Whether it is Robinson Crusoe or a primitive commune determining how to allocate available labour-time, so as to maximise welfare/use value/utility, or an independent commodity producer, the objective determining factor is the value of what is to be produced, and either directly consumed as a product, or else exchanged as a commodity. It is precisely why those commodity producers who produce commodities with a lower individual value than the market value prosper and expand, whilst those that produce with an individual value higher than the market value go out of business.
“Use-values serve directly as means of existence. But, on the other hand, these means of existence are themselves the products of social activity, the result of expended human energy, materialized labour. As objectification of social labour, all commodities are crystallisations of the same substance.” (p 28-9)
When considering different commodities, it is obvious that they are different types of use-value, and, as such, they require different types of concrete labour for their production. The labour of a weaver is not the same as the labour of a worker in an iron foundry. But, similarly, candle-light is not the same as the light from an electric bulb, or from a light emitting diode. Yet, that does not prevent us comparing the luminosity of the light from each, in standardised units. In order to measure the labour expended in the production of a metre of linen, as against the labour expended in the production of a kilo of iron, it is then necessary to reduce all labour to a common standard, a measure of simple labour.
There is nothing unusual in such a procedure. The measure of distance known as the “foot” is derived from measuring distances using the human foot. But, every foot is different, and so a fixed length was settled upon to represent feet in the abstract. A measure of simple, abstract labour could be obtained by taking the total quantity of all commodities produced and dividing by the total amount of labour expended. In that case, if commodity A and B both require 10 hours of concrete labour, for their production, but 10 units of A exchange for 12 units of B, we can conclude that an hour of A labour is equal to 1.2 hours of B labour. Similarly, 1 hour of each type of concrete labour will be equal to 1 hour of average labour, or else will produce more or less value than an hour of average labour. Its then possible to set a baseline, so that every type of labour is then compared to it, being complex labour that represents some multiple of simple labour.
In the first exchanges, these distinctions between different types of labour tend to be ignored. For example, in Africa Ralph Piddington tells us that a peasant from the Heh tribe who orders a spear from the smith works on the smith’s land while he is making the spear (“An Introduction to Social Anthropology” p 275). Moreover, since the dawn of petty commodity production, about 3000 - 5000 B.C., all labour has been considered equivalent, regardless of its special character. On the tablets, inscribed in a Semitic language, found at Susa, the wages in the household of a prince are fixed uniformly at 60 qua of barley for the cook, the barber, the engraver of stones, the carpenter, the smith, the cobbler, the cultivator, the shepherd and the donkey man (Clement Huart and Louis Delaporte “L’Iran antique” p 83).
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