SNLT is *not* necessarily the labor time effectively spent by society in producing a certain amount of a commodity, e.g. a ton of marble. So measuring the hours of labor time spent by workers producing one ton of marble is not necessarily the same as measuring the social labor time required (SNLT) to reproduce a ton of marble. And measuring that an individual quarry is definitely not necessarily the same as quantifying labor time spent by society as a whole (unless that individual quarry is the "social average" one).
Why not? One, labor spent is not necessarily the same as labor required: Labor required is an expectation or average, about how much labor society will spend in the future, which is recalculated at each point in time, conditional on existing (and shifting) knowledge. Of course, knowledge is based on past experience, including knowledge of labor spent in the past. Two, the size of social necessity for one ton of marble is not infinite. If it were, then the only thing that would determine SNLT would be the labor time technically needed on the production side. However, labor spent in things that exceed the size of social necessity is wasted labor: http://bit.ly/d6HXgE Marx followed Smith on assuming "effectual demand" as constant or given, so he seemed to focus on technical necessity on the production side, the consumption side covered ex hypothesi. But relax the assumption (which Marx briefly does here: http://bit.ly/GHTzJn), and the size of social necessity is now viewed as a variable. And this leads me to Three: said size of social necessity varies over time, sometimes rather suddenly (as when a demographic, technological, or cultural revolution turns things upside down in an industry, in the input and/or the output side). Does this mean that SNLT is not measurable at all? No. It means that the measures of SNLT, the exact proportions between labor i and labor j, between labor i and the usefulness of good x, between the usefulness of good x and the usefulness of good y, etc. will be always subject to measurement error. However, insofar as capitalist society reproduces itself, one can be sure that these proportions are being kept "on average," i.e. the *value* way -- i.e. through under- and over-shooting, and the constant process of adjustment of quantities and prices. That tends to be socially costly, but -- hey -- that is how SNLT proportions are adjusted under capitalism. Nobody said it'd be a nice and smooth ride. But that kind of "measuring" is ex post, not ex ante. Indeed, but it is measuring nonetheless. Ex ante measuring is hard in a society where production is fragmented into private individual units. These units only do it when/if, well, it is individually necessary. Within a business, they do it under certain assumptions, and that usually yields useful information to managers. I am not referring only to the measurement of hours worked in specific tasks, etc. That of course, but I am *also* referring to what goes under the rubric of "market research," "demand analysis," "data mining," "business intelligence" (spying on what competitors do) and such. All that collectively is about inferring SNLT insofar as an individual private producer can do so. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
