reduction is constantly being made. A commodity may be the product of the most skilled labor, but its value, by equating it to the product of simple unskilled labor, represents a definite quantity of the latter labor alone. The different proportions in which different sorts of labor are reduced to unskilled labor as their standard, are established by a social process that goes on behind the backs of the producers, and, consequently appears to be fixed by custom." "If," says Böhm-Bawerk, "the product of one day's labor of one man is of the same value as that of another man's five days' labor, then, no matter how people consider it, it forms an exception to the alleged rule, that the exchange-value of goods depends on the amount of human labor incorporated in them."
These objections evidently proceed upon the theory that Marx's "alleged rule" claims that the value of commodities depends upon the amount of labor actually incorporated in them in the process of their production. It is needless to argue whether these objections would amount to anything were this the "alleged rule," for the simple reason that no such rule was ever "alleged" by Marx. We have already seen, that Marx very specifically states that the value of a commodity does not depend on the amount of labor actually spent in its production. And this not only with reference to skilled and unskilled labor, but even with reference to unskilled labor itself. According to the Marxian theory of value, as expounded by us above, it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever, as far as its value is concerned, how much labor, of any kind, was actually spent in production of a commodity. The reason for this is, as already explained, that value, being a social phenomenon, depends entirely on social conditions of production and distribution, and does not depend on anything relating exclusively to the individual conditions of its production or exchange. This applies with equal force to the amount and kind of labor it cost its individual producer, as well as to the particular desires or wants of the persons immediately concerned in any of its mutations during the circulation process.
