This question <29|32> overall <29|31> Hans: <28|34>.  
  Question 53: The value of a commodity does not increase if it is made by a slow or inept laborer. Explain carefully why not. Whose decision is it to do things this way? How is it enforced?   
  [30] Hans: Nature of collective decisions under capitalism   In [29], answering Question 53, Chacci wrote that workers who are slower than the norm are not employed in capitalism. This is indeed Marx's point of view; a reference is in the Annotations soon after Question 55. But it requires an additional step which is too complicated right now. We have to understand one thing at a time. Let us stick with “simple commodity production”, in which each worker owns his own means of production and is not hired by a capitalist. In this situation, Marx claims that a worker who works at half the pace of the average will produce half as much value per hour. This seems only just to us, but I tried to argue in the Annotations that it is a more repressive and less innocuous rule than it may first seem.   
  Since it seems so just, one is tempted to think it has somehow been collectively decided and is enforced by social mores and norms, as Chacci writes. I disagree. The mechanism by which this is enforced is a different one. Does anyone see what this mechanism is?   
 
 
 
  Students enrolled for Econ 5080 in 2009fa are invited to give feedback to the above message
Pseudonym:      UofU ID:  
Text: