OK. Your reasoning is that in Marx, the value of a good is the labor socially necessary to reproduce it. So, the amount of labor socially necessary to reproduce a given act of concrete labor is the labor necessary to reproduce the laborer's labor power. Am I right?
If so, this gets all confusing. It comes down to the labor required to reproduce the thing vs. the thing itself. Why wouldn't the labor being performed be counted in the labor necessary to reproduce the labor being performed? > Hi, Walt. You write: > >> It is obvious that when an employer and worker make a contract (in the >> realm of C in Marx's famous schema) the contract doesn't specify the >> concrete labor to be performed, it just says the parameters within which >> the boss will direct the worker. This seems like a classic case of the >> sale of LP. > >> But what if someone argued that in the realm of P, we were still >> implicitly in the realm of exchange because for every act of concrete >> labor workers were asked to perform, they had the power to weigh that >> against the wage they were paid. Thus, the wage is really payment for >> specific acts of concrete labor? > > The first question to ask here is if workers and firms are able to bargain > over the provision of specific labor services after workers have been > hired, why couldn't these after-hiring transactions have been anticipated > and bargained over at the point of hire? The answer that makes most sense > to me harks back to the "incomplete contracts" story I mentioned earlier > (in contrast to the scenario of *asymmetric information*, in which > employers can never observe some key aspect of workers' contribution). > Initial contracting might be incomplete for any of a number of reasons: > too many contingencies to anticipate and write into a feasible contract, > contingencies that are unverifiable and thus unenforceable by an external > enforcement agency, bounded rationality on the part of the transactors, > whatever. But whatever the reason, then we potentially have the scenario > you describe above: first workers are hired, then a particular > contingency is realized, then firm and employees bargain over services to > be provided and compensation to be paid under that contingency. > > The second question is, how does this scenario affect the canonical > Marxian story from V I, part 2 of capital? In the most general view, not > necessarily at all: as confirmed by the Fundamental Marxian Theorem, so > long as workers expend more labor than is embodied in their wage bundles, > capitalist profit arises. Beyond that, it's just a matter of > interpretation that doesn't seem to affect Marx's canonical account all > that much. On one hand, you could reasonably say it's still true that at > the point of initial hire, only labor power is purchased, since no one > knows yet exactly what the workers will do (or, perhaps, what they'll be > paid). > > On the other hand, as you suggest above, someone could insist that we're > still in the realm of exchange until after the production contingency is > realized and the subsequent wage bargain is concluded. In that case, it's > true that employers would be purchasing specified labor services rather > than labor power--that is, this is just like the case of complete > contracting I mentioned in an earlier post, just more involved. But other > things equal, Marx's value theoretic account might still obtain: what > capitalists pay for is the value of the labor power expended in providing > those labor services, and the necessary basis of profit is that they must > extract more labor than is embodied in the labor power used up. > > In other words, there are two distinct issues at stake in Marx's canonical > account: one is the strategic contracting issue of the form taken by the > labor exchange, and one is the value theoretic issue about what capitalist > firms ultimately pay for vs. what they ultimately receive. Variations in > the former *need not* (although they might) imply alterations in the > latter. The parenthetical comment just previous is the subject of another > post. > > Gil >
