Seems really fucking complicated. I doubt I'd be able to make most workers I know understand it (I'm neet tho anyway). There's no way I'm going to be able to read a book to be honest. I don't have the time, attention span, or intelligence to get what Marx is saying when ever I've read bits from marxists.org. As far as I can gather from articles, videos, and wikipedia, it seems to be that socially necessary labor time of a product is equal to its exchange value.
Socially necessary labor time = the amount of time needed for an average worker to produce the product in question? Exchange value = Equivalent things that it will exchange for?
SNLT = exchange value is supposed to be an empirical law that shows that a product will exchange for another product that took an equal amount of SNLT to produce (but this can't always be true so shouldn't it be AVERAGE exchange value?). I'm not sure if it also equals price (ON AVERAGE), or if it's SNLT + some other thing that explains it.]
SNLT = value in the abstract exchange value is determined by SNLT to an extent, but market and other forces affect it Exchange value is an commodity's value in relation to other commodities. It is not price.
Julian Powell
What does "value in the abstract" mean?
That sounds a bit handwavey. I thought that SNLT was the main basis of the market in Marx's view. What are these other forces?
That's what I thought, but I know it relates to price… somehow.
Daniel Walker
They're wrong, exchange value equals the SNLT.
Oliver Gutierrez
On average, right?
Aiden Lewis
When you are exchanging commodities in quantity you cannot know the concrete labour that went into them. Labour loses its concrete form (e.g., digging, assembling, etc.) and appears only as labour time. However, you still can't know the particular amount of time each piece needed, therefore you only have the social average (the socially necessary labour time).
Exchange governs the social division of labour, that is, you produce something someone else needs, and get something equivalent in exchange that you need. The exchange value is the amount the commodity contributed/costed to society's "metabolism."
Owen Ortiz
SNLT is already an average.
Logan Howard
Yes, but is exchange value?
Evan Hall
In what sense? The commodity is already "average" in the sense that it's not about a particular piece of it but the commodity in general.
Jayden Ortiz
Only because it is equivalent to SNLT which is an average.
