Skilled labour and value production in the critique of political economy

Abstract

This article develops a critical reconstruction of the history of the controversies over the determination of complex labour in value-production and offers an alternative solution which is consistent with the Marxian critique of political economy. In the first place, it is argued that the value-form eliminates the differences in the complexity of labour by socially determining the labour objectified in the commodity as simple labour. In the second place, it is argued that the degree in which complex labour counts as a multiple of simple labour in value-production is solely determined by the expenditure of simple labour-power that the complex labourer needs to undertake in order to produce her/his own specially-developed labour-power.