| This question <21|120-1> overall <119-2|120-1> Hans: <118|121>. |
| Question 62: First Marx says that the quantity of value is determined by labor time, and then he continues: “It might seem that if the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of labor spent in its production, the more lazy and inept the laborer, the more valuable his commodity would be.” Why does Marx write here: “it might seem that”? Does his prescription how to measure the quantity of value lead to absurd results or does it not? |
| [120] Hans: The Lazy Worker One More Time Only one person answered this exam question, and I am not surprised. It is a difficult question. Let me try to explain again how I would have answered it: |
| We get to this absurd result only because we overlook something. Actually it is not only one thing but two things which we are overlooking here: |
| (1) The concrete labor times of different people are not homogeneous and therefore cannot be added together, just as apples and oranges cannot be added together. The absurd result arises only because we had forgotten that only something that is homogeneous can be measured quantitatively. The lazy laborer reminds us of this oversight. |
| (2) We also had overlooked that our goal is to determine the magnitude of value. For this we do not need the quantity of concrete labor but that of abstract labor. This is not measured by the actual labor time but by the socially necessary labor time. |
| Once these oversights are cleared up it is obvious that an unskillful or lazy worker produces less value per hour than a normal worker. |
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