| This question <64|70> overall <65|67> Hans: <64|72>. |
| 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? |
| [66] Hans: Emma did in [61] exactly what she intended to do: she laid out her assumptions so openly and clearly that it is more easily possible to “spot and correct” her errors. |
| At the beginning, everything is correct, and I am repeating it here, because it is so well formulated: |
| 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. |
| But what comes next is a misunderstanding. Emma continues |
| 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. |
| This is incorrect. Marx says on the contrary: the blind bartering for self-interest on the market has the social consequence that exchange proportions are governed by labor time. Please go back and read the text again, Emma. What you interpret to be Marx's judgments how a fair economy ought to function are in reality Marx's inferences about how an actual “simple commodity” economy ticks. Admittedly, everything looks fair, but it already has some hidden sources of inequity built in, which will assert themselves later in the book. |
| There is really lots of good stuff in what you write, Emma, even if your main organizing principle is wrong now. But I will just pick out one example of what you say in order to make my point. For instance, regarding the question that all labor is equally valued, regardless of what it produces and how high the technology is, you write: |
| 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. |
| Marx's conclusion is not based on the value judgment that all labor should be valued equal, but on the simple fact that the exact same labor which today produces with very low technology can tomorrow go to a different workplace and produce something with very high technology. This mobility of labor is the reason why certain kinds of labor cannot permanently command higher prices on the market than others. If they would, then laborers would just migrate into those industries which command the higher prices. This is an economic mechanism of the kind I was looking for. Modern economic models are full of them. |
| Marx differs from modern economics in that he does not yet consider these economic mechanisms to be the final explanation. He goes one step further and says: this migration of labor is possible because in a certain respect these two kinds of labor are indeed equal, they are both the expenditure of human brain, nerves, muscles, etc. Now it is easy to interpret this as a value judgment, that it would be fair to treat these labors as equals, but Marx means it as a factual statement, these labors are equal qua abstract labor, and this equality is socially recognized in the equality of market prices. |
| Question 53 still has not yet been answered. The answer is really simple, almost trivial, and after all this, many of you will probably be disappointed when you hear it. But nevertheless, your attempted answers to 53 have been very instructive and have by no means been a waste of time. |
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