On the basis of their theory, the economists arrived at the contradiction, and dead end, described earlier. If labour, and not labour-power is sold as a commodity then what is the value of an hour's labour? The question is meaningless. If we take labour not only as the essence of value, but also its measure, it is like asking what is the length of a metre? Well, its a metre, and we have moved forward not one jot. To say the value of an hour's labour is an hour's labour is a sterile tautology, but also leads to the contradiction faced by Smith. If the worker sells an hours' labour, then equal exchange requires they get the equivalent of an hour's labour in wages, equal to the value of an hour's labour in wage goods, or money.
If capital buys 10 hours of labour, at its value, it pays the equivalent of 10 hours labour for it, either in money wages or commodities, but, then, if wages equal 10 hours labour, and the worker creates the same 10 hours of new value, there can be no surplus value/profit! To explain profit, you, then, have to revert to Mercantilist theories based on cheating and unequal exchange – many liberals, Stalinists, and Third Worldists reverted to this pre-Marx/pre-Smith theory as, also, the basis upon which to explain so called “super-exploitation” by imperialism – which contradicts the theories of commodity production and exchange, which assume an exchange of equal values.
Moreover, as Marx explains, whilst such cheating and unequal exchange might explain the individual profits of this or that capital, they cannot explain the existence of profit overall, because the profit obtained by such cheating, requires losses on the part of those cheated, so that profits and losses cancel to zero. For liberals, Stalinists and Third Worldist, the logic of that is, necessarily “the development of underdevelopment”, the profit from unequal exchange for imperialism, must have as its counter, an equal loss for the counter party in the “less developed” economies, leading to their further lack of development. In which case, the actual development of nearly all economies across the globe, and the particularly rapid development, and capital accumulation of some of those former less developed economies, becomes impossible to fathom!
“Classical economics, therefore, essayed another turn. It said: the value of a commodity is equal to its cost of production. But, what is the cost of production of “labour"? In order to answer this question, the economists are forced to strain logic just a little. Instead of investigating the cost of production of labour itself, which, unfortunately, cannot be ascertained, they now investigate the cost of production of the labourer. And this latter can be ascertained. It changes according to time and circumstances, but for a given condition of society, in a given locality, and in a given branch of production, it, too, is given, at least within quite narrow limits.” (p 8)
Of course, we come back, here, to the question of concrete as against abstract labour. The cost of production of a brain surgeon is greater than that of a machine minder, because the former requires much more expenditure of resources for education and training. It is the concrete labour-power of the worker that the capitalist buys, and for which they pay the given wage, as the phenomenal form of the value of this labour-power. There is no correlation between this wage/value of labour-power, and the value created by the application of this labour, because the latter depends on the relative value that consumers place on it, in the market.
However, suppose that the value of an hour's labour-power of a brain surgeon is £10, and that of a weaver £2, but that, in the market, consumers value the product of an hour's labour by the former to be £20, and that of the weaver to be £10, the rate of surplus value for the latter is five times that of the former. For one brain surgeon, a capitalist can employ 5 weavers, and where the former produces £10 of surplus value, the latter produces £40. Capital would, then, all else being equal, move into weaving, and out of brain surgery. The price of cloth would fall, whilst weavers' wages would tend to rise above their value. The opposite would apply in relation to brain surgery. But, the other consequence would be that the capitalist, in the latter sphere, would look to reduce the cost of producing the labour-power of surgeons.
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