Socially necessary work

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In Marxist political economy, the socially necessary labor is the average amount of labor units contained in a produced commodity. It is defined by Karl Marx as an average size. It is the labor value of a commodity and is expressed in the exchange value and price of a commodity.

The socially necessary work must be distinguished from the necessary work that is part of the working day.

Labor value

In capital , the labor value of a commodity generally deviates from its cost of production. The transformation problem arises from this . In modern economic theory, the socially necessary work is determined by optimization methods that use marginal analysis or the methods of linear programming . It is the problem of minimizing costs. In the optimum, the marginal costs correspond to the socially necessary labor multiplied by the wage rate.

The determination of the socially necessary labor in capitalism

In capitalism, the socially necessary labor is determined by the capitalist producer, since it is he who decides on the use of resources. In the case of the problem of minimizing costs, it is generally assumed that the producer is acting under conditions of full competition . This means that the price of the product as well as the price for the services of the factors of production are given and cannot be influenced. The problem is to combine the factors of production so that the average cost of production is minimal. The average costs are equal to Marx's production cost prices (with wages paid in arrears). The average costs are shown as a function of the output volume. At the minimum of this function, the average costs are equal to the marginal costs .

From the optimalization conditions it follows that the value of the marginal product of each factor is equal to the price of its services. In the case of labor, this means that the capitalist adjusts the amount of labor in relation to the means of production so that the rate of wages is equal to the marginal productivity of labor multiplied by the price of the product .

But the wage rate is a ratio of money per work. This is better expressed when the equation is transformed to

This is possible because, in general, the production functions from which marginal productivity is derived are invertible. is equal to the price of the commodity in relation to the reciprocal value of the marginal productivity of labor.

The expression δ L / δ x is found for the first time in the literature of political economy in William Stanley Jevons in his Theory of Political Economy . He described him as a subjectivist limit suffering ( English marginal disutility ), a derivation from the work suffering ( English disutility ). The expression can, however, be determined objectively as a production-theoretical quantity. It is the amount of work that it takes to create an additional unit of the product. It is the analytical expression of socially necessary work .

The cost minimization conditions show that the socially necessary labor multiplied by the wage rate is equal to the marginal costs. It can also be shown that a producer maximizes his profit if he determines his output quantity in such a way that his marginal costs are equal to the product price. The following applies:

In a capitalist economy the law of value is realized through the profit-maximizing behavior of capitalists. Marginal analysis makes it possible to determine the labor value of a commodity without knowing the intricacies of the production processes that created the means of production and the labor expenditure; required for these processes. Indeed, through their behavior, the capitalists determine what Marx called the socially necessary labor for the production of a commodity.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Stanley Jevons, Theory of Political Economy , 4th Edition, 1879, p. 177