willow: "IT IS OUR TASK TO ANALYZE THE LAWS OF SOCIAL EQUALIZATION SLUG"

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willow @dreary.dev

IT IS OUR TASK TO ANALYZE THE LAWS OF SOCIAL EQUALIZATION SLUG

Isaak Illich Rubin, Essays on Marx's Theory of Value, page 169
With this interpretation of the labor theory of value, one cannot deny the fact that one h o u r of the jeweller's labor and four hours of the shoemaker's labor represent, from a physiological point of view, unequal quantities of labor. Every a t t e m p t to represent one h o u r of qualified labor as physiologically condensed labor and equal, in terms of energy, to several hours of simple labor, seems hopeless and methodologically incorrect. Qualified labor is, in fact, condensed, multiplied, potential labor; it is not physiologically, but socially condensed. The labor theory of value does not affirm the physiological equality but the social equalization of labor which, in turn, of course takes place on the basis of properties which characterize labor f r o m the material-technical and physiological aspects (see the end of the previous chapter). On the market, products are not exchanged in terms of equal, but of equalized quantities of labor. It is our task to analyze the laws of the social equalization of various f o r m s of labor in the process of social distribution of labor. If these laws explain the causes of the equalization of one hour of the jeweller's labor with four hours of the unquali- fied worker's labor, then our problem is solved, irrespective of the physiological equality or inequality of these socially equalized quantities of labor. The second objection of Marx's critics assigns to economic theory a task which is in no way proper to it: to find a standard of value which would make it operationally possible to compare different kinds of labor with each other. However, the theory of value is not concerned with the analysis or search for an operational standard of equalization; it seeks a causal explanation of the objective process of equalization of different forms of labor which actually takes place in a commodity capitalist society.

March 2, 2025 at 1:21 PM