Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth

by Ludwig von Mises

Skilled labour counts only as intensified, or rather multiplied, simple labour, so that a smaller quantity of skilled labour is equal to a larger quantity of simple labour. Experience shows that skilled labour can always be reduced in this way to the terms of simple labour. No matter that a commodity be the product of the most highly skilled labour, its value can be equated with that of the product of simple labour, so that it represents merely a definite amount of simple labour. Böhm-Bawerk is not far wrong when he calls this argument “a theoretical juggle of almost stupefying naïveté.13 To judge Marx’s view we need not ask if it is possible to discover a single uniform physiological measure of all human labor, whether it be physical or “mental.” For it is certain that there exist among men varying degrees of capacity and dexterity, which cause the products and services of labor to have varying qualities.