27 as follows: |
| Even if the socially necessary labor time is not actually contained in a particular article under consideration, it usually is contained in the majority of other articles which have the same use value. And as long as the use values are identical, the buyers do not distinguish between them. |
| This was perhaps not terribly clear. I meant to say: An exceptionally slow worker has to compete with idential articles made by average laborers, therefore he cannot fetch a better price than those. |
| Therefore the market is what enforces it! This is an argument which Marx certainly had in mind but he did not say it very explicitly either. He said things like: |
| The individual commodity is here generally to be considered as an average sample of its kind. |
| But at least he cites Le Trosne, who said it more clearly: |
| All products of the same kind in fact form only one mass, the price of which is determined generally and without regard of the particular circumstances. |
| Moo said something like this at the end of his submission: |
| A commodity's value is already predetermined, it is what one receives in exchange in the marketplace. The amount of labor-power put into it does not matter. |
| He was therefore thinking along these lines, but had not yet sorted it out very clearly, I hope this shows you how Marx is to be read, and how difficult these very basic categories are. |
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