Labor theory of value

“ Besides the mass of necessaries required for his own maintenance, he wants another amount of necessaries to bring up a certain quota of children that are to replace him on the labor market and to perpetuate the race of laborers... It will be seen that the value of laboring-power is determined by the value of the necessaries required to produce, develop, maintain and perpetuate the laboring-power. ”

“ Working men and women spent labor producing you and me. Somebody made bread, sewed shoes, built houses and made clothes for us. All the things we ate and drank and wore and used were made by the labor of working men and women. Their labor was necessary labor. Without it we should never have grown old enough or strong enough to have labor-power to sell. Labor-power was spent in raising us to the point where we would be able to work.
The value of a commodity is determined by the social labor-time necessary to produce it. ”

“ And this is the economic constitution of our entire modern society; it is the working class alone, which produces all values. For value is merely another expression for labor, that expression by which in our present capitalist society is designated the quantity of socially necessary labor, embodied in a difinite commodity. But the values, produced by the laborers, do not constitute their property. ”

“ But intelligent workmen and women are not content with selling their laboring-power at its value. They are coming more and more to demand the value of their products. We are growing weary of being mere commodities, compelled to sell ourselves, for wages at the regular "market price." We are weary of receiving a product of two hours of labor for products containing ten hours of our labor. We are tired of living on meagre wages while we pile up millions for the capitalist class. ”

“ We see how an increase in the value of A means a consequent increase in the value of labor-power. We must not, therefore, berate the grocer, the butcher or landlord when our employers fail to pay us the value of our labor-power. We will be forced to demand higher wages in order to live. ”

“ But the digging of gold, the extraction of iron from a mine, the raising of wheat and the weaving of silk are so many kinds of labor, differing in quality. As a matter of fact, what in reality appears as a difference in use-values, is in the process of production, a difference in the work creating those use-values. Just as labor, which creates exchange value, is indifferent to the material of use-values, so it is to the special form of labor itself. ”

“ What the laborers require to live, and to marry, and beget children in sufficient numbers to supply the labor market, is their standard of life. This they obtain and no more. Labor costs labor, and is measured by labor; but labor produces more than it consumes, and this surplus-value is rent. ”

“ The wage worker receives his wages. That he is exploited by his employer. But when he goes to buy shoes, food, meat or clothes, he finds the owner of these commodities selling them at a higher price than he can pay. Then the reformers conclude that these merchants are exploiting the workers also. These people do not understand that the value of A (the necessities of life) determine wages.
Not all individual workingmen or women receive the value of their labor-power. Some men and women receive a little more than the value of labor-power. ”

“ The employer engaged in any enterprise who has grown richer, can pay more wages, but whether he will do it depends on other causes, and even his ability to do it, in the long run, on his customers. When John Stuart Mill, Principles, I, ch. 5, 9, says that only the capital which comes into the hands of labor before the completion of their work contributes to their support, it is as if he were to explain the phenomena of prices by demand and supply, and nothing else, denying the influence of the cost of production, of value in use, and of the deeper determining causes upon them. ”

“ Capital does not consist in the fact that accumulated labor serves living labor as a means for new production. It consists in the fact that living labor serves accumulated labor as the means of preserving and multiplying its exchange value. ”

“ Why do not the economists, if they believe, as they appear to, that the labor of each should leave an excess, use all their influence in spreading this truth, so simple and so luminous: Each man's labor can buy only the value which it contains, and this value is proportional to the services of all other laborers? ”

“ Would it ever be possible for him to pay the laborers MORE than the value of their labor power and to sell their products at LESS than their value, and still make a profit? Explain why this would be possible.
Are the workers any better off where the cost of living is low than where the cost of living is high? Are they able to save any more in the countries of low prices? Do low prices benefit the working class? Do we find wages high or low where the cost of living is high? Where the cost of living is low? Does a low cost of living benefit the capitalists? ”

“ If they told the truth they would say, “an article upon which labor has been expended has value only because it is useful.” But this would be to admit that their whole scheme is built upon a foundation of sand.
A commodity has value, not only because it has cost time and skill to produce it, and therefore is difficult of attainment, but also for the reason that it holds the one common property of all valuable articles—utility. It is true that articles of value are seldom produced without labor. It is not true that it is labor that makes them valuable. ”

