LuÃs Henrique
26th February 2007, 00:59
Originally posted by
[email protected] 25, 2007 09:39 pm
So two products consisting of 4 hours of labor is equal to that of one product that has been labor embodied 8 hours? Right..?
But what if one of the labor tasks were very demanding and tiring, while the other labor task was quite easy, and perhaps even enjoyable?
Wouldn't that change the value of the commodities in relation to each other?
Yes, it does.
The value is determined by the average work needed to produce a commodity.
When you say that commodity A takes 4 hours of "easy" labour to be produced, while commodity B takes 4 hours of "hard" labour, you are saying one of two things:
a) that commodity A can be produced in less than four hours, if the worker that produces it puts more efforts into his/her work (or, conversely, that commodity B will take more than four hours to be produced, if the worker "takes it easy"). It would probably be the case that commodity A takes, in average, less than four hours of labour, and/or commodity B takes more than that.
b) that commodity B requires specially skilled labour, not required by commodity A. In this case, the value of commodity B is higher, because the value of labour force necessary to produce it is higher. Skilled labour force is worth more, because it requires more labour to be reproduced itself.
Luís Henrique