In the previous chapter, we talked about the duality of use value and value of commodities, and the fundamental reason for this duality is the duality of the labor that produces the commodity.
First of all, if a commodity can satisfy a certain human need, then the commodity has a certain use, and then the way of producing this commodity is called useful labor.
This kind of labor is concrete, and different commodities require useful labor of different natures and types to be realized, so that the sum of all commodity production activities forms a social division of labor.
Moreover, useful labor does not exist only in capitalist society, it has always existed since human beings began to carry out some kind of activity of transforming natural materials to meet their own certain needs, and it does not transfer to social forms, but is the eternal natural inevitability of human life to be realized.
Of course, commodities also contain natural components that are different from human labor, so Marx said: "Labor is not the only source of the use-value, that is, material wealth it produces".
This phrase is often distorted as a justification for the unequal distribution of workers, but it is actually related to who owns the means of production, which will be discussed in detail later when we talk about the multiplication of capital.
For useful labor, the key is the question of what kind of labor and how to work.
If we look for a common denominator in the labor expended in the production of different commodities, we will find that it can essentially be abstracted as the consumption of human brainpower, hands, nerves, and muscles, that is, abstract labor.
For commodities, their value is determined by the undifferentiated human labor they contain, and labor here actually refers to simple labor, that is, the labor that can be provided by every person without expertise under certain social conditions at a certain time.
And the so-called complex labor, whether it is the creation of tools or talent, is a kind of efficiency improvement for simple labor, so it can also be understood as many times the simple labor.
For abstract labor, his key is the question of how much labor and how long it lasts.
Therefore, no matter how the productivity of labor changes, as long as a person still works 8 hours a day, without touching the fish and not increasing the intensity, the person's consumption of his own mental and physical strength is the same, and the amount of value generated is the same.
If this is the case, then why in reality can individual enterprises get more revenue by improving production technology to improve efficiency?
That's because the enterprise is in accordance with the socially necessary labor time, and the enterprise shortens the labor time of producing goods by improving production efficiency, and there is a difference here, and this difference is the expansion of income.
For example, it used to take 8 hours to make a blouse in society, which can be exchanged for 20 yards of linen (income), but after improving the technology, it only takes 4 hours, so the same working time can be exchanged for 40 yards of linen, and the income is doubled.
And when this production technology was popularized throughout society, the socially necessary labor time for the blouse became four hours, so that the ratio of exchange became that one blouse could be exchanged for 10 yards of linen, and the difference disappeared.
After understanding the duality of labor, we can understand why commodities are exchanged based on the proportion of value through abstract labor, and in the next issue, we will gradually reveal the mystery of money starting from the form of exchange of commodities, so stay tuned