What's this quote mean exactly?

[Sinister Intents]

This is in RtR's sig

"We should not say that one man's hour is worth another man's hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time's carcass." Karl Marx

So what exactly does this mean?

[Rudolf]

Here's the full paragraph:


Competition, according to an American economist, determines how many days of simple labor are contained in one day’s compound labor. Does not this reduction of days of compound labor to days of simple labor suppose that simple labor is itself taken as a measure of value? If the mere quantity of labor functions as a measure of value regardless of quality, it presupposes that simple labor has become the pivot of industry. It presupposes that labor has been equalized by the subordination of man to the machine or by the extreme division of labor; that men are effaced by their labor; that the pendulum of the clock has become as accurate a measure of the relative activity of two workers as it is of the speed of two locomotives. Therefore, we should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing; he is, at the most, time’s carcase. Quality no longer matters. Quantity alone decides everything; hour for hour, day for day; but this equalizing of labor is not by any means the work of M. Proudhon’s eternal justice; it is purely and simply a fact of modern industry.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch01b.htm

With that sentence it seems to me that Marx is emphasising that labour is abstracted. The meaning the person who's signature it is has attached to it i cannot say.


I've not actually read Poverty of Philosophy. Worth a read?

[G4b3n]

Here's the full paragraph:


Competition, according to an American economist, determines how many days of simple labor are contained in one day’s compound labor. Does not this reduction of days of compound labor to days of simple labor suppose that simple labor is itself taken as a measure of value? If the mere quantity of labor functions as a measure of value regardless of quality, it presupposes that simple labor has become the pivot of industry. It presupposes that labor has been equalized by the subordination of man to the machine or by the extreme division of labor; that men are effaced by their labor; that the pendulum of the clock has become as accurate a measure of the relative activity of two workers as it is of the speed of two locomotives. Therefore, we should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing; he is, at the most, time’s carcase. Quality no longer matters. Quantity alone decides everything; hour for hour, day for day; but this equalizing of labor is not by any means the work of M. Proudhon’s eternal justice; it is purely and simply a fact of modern industry.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch01b.htm

With that sentence it seems to me that Marx is emphasising that labour is abstracted. The meaning the person who's signature it is has attached to it i cannot say.


I've not actually read Poverty of Philosophy. Worth a read?


The work is interesting because it is one of Marx's first attempts to analyze in depth the reality of capitalist political economy, compared to how bourgeois economists of the day understood them but mostly compared to how the other opposition camp, the anarchists de facto headed by Proudhon, understood them.

What Marx emphasizes, is that his understanding is not a radical break with the classical theorists such as Smith and Ricardo. These men were simply not in a position in which it was possible to understand the full extent of the historical development of bourgeois production, which became unique to the conditions of Marx's and Proudhon's day. It is relatively easy to understand what he is saying in the abstract in regards to the law of value. I haven't the slightest idea on how to apply it independently of his understanding to real and changing conditions, and of course it obviously requires a vast and extremely in depth understanding of classical economics.

But if you want the essence of the work, with whom Marx regards as an authority and who he is arguing against and why summed up shortly. Here is one from the very same chapter that sums it up well.

"Ricardo’s theory of values is the scientific interpretation of actual economic life; M. Proudhon’s theory of values is the utopian interpretation of Ricardo’s theory"