In terms of measuring value, it is measured in terms of simple labour, or, put another way, all labour actually expended is reducible to, and, in the market, is reduced to a quantity of simple labour, in the same way that distances measured in furlongs, miles etc., can all be reduced to a common measure in yards.
“A commodity may be the product of the most complex labour, but its value, equates it to the product of simple labour, and consequently only represents a definite quantity of simple labour. The different proportions in which different sorts of labour are reduced to simple labour as their unit of measure are established by a social process that goes on behind the backs of the producers, and, consequently, appear to them to be fixed by custom”.” (p 252-3)
The social process is that resulting from competition in the market place, and which, also, thereby, indicates that, again, this relation between complex and simple labour is not reducible to the relation between the value of skilled labour-power to unskilled labour-power, which is only a back-door means of smuggling in the idea that value is determined by the value of labour-power/wages.
Engels notes,
“ First of all, Marx is here dealing only with the determination of the value of commodities, i.e., of objects which, within a society composed of private producers, are produced and exchanged against each other by these private producers for their private account. In this passage therefore there is no question whatever of “absolute value” —whatever regions it may haunt - but of the value which is current in a definite form of society.” (p 253)
So, take the labour of a hand-loom weaver. It is skilled labour-power. The hand loom weaver must spend time being trained etc. to acquire this skill, and this is reflected in the value of their labour-power. But, this has no relation to the value created by their labour. This is clearly seen when that labour comes into comparison with the unskilled labour of the machine minding labour of the power-loom weavers. The individual value of the product of the hand-loom weaver – the amount of their labour required to produce a metre of cloth – remains the same, here, say, 10 hours, but, in a society based on commodity production and exchange, this individual value is subsumed within the overall market value of cloth, which is determined by the power-loom weavers.
If the market value of cloth, thereby, is only 1 hour per metre, it is this value that is determinant. It simply means that, in selling their output at this market value, the hand loom weaver expends a much greater part of the day in performing necessary labour, to reproduce their labour-power, leaving much less, if any, of their working-day as surplus labour. That was what happened with the petty-bourgeois, self-employed hand loom weavers, in the 19th century.
In terms of the example given earlier of such workers in developing economies, this becomes even more pronounced and clearer, as Marx describes in Capital III. Because, in such economies, productivity, as a whole, is low, the value of all labour-power, skilled or unskilled, is relatively high, despite lower living standards. Low productivity means the amount of labour required to produce the food, clothing ad shelter of the labourer is high, compared to in developed economies, where productivity is much higher. To reproduce a day's labour-power, in the former, may require 8 hours of labour, compared to only 1 hour in the latter. Yet, this same factor of low productivity means that the weaver in India sells their metre of cloth at the same, global market price as the weaver in Britain, where, despite higher wages, and living standards, the value of cloth is lower.
The reason is simple, that, because a day's labour of the weaver in Britain produces 100 metres of cloth, in India, it produces only 10 metres. So, even if British weaver's wages are five times that of the Indian weaver, their living standards 5 times higher, these wages constitute only half the amount of Indian wages, in each metre.
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