| This question <102|576> overall <102|105> Hans: <96|105>. |
| Question 129: The exchange of commodities poses a dilemma: what are the grounds for treating tangibly different commodities as equals? This dilemma is then also echoed on the level of the labors producing these commodities, and on the level of labor-powers. On each of these three levels the dilemma has a different resolution. Describe these three different resolutions. |
| [103] Hans: Three dilemmas. Danny' answer [102] is two-thirds right. Danny correctly resolves the first dilemma: what commonality is there between different use-values that would justify them being equated to each other (and to money) on the market? Answer: all are the product of social labor. |
| But Danny does not correctly answer the second dilemma: someone might say that labor cannot really be considered a commonality between the products, because each product is the product of a different kind of labor. These labors are so different that one cannot consider them a commonality. Marx agrees that, as far as the activity goes which is necessary to produce the product, these activities are very different. But he says that all labors, despite these differences, have one thing is common, namely that they are the expenditures of human labor-power. It takes a person to do the work, and this is what gives the commonality. |
| The third dilemma is then that different labor-powers are different too. Danny has that part of the answer right again. Here the resolution lies in the fact that most of these differences can be reduced to differences in training. The skilled labor of a trained worker counts as multiplied labor, since the training time is pro-rated over the time the worker is producing the product. |
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