From: gerald_a_levy (gerald_a_levy@msn.com)
Date: Wed Jan 15 2003 - 06:24:17 EST
Re [8330]: > Here's what I mean: accept that the value magnitude of a commodity is > determined by the labor socially necessary for its production. In > practice it will typically be the case that production of a given > commodity requires different types of labor exercising different types > of skills. In practice acquiring those skills will in return require the > expenditure of labor--e.g., the labor of workers teaching the skills to > others. You add up all the labor times required on average to produce > the commodity--including the labor required to generate the skills > exercised by skilled workers in the production process-- and voila, > there's your socially necessary labor time. No need to "reduce" the > "complex" labor to "simple" labor. Labor time is labor time. Hi Gil. Happy new year. a) Labor time is labor time. But, not all labor time is performed by wage-labor. Not all labor time is at the direction of capital. Not all labor time is socially-necessary-labor-time. Not all labor time is paid labor time, e.g there is labor time that goes into the development of skills for which the skill-teachers receive no monetary compensation as in the case of volunteers. Not all labor time produces surplus-value. Etc. This has great relevance in terms of _which_ labor times you "add up". b) Since simple labor represents simple average labor, you would have to "add up" the labor required to not only produce a "given commodity" but the labor required to produce _all_ commodities in order to obtain the average. This, however, would be no easy calculation because the data would have to disaggregated to account for the issues raised in a). Solidarity, Jerry
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