our 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 measure of value. The coat, mentioned above, exchanges for four pairs of trousers because the coat contains four times the quantity of social-labor that one pair of the trousers contains.
The necessary social labor contained in a commodity (shoes, coats, gold, bread, your labor power or whatever it may be) determines what it will exchange for. The natural tendency is for commodities of equal value to exchange for each other, or for other commodities of equal value.
For example: the amount of wheat produced by ten hours of necessary social labor time will exchange for the amount of cloth, shoes, chairs, gold or some other commodity that will be produced by ten hours of necessary social labor.
The value or values for which commodities will exchange change constantly as the social labor necessary to their production changes. Last month we read of a new molding machine that enables one boy to produce as many castings in one day as four men had been accustomed to produce. These castings have now greatly decreased in value (in the individual plant where the new process is used) but the total value of castings in general has been only slightly reduced. The average labor necessary to produce castings is only a little less than formerly. 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.....The relative values of commodities are, therefore, determined by the respective quantities or amounts of labor worked up (or contained) in them." (Pages 56 and 57, Value, Price and Profit).
"In calculating the exchangeable value of a commodity we mu