| This question <194-2|197-2> overall <194-2|194-4> Panacea: <39|194-4>. |
| Question 74: Does skilled labor produce more value per hour than unskilled labor? Explain! |
| [194-3] Panacea: Yes! The greatest difficulty in speaking about labour is it's reduction to general terms - ‘skilled’ and ‘unskilled’. This is not an exact and absolute science, and Marx knew it. There are no absolutes. But a great deal of evidence exists which indicate a ‘multiplier effect’ possible in labour - this is the qualitative distinction between ‘skilled’ and 'unskilled'labour. A brain surgeon studies for years ( a relatively unproductive time for society) in order to become an effective doctor. Those years of training multiply his effectiveness in terms of use value (one coat clothes one man; if I can work better and more skilled, I can produce two coats to clothe two men in the same time). Note: the effort expended remains the same between unskilled and skilled (or should). Panacea. |
| Hans: The case in which two workers produce the same product is much clearer than the case discussed in this Question in which the skilled labor of a doctor is explained with the labor of his janitor. Your “multiplier effect”, if I understand it right, is an effort to combine the two. Forget it! A surgeon does not have to work twice as fast as someone else in order to get his training time added to the value produced when he uses his skills. |
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