Socially Necessary Labor

[Lefthanded]

How exactly is labor that is socially necessary determined? How can we compare the value of commodities, which are, in essence, comparing the "values" of labor? Is it simply the social demand of the public that determines the necessity of labor? Doesn't this take away from the idea that the value of commodities is determined by production and not a subjective concept such as demand?

[Severian]

IIRC when Marx wrote that the value of a commodity is determined by the labor socially necessary to produce it, he was talking about production.

For example, if one factory can produce 500 widgets per worker-hour, and another has outmoded equipment so it can only produce 300...the socially necessary labor is 1/500 of a worker-hour per widget. (Leaving aside the inputs for machinery, raw materials etc.)

That's all the inefficient factory can charge, since it has to compete with the more efficient one.

[Djehuti]

About the "socially part":


If technology is developed before the commodity is sold, its social value don't correspond to its individual value. The value is always sold to its social value (if we (to simplify) put value = price). The commodity producent's job is to see to that the individual value of the commodity is alyas as low as possible in relation to its social value. This values are important to seperate.

For example: I sew a pair of pants on 15 hours with the tools that are most common at the time, in this case an ordinary neel. If I now go to the market with my pants and want to trade them, I can get products corresponding 15 hours of work for them, assuming anyone wants them ofcource (my pants must have a use value for he who buys/trades them).
I trade my pants for a chair (15 hours).

But... what happens if I instead of trading the pants hang them in the wardrobe for a year? During this year techonology makes huge progress and the sewing machine is invented. When the pants after a year comes out from the wardrobe, a pair of pants is made at an average of five hours. Now I take my pants to the market and meet with the chair-manufacturer, but he just laugh at me. His chair takes 15 hours to create (technology here has not developed during this year), while my pants only takes 5 hours to create. The individual value of my pants is 15 hours, but the social value is only five hours. And on the market, it is always the social value that is interesting. So I will have to make two more pants to get my chair. It is out of this difference between individual and social value that the capitalist later can extract extra surplus value, the whole goal of the capitalist competition.


About the "necessary part":

A carpenter makes a chair in one hour.
Another makes it in 1.5 hours.
A third in 1.7 hours.
And a fourht in two hours.

The first carpenter might have a good hammer and nails to his aid, while the last might only have his hands and some thread to bind the chairs together with. Those n the middle might have something in between.

In the example above the value is 1 + 1.5 + 1.7. + 2 = 6.2
6.2 / 4 = 1.55. The socially necessary labour time to manufacture a chair is in this society 1.55.