[OPE-L:3436] Re: objectivity of value

[Paul Cockshott <wpc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 11:35 02/06/00 -0400, you wrote:
> Sorry I cut this reply to 3415 out when editing
>
> Paul C claimed:
>
> >What Taylor was quantifying was exactly Marx's simple average labour.
>
> Taylor could not have done this himself. Marx clearly argues in the
> paragraph which you quote that reduction of skilled or intensified labor
> into a specific quantity of simple labor is established by a SOCIAL process
> that goes on behind the backs of the producers. And this would include
> Taylor's (back). He can't effect the reduction or conversion by himself;
> this social process happens in the market.

The fact that it usually went on behind the backs of employers did not
prevent it from being discoverable. That was the point of Taylors Scientific
Management, to discover by systematic experiment what would otherwise
have been left to ad hoc rules of thumb guided by market prices.

Taylors experiments of course involve assumptions about the basic technology
available being the same to different producers. A work study of labour
required in hand loom weaving would be superceeded once power looms
came in.