>Although I have no degree in economics, I have doubts about your
>claim that this issue is soluble in terms of "Marx's conceptual
>distinction between value (labor time as a measure of wealth) and
>wealth itself, the production of which has come indeed to depend less
>on direct labor because of scientific and technological advance..."
>There is a Scholastic touch to this argument which I mistrust.
>For, if the production of wealth depends increasingly on science and
>technology, how can "labor time [continue to be] a measure of wealth"?
Hi Ricardo,
I certainly have no degree in economics. I'll just elaborate a bit about
how I understand Postone's argument.
If the quantity of use values produced by the modal producer per unit of
time (say an hour) determines what counts as a social labor hour (say the
"average" is 40 yds of cloth per hour by a powerloom), then it follows
that until through the generalisation of his technique he becomes the modal
producer, a more efficient producer actually performs more social labor
hours ( say someone with a very powerful loom, using unshreddable synthetic
materials, which allows him to produce in one hour 80 yds of cloth).
Since in bourgeois society the metric is a social labor hour, it follows
that the most efficient producer actually has actually put in twice as many
social labor hours as a result of the greater quantity of use values he has
produced...even if he has put in the same number of abstract units of time:
The "Newtonian" interval of abstract, homogeneous units of time is
irrelevant.
This is not a scholastic distinction. If it were not the case that the
most efficient producer actually does produce more value by performing
more hours of social labor, then there would be no way to understand the
race to increase productivity and therewith value and most importantly
surplus value.
Now it does seem paradoxical that the producer who may have put in the most
social labor hours may have worked fewer of those Newtonian units of
abstract time than even the average, much less least efficient, producer.
It does follow that if the least efficient producer labors for a duration
of more units of abstract time, while in that time not producing as many
use values as the modal producer does in say an average working day (say a
handweaver who produces only 20yds of cloth in one hour), this "backward"
producer has actually put in fewer social labor hours and produced less
value--a little more than half as much if he put in more abstract units of
time than the modal powerloomer. The market will thus punish the
handweaver unless he can win some protection from it--otherwise, the
countryside will be bleached with the bones of the weavers, as Marx noted
about India.
At the most basic level, this is part of the reason there is a struggle
for protection from the world market.
Rakesh
