| This question <39|55> overall <48|50> Inca: <1349|108>. |
| Question 96: The value of the product is determined by the socially necessary labor-time. What are the implications of this for a capitalist supervising his employees? |
| [49] Inca: I do not think this is a question to think straight forward as most of the questions are. We might intend to think that in a capitalist society (in our case) since the value of a commodity is generated on human labor and as the quantity of labor is measured by its time; consequently there would be a logical concern in the supervisory level in terms of taking care the time utilization in the working place. But again this is not what Marx is trying to look in capitalist societies, if this is the case we would conclude that capitalism is for an extension in the time spend in the production process or in promoting laziness which as we can think now is not real. There are some other considerations we need to point in this case in order to answer this question as the “lazy case” conditions. |
| First of all, we need to count that as in most of cases Marx is referring to the abstract human labor. So, as it is pointed in the first part of this section “... the substance of which value consist, namely the abstract human labor”. This is the type of labor that “still present in the commodity”, and what is used and pool from the society in the production process to give a value to a determined article produced. Now I think what Marx helps the most in his interpretation of value is precisely in the understanding of how value is generated and how this generation of the value is manifested in the commodity itself. |
| Now, we have to remember the “social pact” that I think Marx explains in some area in this section which consider that there are some “common sense” if we like to assume some general concepts to our reciprocal relation in society in order to maintain the normal relations between individuals. This is not only the concept of common interest over the individual interest. In this case we just take the part of what the society expect as a whole from all its parts or from all individuals. Here comes after explaining that “... commodities producers do not know how much value their commodity has, all they know is how much time their concrete labor takes,” that nevertheless these decisions will ultimately lead to the outcome that exchange-values are governed by the abstract social labor. So, in other words yes there might some actions involve in order to keep the “necessary time” to produce determined commodity and be more productive if we want but that does not have anything to do with affecting the value since as also is considered in the question there are some socially necessary labor-time condition. |
| Hans: I was unable to follow your argument. |
| Inca: I was trying to say that there is not straight reasoning for this question. We need to consider the abstraction of some concepts and from there we can conclude that so far, Marx is focused in this section in the substance that provide the value to commodities, this substance comes as he explains from the production process, the labor. |
| The analysis for this question might distract our attention to time as a measure of labor but this would be incorrect as the “lazy case.” There is no implication based on this knowledge on the supervisory level. |
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