| This question <53|62> overall <60|62> Emma: <597|139>. |
| 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? |
| [61] Emma: Commodity, Labor and Value Following the model set by Hans in class for interpreting passages of Capital, I will take the question apart and answer it in pieces first, in part by defiing some terms. Then I intend to put the pieces together and answer the question in whole. Hopefully by making some of my assumptions overt through definitions the many errors in my thinking will be more easily spotted and corrected. |
| For Marx a commodity is a use value which is produced for sale in the market and thus has an exchange value. The “value” referred to in the question is the exchange value. It is primarily a social relation and may have a dollar amount ascribed to it. Unlike a use value which is a carrier of exchange value and represents utility possibilities not measured per se, the value mentioned in the question has an explicit exchange value, or price, that may or may not change over time. |
| Exchange value is set in a capitalist society through a market where bartering and negotiating work to set a price. In this process, the capitalist observes the needs of the market to determine which commodities are in demand. He then adjusts his production to meet the demands he observes. This is a process grounded on the self-interest of the producer of the commodity who intends to meet a market need and thereby maximize his own benefit. The commodity in question is produced strictly for the market. The exchange value of a commodity in a capitalist society is exactly equal to what someone is willingto pay or trade for it. |
| Marx believes that a better and more equitable way to establish the exchange value of a commodity is through the quantification of the labor required to produce the commodity, but not just any labor. For Marx the substance of value is labor and the magnitude of value is measured by the amount of labor. And it is the duration of time that measures labor, time being defined in typical terms. There are a number of peculiar assumptions posited by Marx and upon which Marx bases his value theory that should be understood when trying to grasp his meanings of labor and value. Specifically, the notions of “concrete” and “abstract” labor should be considered, with the latter being the real basis for the measure of exchange value, though it is also an incomplete idea on its own. As I understand it, concrete labor is the labor act that results in a particular commodity. Abstract labor is characterized as the general expenditure of human energy. |
| From this model it would be tempting to assume that the longer it takes to produce a commodity the greater its value would be. That is, time spent relatively unproductively on the job would count equally toward creating value as time spent actively and skillfully engaged. Now, intuitively most people, including Marx, would conclude that such an approach is absurd since qualitatively there would be an obvious difference between the results of the two uses of time. Therefore, Marx was compelled to include in his theory of concret and abstract labor as the fundamentals of value the idea of “average human labor power” which is a social interpretation and measurement of the abstract labor time necessary to produce a commodity. It is an attempt at establishing a norm against which to measure the productivity and value of other labor. For Marx, the socially necessary labor time required to produce a commodity must take into consideration the fact that the abstract labor expended to create exchange value in one commodity is equal to any other abstract labor because special consideration must be given to the “prevailing socially normal conditions of production and with the socially average degree of skill and intensity,” the idea being that although some labor may be aided by higher levels of technology and produce more of a commodity than labor without such advantages for example, the abstract labor in both cases is still of equal intrinsic value. Therefore, while the results of various abstract labors may be different and equate to different exchange values in the production of a commodity, the intrinsic value of the abstract labors required to produce the commodity are equal; and given the idea of “average” in this context one would expect that the laborer favored with the means for greater productivity would produce absolutely more product while the average product of this laborer would still equal that of the laborer not so favored. This theory holds so long as the differences in abstract labor are as described in the question, that is, slow and inept in the benign sense of not being as skilled or procicient as someone else, and not something purposeful such as lazy. Marx seems to discount the possibility of lazy or willfully inept workers (something most people who work in the real world would have difficulty accepting) except to say that society might sanction someone who isn't measuring up. |
| For Marx, labor is the key to the problem of value, and the amount of socially necessary abstract labor determines exchange value. The assumption again is that workers are working diligently, and the speed with which a product is produced is irrelevant to its exchange value, contrary to capitalism. The notion that this concept forces everyone to “hurry-up” is wrong. On the contrary, it allows all workers to labor at their own pace. It specifically allows for the “Mozarts” and “Einsteins” of the world because it values labor intrinsically and abstractly equally with concrete labor. In this model the end result is not the determinant of exchange value, contrary to capitalism. (By the way, Mozart and Einstein are bad examples of artists and thinkers whose efforts are generally suspect by the materialists of the world. Better to use Courtney Love and Jackson Pollack. Yikes!) |
| How Marx would go about setting the socially accepted labor standards is unknown to me. I assume his theories would lead toward establishing some very unproductive “lowest common denominator” standards. That the world that once theoretically embraced his ideas is moving away from them to something that isn't quite capitalism yet also not socialism is telling. |
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