Tuesday, June 4, 2019

Synergy and Labor Theory of Value

A notable historical example of Synergy is Smith's illustration of the advantage of Division of Labor.  According to him, in a pin factory, dividing the manufacture of a pin into 18 specialized tasks is 50 times more productive than each worker producing one pin at a time.  Thus, regardless of the mechanical character of this type of Organization of Labor, the Whole is significantly greater than the some of its Parts.  But, if the Labor Theory of Value is correct, and if, presumably, the exertion of an individual worker is the same in both contexts, the corresponding increase of Value of the productivity of the work-force can be attributable only to the source of the organizational scheme.  However, it is unclear how proponents of the LTV, which Smith is in at least some passages, incorporate a Synergic analysis into it.  For example, an organizational scheme is easy to conceive as the product of intellectual Labor, but Marx does not seem to recognize it as such, and, hence, he does not consider that his inclusion of 'intellectual' Labor within the Division of Labor abstracts from the Labor expended by an intellect in devising a scheme which entails such a differentiation of tasks.  So, in these prominent cases, there is little indication of explicit attention to Synergy in Economic Theory, even where its involvement is plain and efficacious.

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