Question:

How should we understand simple labor and complex labor?

Answer:

1 Complex labor is a multiple of simple labor. Within the same amount of time, products made through complex labor contain more value than products made through simple labor. Since this value can be paid for with gold produced by simple digging labor, we convert all abstract human labor into the expenditure of simple labor-power.

Marx: “It [abstract human labor] is the expenditure of simple labor-power which, on average, every ordinary person possesses in their physical organism without any special training. Although simple average labor itself varies in character between different countries and different cultural epochs, it is a given quantity within a particular society. More complex labor counts only as simple labor raised to a power, or rather multiplied, so that a smaller quantity of complex labor equals a larger quantity of simple labor. (58)” “A commodity may be the product of the most complex labor, but its value equates it with the product of simple labor and therefore represents only a definite quantity of simple labor. The varying proportions in which different kinds of labor are reduced to simple labor as their unit of measurement are established by a social process taking place behind the producers’ backs, and thus appear to them to be fixed by custom. For convenience, from this point onward we shall treat every kind of labor-power directly as simple labor-power, thereby sparing ourselves the trouble of making this reduction. (58)”

“This reduction is in fact accomplished as soon as the products of different kinds of labor are established as values. As values, the products of different kinds of labor are equivalents in definite proportions; higher forms of labor themselves are valued in terms of simple labor. This becomes clear if we consider, for example, that Californian gold is the product of simple labor. Moreover, every kind of labor is paid for in gold. Qualitative differences are thus eliminated, and the product of a higher form of labor is in practice reduced to a definite quantity of simple labor. (Collected Works, Vol. 46, Part II, p. 376; quoted in Yu Bin, The True Meaning of Capital, p. 19)”

2 It is neither possible nor necessary to calculate conversion coefficients between simple and complex labor. Distribution according to labor in a socialist society should pay more attention to distribution between workers performing complex labor and those performing simple labor, rather than to converting complex labor into simple labor. For a detailed discussion, see pp. 15–20 of Yu Bin’s The True Meaning of Capital.

Chen Zhenyu: “Since the determination of commodity value is a blind, spontaneous social process that people cannot consciously and directly control, people can only conduct scientific theoretical investigations to reveal the proportions by which complex labor is reduced to multiples of simple labor; they cannot, and need not, formulate multiplication coefficients for various models of reducing complex labor to simple labor. (Chen Zhenyu, ‘Correctly Understanding Marx’s Theory of Simple and Complex Labor’; quoted in Yu Bin, The True Meaning of Capital, p. 19)”

“The distinction between higher and simple labor, between skilled and unskilled labor, rests in part on mere illusion, or at least on distinctions that have long ceased to be real and persist only as traditional convention. In part, it rests on the fact that certain sections of the working class are more helpless and have greater difficulty than others in obtaining the value of their labor-power. Accidental circumstances play so large a role here that the two kinds of labor may exchange positions. (Footnote on p. 230)”

3 Simple labor and complex labor are relative concepts that can turn into one another under certain conditions. In general, as society develops, more and more forms of complex labor become simple labor. For example, a typist’s work counted as complex labor in the 1980s and 1990s, whereas typing is now almost taken for granted as an essential skill for every worker and has become simple labor. Whether labor-power is simple or complex has nothing to do with whether the labor is physical or mental. For example, an unskilled construction worker today may command a higher wage than a university-educated office clerk, and the work may also be more complex.

“Accidental circumstances play so large a role here that the two kinds of labor may exchange positions. For example, in all countries with developed capitalist production, the physical condition of the working class has become weak and considerably depleted. Thus, generally speaking, compared with very light, delicate work, rough work requiring considerable strength often becomes higher labor, while delicate work is reduced to simple labor. A bricklayer’s labor in England, for example, ranks far above that of a damask weaver. On the other hand, the labor of a wool shearer, though physically demanding and very unhealthy, is still regarded as ‘simple’ labor. (Footnote on p. 230)”