To arrive at Proudhon's conclusions would require a series of unrealistic assumptions. In essence, these assumptions involve the fallacies already described in relation to simple as against complex labour, and so on. Marx gives the example of the labour of a jeweller and weaver, in which the value created by the former, in a day, is equal to three of the latter, and two of some other type of labour. Marx's example is not quite accurate, because he fails to account for the value of constant capital, i.e. gold and gems or the former, flax for the weaver etc., but, discounting the preserved value of this constant capital, in the value of their output, Marx's argument is valid. He says,
“If three working days of different workers be related to one another in the ratio of 1:2:3, then every change in the relative value of their products will be a change in this same proportion of 1:2:3. Thus values can be measured by labour time, in spite of the inequality of value of different working days; but to apply such a measure we must have a comparative scale of the different working days: it is competition that sets up this scale.
Is your hour’s labour worth mine? That is a question which is decided by competition.” (p 51)
The measure of value, thereby, becomes simple labour, and so the value of commodities produced by complex labour is, then, just a multiple of that simple labour.
“If the mere quantity of labour functions as a measure of value regardless of quality, it presupposes that simple labour has become the pivot of industry. It presupposes that labour has been equalized by the subordination of man to the machine or by the extreme division of labour; that men are effaced by their labour; 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 labour is not by any means the work of M. Proudhon’s eternal justice; it is purely and simply a fact of modern industry.” (p 52)
For the reasons set out above, this doesn't mean that all labour is of the type of machine labour. The skilled engineer uses a machine, but not in the way an unskilled machine minder operates a machine. The actions of the latter are determined by the speed and operation of the machine itself, whereas it is the engineer that uses the machine in the way they would use a tool, setting it up, determining its operation, speed and so on. And, many other forms of skilled labour continue, as with the jeweller etc.
That is why the product of an hour's labour by, say, a singer, actor, or footballer may be many, many times that of the product of a machine minder's labour. As I have set out, for example, in my response to Paul Cockshott, many years ago, it is why economies that may have relatively small populations, but whose labourers are disproportionately involved in such complex labour, can create more value, and surplus value than other economies with larger populations involved in only simple labour.
“All the “equalitarian” consequences which M. Proudhon deduces from Ricardo's doctrine are based on a fundamental error. He confounds the value of commodities measured by the quantity of labour embodied in them with the value of commodities measured by “the value of labour ” If these two ways of measuring the value of commodities were equivalent, it could be said indifferently that the relative value of any commodity is measured by the quantity of labour embodied in it; or that it is measured by the quantity of labour it can buy; or again that it is measured by the quantity of labour which can acquire it. But this is far from being so. The value of labour can no more serve as a measure of value than the value of any other commodity.” (p 52-3)
And, that is so for the reasons already outlined. The value of labour-power, as a use value/commodity is determined by the labour-time required for its production, i.e. the reproduction of the labourer, but this is not the same as the new value that the labourer can produce by the exercise of their labour in the labour process. Robinson may require 8 hours labour to live, but that does not stop him working for 10 hours; the peasant may need to labour for 3 days on their own land, but that does not stop them working another 3 days on the land of the Lord of the Manor; the wage worker may need work only 8 hours in a day to produce a value equal to the value of wage goods, required for their reproduction, but it doesn't mean they cannot work for 10 hours in a day, and, indeed, the capitalist will insist they do, so that he obtains his profit.
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