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

[David McDonald <dbmcdonald@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Joaquin:


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.




As I learned from another poster on this list, Juriaan Bendien if I 
recall correctly, socially necessary labor time also incorporates the 
idea of the amount of a given commodity that is actually required to 
satisfy demand. Since demand in turn is partially a function of price, 
the point is that socially necessary labor time is not something that 
can be determined even in theory in advance. It is more like the idea of 
how much of society's labor time in general (abstract labor time) was 
actually needed to produce the number of commodities of a given type 
that were actually sold. So that even if your factory is as efficient as 
mine, and both of us produce x's at the lowest possible cost, none of 
this means that all of our production will be sold, and the labor 
expended on the total production run becomes the basis for determining 
what portion of each sold commodity represents surplus value.

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