| This question <18|127-4> overall <22|24> Hans: <15|24>. |
| Question 68: Did Marx introduce additional assumptions in order to resolve the paradox of the lazy worker, or does his solution follow from assumptions made or results derived earlier? |
| [23] Hans: The primary economic forces do not arise from competition Angus [21] and Quake [22] give very good and eminently reasonable answers to Questions 62 and 66; yet I will try to show that Marx argues a little differently than they. |
| Angus says: the existence of lazy workers, or other differences in skill and speed among workers, will not lead to absurd results in the measurement of value, because value is measured by the time needed to produce the use-value “under the conditions of production normal for a given society and with the average degree of skill and intensity of labor prevalent in society.” (Capital pg. 129) |
| Although this seems to be a reasonable enough criterion, one might still be curious, and this is Question 66, who sees to it that things are done this way? Quake [22] gives here the correct answer: the market enforces this through competition, because the product of the lazy laborer will fetch the same price as that of the industrious and efficient laborer. |
| But if you look back at the text you will discover that Marx does not argue: the lazy or unskillful laborer who takes twice as long only creates half the value per hour because his product has to compete on the market with the product of the laborers working with normal skills. The competition argument is only given as an afterthought. The competition between the different goods brought to the market enforces the same quantitative relationships which Marx derives at the beginning of the currently assigned Section 1.1.3 by an argument which is much more difficult to understand than the argument just given, and which does not take recourse to competition. |
| This is not an accident. In Grundrisse (which was a manuscript Marx wrote for his self-clarification before writing Capital) one can find repeated pronouncements that it is impossible to explain the laws of capitalism from competition. Why? This comes from Marx's distinction between core and surface of the economy. Competition, i.e., the interaction of the economic agents on the surface, reflects and enforces the deeper laws of “capital in general” in the core. But someone who wants to understand the forces that shape our economy must look at this deep structure itself. Competition is only secondary; it is a reflection of this deep structure (although it also has its own measure of autonomy). The deep structure has to do with production, while competition has to do with circulation. Production is primary, circulation is secondary. |
| The magnitude of the value of a commodity is measured not by the actual but by the socially necessary labor time. This is not a new ad-hoc assumption but it can be derived from what we know about value from Section 1.1.2. It can be derived only looking at production itself, not at the market. Marx indeed gives such a derivation at the beginning of Section 1.1.3, and I tried to elaborate on this derivation in the Annotations. Can someone explain in their own words in plain English what this derivation is? Use Question number 68 for this. This is a difficult Question, but if you give it a serious shot I will grade it leniently. In order to give you more time to study this, I am extending the deadline for Questions 60-69 until 6 pm Thursday. |
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