[Pen-l] The Irrelevance of Workers In Economic Theory

["Charles Brown" <charlesb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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To: "Progressive Economics" <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
Subject: RE: [Pen-l] Re: The Irrelevance of Workers In Economic Theory

From: "Perelman, Michael"  


Marx realized that all workers did not bring the same amount of
abstract
labor to the table.  Unskilled workers can and do shift from job to
job,
but not all workers can substitute for one another.  If that were the
case, Marx could have just wrote of work hours.  Time may be money,
but
your time and mine might not command the same amount of money because
of
differing levels of skills.

^^^^
CB: Yes, Marx recognizes different levels of skill. Labor power is a
commodity in capitalist relations of production.  A main distinguishing
characteristic of capitalism is that labor power becomes a commodity -
wage labor.

  Different levels of skilled labor have different amounts of value
added to the labor power, i.e. have different values.  That's the
definition of different levels of skill.  So, different levels of skill
in labor add different amounts of value per time to the commodity they
produce.

But holding skill level constant, labor added to a commodity is
measured by time in the Marxist paradigm. 

I think Marx considered that he had solved a paradox in the Ricardian
scheme which didn't differentiate between abstract and concrete labor.




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