“ The explanation of differences of remuneration like these is not to be found in different quantities of labour, but in different qualities of labour. One man's work is higher, rarer, more excellent, possesses, in short, more social utility than another's, and for that reason is more valuable, as value is at present constituted. It is thus manifest that the theory which declares value to be nothing but quantity of labour, nothing but time of labour, is inconsistent with some of the most obvious and important phenomena of the value of different kinds of labour. ”

“ A few grains of grass, growing wild in the woods, and unfit for any human purpose" [7] —then all these views do not refer to abstract labor as the source of exchange value, but to concrete labor as the source of material wealth; in short, to labor in so far as it produces use-values. In assuming that a commodity has use-value we assume the special usefulness and distinct fitness of the labor absorbed by it, but that is all there is to the view of labor as useful labor from the standpoint of commodity. ”

“ Profits an element in Cost of Production. Thus far of labor or wages as an element in cost of production. But in our analysis, in the First Book, of the requisites of production, we found that there is another necessary element in it besides labor. There is also capital; and this being the result of abstinence, the produce, or its value, must be sufficient to remunerate, not only all the labor required, but the abstinence of all the persons by whom the remuneration of the different classes of laborers was advanced. The return from abstinence is Profit. ”

“ We mean thereby the ordinary average labor which is required at a given time in a given society. The average man is taken as a basis, together with the average advantages of machinery and the arts. This is average social labor-time. Complicated labor is simply a multiple of simple labor. One man’s labor, which has required long and careful training, may count for twice as much as ordinary, simple labor; but the simple labor is the unit.
This distinction between value in use and value in exchange enables us to understand how capitalists exploit their laborers. ”

“ When the new process becomes general and the average necessary labor greatly reduced, castings will greatly decrease in value.
"If we consider commodities as values, we consider them exclusively under the single aspect of realized, fixed, or, if you like, crystalized human labor. In this respect they can differ only by representing greater or smaller quantities of labor, as for example, a greater amount of labor may be worked up in a silken handkerchief than in a brick.
"A commodity has value, because it is a crystalization of social labor... ”

“ As the rendering of labour precedes the payment of wages, and as the rendering of labour in production implies the creation of value, the employer receives value before he pays out value. For the creation of value takes place at every stage of the process of production as the immediate result of the application of labour, and hence, no matter how long the process in which it is engaged, labour always adds to wealth by its exertion before it takes its wages. ”

“ We have been seeking the value of labor, and found more then we can use. For the workman the value of twelve hours’ labor is 2 dollars, for the capitalist—4 dollars, out of which he pays the work man 2 in the form of wages and puts two into his own pocket. Labor then, it appears, has not one, but two values and quite different ones too, in the bargain. ”

“ Did they demand more, the competition of others would prevent them from getting employment. Did he offer less, none would accept the terms, as they could obtain greater results by working for themselves. Thus, although the employer wishes to pay as little as possible, and the employee to receive as much as possible, wages will be fixed by the value or produce of such labor to the laborers themselves. If wages are temporarily carried either above or below this line, a tendency to carry them back at once arises. ”

“ But the theory of labour-value as the determining factor of the exchange or market value of commodities can with justification be disputed, and is surely not more true than those theories of value based on social demand or utility. ”

“ Thus, as productive capital grows, competition among the workers grows too, and grows in a far greater proportion. The reward of labor is less for all, and the burden of labor is increased for some at least. ”

“ Hence the notion of a productive labourer implies not merely a relation between work and useful effect, between labourer and product of labour, but also a specific, social relation of production, a relation that has sprung up historically and stamps the labourer as the direct means of creating surplus-value. To be a productive labourer is, therefore, not a piece of luck, but a misfortune. ”

“ Labour is necessary to the production of all commodities, but it is not itself a commodity, nor anything which for itself is desired. It is a force, and, like every force, valuable according to the results it accomplishes. If unproductive, it has no value; if productive,15 its value varies according to the value of the commodities or utilities it creates. ”

“ In piece-wages it seems at first sight as if the use-value bought from the labourer was, not the function of his labour-power, living labour, but labour already realised in the product, and as if the price of this labour was determined, not as with time-wages, by the fraction, daily value of labour-power/working-day of a given number of hours, but by the capacity for work of the producer. ”