> On 7/8/06, Walt Byars wrote: >>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 laborer's > labor power. Am I right? ... < > > I can't speak for Gil, but "a given act of concrete labor" isn't on > the market -- it's not a commodity -- and thus doesn't have a value at > all in the Marxian system. It's the labor-power which has a value.
Yeah, Jim, but that assumes some sort of incomplete contracting situation so that capitalists can't contract for specific labor services. But I take Walt's point to be: what if they can, as in the case where firms engage outside contractors to perform specific tasks, and pay them if and only if those specific tasks are performed? In that case, what would be the value of the services thus transacted? That said, I agree with you it isn't the *labor* that's transacted for, even in this case--it's the concrete labor service, i.e. the thing *accomplished* by the labor. But Walt's question still arises with this amendment. Gil > > (To my mind, the idea of setting the value of labor-power equal to the > labor necessary to reproduce it is problematic. It was a reasonable > simplifying assumption in most of CAPITAL volume I, however.) > -- > Jim Devine / "It was the mystical dogma of Bentham and Adam Smith and > the rest, that some of the worst of human passions would turn out to > be all for the best. It was the mysterious doctrine that selfishness > would do the work of unselfishness." -- G. K.Chesterton. > > This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from > http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm >
