Re: [Marxism] Socially Necessary Abstract(?) Labor Time

["Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx>]

SNALT --socially necessarty ABSTRACT labor time-- sounds ok to me --
depending on how you use it. 

The idea of socially necessary labor time is that the value recognized in a
commodity is a function of the labor time it takes to produce it. But that
doesn't mean if you take twice as long to make a pair of shoes, they are
twice as valuable. It means how long it takes to produce it, on average, in
a given social setting. But also it means how long it takes to produce it in
terms of "simple" labor -- labor with only the generalized skills prevalent
in that society working at normal intensity. 

If it takes ten years for someone to be trained to produce those kinds of
shoes, the labor of that person is no longer "simple" but complex labor. The
commodity will embody not just the average labor time it takes to be
produced, but also a portion of the training time, both that of the trainee
and of the trainer. Highly skilled labor which imparts to a commodity not
just the value of, say, one hour at work, but also a proportionate share of
the labor used to create this specific kind of skilled labor. This kind of
labor is known as complex labor.

Using "abstract" labor time here means, I assume, the equivalent or saying
labor time expressed in terms of simple labor. Because "abstract" strips the
labor of any specificity, any particular skill, any specialized training.
Thus socially necessary abstract labor time means the socially necessary
labor time, but with the labor time expressed as simple, i.e., unskilled
labor of average intensity for a given society.

Joaquin



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