 demand for shoes. The factories using the very old fashioned machinery would require more labor to the shoe than the factories using newer machines, while the great, up-to-date factories using the most modern machines would need comparatively little human labor-power in producing shoes.
The value of shoes would be determined by the average (or social) labor-time necessary to make them, or the socially necessary labor contained in all the shoes.
The value of gold or silver is determined in the same way. The necessary social labor needed to produce gold gives it its value. The value of gold rises or falls just as the value of other commodities rise or fall. Today gold is much lower in value than it was twenty years ago, because new methods of production have reduced the social labor needed in gold mining about one-half. If you have twenty dollars in gold it is only of half the value of twenty dollars twenty years ago. It contains only half the labor.
In the same may we may determine the value of laboring-power "Like every other commodity its value is determined by the quantity (or time) of labor necessary to produce it.
"The laboring-power of a man exists only in his living individuality. A certain mass of necessaries must be consumed by a man to grow up and maintain his life. But the man, like the machine, will wear out, and must be replaced by another man. 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." (Value, Price and Profit, pp. 75-76.)
The value of a man's labor-power is determined by the social labor necessary to produce it, Marx says. This means food, clothing, shelter (the necessities of life) and it means something additional to rear a boy or girl to take your place in the shop or factory when you grow too old to keep up the fierce pace set by the boss.
Enough to live on and to raise workers to take our places–this is the value of our labor-power, if we are wage-workers.
What is a commodity? What does the wage-worker sell to his employer?
What determines the value of a commodity?
What do you mean by SOCIAL labor-power?
Are matches less valuable now than they were ten years ago? Why?
Have commodities in general decreased in value in the last tell years of improved machine production? Why?
Name commodities that have decreased in value. Has rubber increased in value? Why?
Does it take less labor power to weave cloth, to make cement, to slaughter hogs than it did twenty years ago? Why?
Remember that SCARCITY may cause a commodity to exchange (sell) above or below its value, but it does not make value. Marx says that Value is human labor (in the abstract).
Every class should, have at least one set of Marx's Capital for reference in connection with these lessons. The Table of Contents in these three volumes is a splendid guide to students. Price, $2.00 a volume. For $6.00 sent us for six NEW REVIEW subscriptions, we will send the three volumes as premiums, prepaid expressage.
The value of a commodity is determined by the necessary social labor contained in it. If some one told me that an overcoat was equal in value to the value of (or contained in) a suit of clothes, I would know that the overcoat and suit of clothes were equal in value because they contained equal quantities of the same common thing–labor.
Generally speaking the value of four pairs of trousers is about equal to the value of one coat. Why is the coat more valuable than the trousers? And what determines the measure of value when we come to exchange commodities?
You exchange your labor-power–to the boss–for perhaps $2 in gold a day, and in turn the gold is exchanged for the necessities of life–food, clothing and shelter. Why do these commodities exchange for each other?
As we, learned before, labor is the 