Did Marx really claim all labour is Homogenous?

[Nusocialist]

I'm not a Marxist and have been debating with some capitalists on the LTV and they claim Marx thought all labour was homogenous,ie one hour in a mine is the same as one hour in an office.
I'm pretty sure this is not true,am I right? And what did Marx really think?

[KC]

No, he claimed that the value of all commodities is the amount of abstract socially necessary labour that has gone into it. He reduced labour to a unit of measure. More intense labour in the same amount of time is merely more abstract socially necessary labour. For example, if I work to build a commodity for a given period of time, then I work twice as hard to build a different commodity for the same amount of time, the second one is going to be worth twice as much (provided it was productive) because it contains twice as much abstract socially necessary labour.

[Nusocialist]

Originally posted by Khayembii [email protected] 15, 2006 05:34 am
No, he claimed that the value of all commodities is the amount of abstract socially necessary labour that has gone into it. He reduced labour to a unit of measure. More intense labour in the same amount of time is merely more abstract socially necessary labour. For example, if I work to build a commodity for a given period of time, then I work twice as hard to build a different commodity for the same amount of time, the second one is going to be worth twice as much (provided it was productive) because it contains twice as much abstract socially necessary labour.
Yeah I was pretty sure of that,but am not too knowledgeable on Marx. Thanks.

They also claimed Smith and Ricardo believed the same,I find this hard to believe,that men like that(serious academics.) would believe something as absurd as all labour is homogenous and simply measured in time.

[encephalon]

actually, though i don't have the time to thumb through my copy of kapital at the moment, I believe Marx had a problem with some of ricardo and smith's work precisely because they didn't take the intensity of work into consideration at all.

I could be wrong, though, and I wouldn't suggest taking my word for it.

[angus_mor]

I'm not a Marxist and have been debating with some capitalists on the LTV and they claim Marx thought all labour was homogenous,ie one hour in a mine is the same as one hour in an office.

Being a Marxist, I, as well as others, would argue that anyone's time isn't necessarily more valuable than another's, and thus it is wrong to pay one more than another who works just as long.


No, he claimed that the value of all commodities is the amount of abstract socially necessary labour that has gone into it.

Quite true, this is where the surplus value comes in; the theft of labor. Allow me to give you a real life example. I work as a cashier, I take in about, say, $500 - $1000 on a single shift, that's six hours, just in cash. The cash is worth the amount of labor it takes to collect it. However, I make $7.50 an hour, so I only get $45 per shift, which means that $455 - $955 is being stolen from me each shift. This isn't even including debit/credit charges; just imagine how much more that could reveal. That's what property rights mean; the right to steal labor, hence; property is theft.

[Nusocialist]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2006 07:56 am
Quite true, this is where the surplus value comes in; the theft of labor. Allow me to give you a real life example. I work as a cashier, I take in about, say, $500 - $1000 on a single shift, that's six hours, just in cash. The cash is worth the amount of labor it takes to collect it. However, I make $7.50 an hour, so I only get $45 per shift, which means that $455 - $955 is being stolen from me each shift. This isn't even including debit/credit charges; just imagine how much more that could reveal. That's what property rights mean; the right to steal labor, hence; property is theft.
But you didn't create all that $1000,you sell products at your checkout,surely the workers who created those products created some of the $1000 value?

[encephalon]

But you didn't create all that $1000,you sell products at your checkout,surely the workers who created those products created some of the $1000 value?

Yes, you'd be correct; in fact, the cashier adds very little to the value of a commodity that is sold. Cashiers aid in the valorization of the store-owner's capital, not that of said capitalist's suppliers (though they are all connected) nor the products they sell; they line the capitalists pockets all the same, but the product that a cashier adds to is less concrete than, say, a candy bar.

Without cashiers, the capitalist would have to record all transactions by himself--which of course isn't going to happen.

[apathy maybe]

So then question is, if retail workers do not actually add to the value of the product (I know you said that they add a little), are they proletariat? They do not actually have a relationship to the means of production at all. I know that most Marxists now seem not to use means of production but rather exploitation, but still.

[Whitten]

Originally posted by apathy [email protected] 15, 2006 11:05 am
So then question is, if retail workers do not actually add to the value of the product (I know you said that they add a little), are they proletariat? They do not actually have a relationship to the means of production at all. I know that most Marxists now seem not to use means of production but rather exploitation, but still.
If they added nothing to the value fo the product then no they wouldnt be proletariat. In reality however they do add value, as they provide a service which allows the products to be sold. Without this service it would be much harder to trade the products for capital, and so their value wouldnt be as great (without finding another means of distribution).

[angus_mor]

But you didn't create all that $1000,you sell products at your checkout,surely the workers who created those products created some of the $1000 value?

Yes of course, they created all of the value of those products, but their labor was already stolen from them by another bourgeois capitalist. I create a new product; service, and the product of my service is the cash in the till. If the capitalist is to truely say that they earned the product of capital, they'd have to be the ones operating the capital, but it is not them; it is I. Within this framework, I am the one being exploited, but the commodities being sold are purchased from a larger bourgeois manufacturer who has already stolen and profited from the labor of others. But even so, I am just as alienated from the product of my labor, which makes the job stressful, unstimulating, and unrewarding.