(OPE-L) RE: 'simple commodity production'

From: Gerald A. Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Mon Sep 13 2004 - 11:53:36 EDT 

Hi Ajit:

You might be interested in reading Ian W's discussion of the
significance of  the assumption of labor homogeneity in
his scp model. See pages 24-25 in his paper "The emergence
of the law of value in a dynamic simple commodity economy":
http://home.mindspring.com/~ianusa/sce.pdf

In solidarity, Jerry


> <snip, JL> Though,
> given labor mobility, the assumption of equal pay for
> equal work is theoretically justified for the
> capitalist system (assuming away the sex, race
> discrimination), it cannot be justified for simple
> commodity production. Labor is assumed to be mobile in
> a capitalist system precisely because it is abstract
> labor. Since workers are completely dispossessed of
> all means of production, they have nothing to sell but
> certain amount of their labor-power irrespective of
> the form in which it is utilized. In this case it
> would be rational to assume that labor will move in
> the direction of higher remuneration, that is, workers
> would prefer to sell their labor-power to whoever
> offers the best price for their commodity.
> However, simple commodity production assumes unity of
> the means of production and the worker. Since the
> workers own their means of production, it is not only
> practically difficult for the workers to move from one
> concrete form of labor to another, but theoretically
> workers do not have enough information to rationalize
> such behavior. WAGES DO NOT EXIST AS ECONOMIC DATA FOR
> WORKERS. Moreover, even if, as in our example, the
> corn producer knew that the iron producer's work is
> twice as highly remunerated as his/her work, he/she
> has no means of determining whether it is because of
> the high skill needed to produce iron or low level of
> supply of iron. As we have seen in our example above,
> the differentials in work remuneration only requires
> changes in the exchange ratios of commodities for the
> smooth reproduction of the system. Over time these
> wage differentials may become culturally ingrained and
> socially stamped. Since there is no inbuilt dynamics
> in the system to correct it, exchange ratios may vary
> from value ratios of commodities in simple commodity
> production."

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