[OPE-L:5294] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: how is SNLT measured?

From: Paul Cockshott (paul@cockshott.com)
Date: Fri Mar 30 2001 - 06:11:55 EST


On Fri, 30 Mar 2001, you wrote:
 
> It is a fetish to think the only way we can measure time is by a clock.
> Think of all the ways we measure time.  

PLEASE ENUMERATE THESE AND GIVE SOME ESTIMATE OF THE
ERRORS ASSOCIATED WITH OTHER MEASURES THAN THOSE 
DERIVED FROM CLOCKS.

> Capital shows us in a profound way
> the manner in which labor time can be measured under capitalism.  You
> cannot come up with technical by the clock measures because social
> reproduction is a matter of the unity of production and exchange.   

My understanding is that socially necessary labour time is
given as 'average' socially necessary labour time. It is fair to
say that one can not determine the time necessary for a task by
observing a single worker doing the task, but that if one has
observations of a large group, one can then obtain the average
time required. One would have to study the time required accross
several different work places in order to arrive at this, since the
method of production will vary to some extent across them.

I think you should qualify your statement that "social
> reproduction is a matter of the unity of production and exchange."
to say that social reproduction under capitalism is a unity
of production and exchange.  Non commodity producing
societies reproduce themselves without exchange.

In  a non commodity producing society, there are still constraints
on the amount of labour that has to be expended to produce
things, there is still an amount of labour that is socially necessary
for that purpose. It is just not represented as sums of money.

  

-- 
Paul Cockshott, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland
0141 330 3125  mobile:07946 476966
paul@cockshott.com
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/people/personal/wpc/
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/index.html



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