Re: [ox-en] Re: What is value?
- From: Stefan Meretz <stefan meretz.de>
- Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:40:19 +0100
On 2008-11-27 22:29, Paul Cockshott wrote:
What about development of productive forces? Using machines,
computers, levels of cooperation? What about tacit knowledge?
Affective labour? And so on...
Why does this enter into the question, could you explain a bit
more what you are thinking?
Because there is not only training, that transforms "simple labour"
into "complex labour", but also the aspects I mentioned above.
Take a worker in a manufactory doing some manual operations. Take
the same worker and put him into an industrialized factory doing the
same operations with a thousand times bigger output. Skill does not
play any role in this example, but development of productive forces
(my first point).
But why is this relevant to the question of simple versus complex
labour. This is a different issue, that with technical advances
less labour is socially necessary. This was well understood by all
the classicals.
No, I think it is the analytical question of Marx about how different
types of labour are compared during equivalent exchange. He makes the
following distinct assumption to solve the problem:
»Simple average labour, it is true, varies in character in different
countries and at different times, but in a particular society it is
given. Skilled labour counts only as simple labour intensified, or
rather, as multiplied simple labour, a given quantity of skilled being
considered equal to a greater quantity of simple labour. Experience
shows that this reduction is constantly being made. A commodity may be
the product of the most skilled labour, but its value, by equating it
to the product of simple unskilled labour, represents a definite
quantity of the latter labour alone.[15] The different proportions in
which different sorts of labour are reduced to unskilled labour as
their standard, are established by a social process that goes on behind
the backs of the producers, and, consequently, appear to be fixed by
custom. For simplicity’s sake we shall henceforth account every kind of
labour to be unskilled, simple labour; by this we do no more than save
ourselves the trouble of making the reduction.«
Uh, a bad translation. In the original german version the (imho more
adequate) word "complicated" (in the sense of "complex") is used
instead of "skilled". Skill in the sense of qualification does not
occur in the whole paragraph. -- Could this be the source of different
interpretations?
Ciao,
Stefan
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