The stability of the hierarchy of wages and expression of quantities of labour into a common unit

Guy Bensimon ()

Cahiers d’économie politique / Papers in Political Economy, 2011, issue 60, 87-108

Abstract: This paper shows that the Smith-Ricardo and the Keynes rules of reduction of various kinds of labour to any one kind assume the stability of the hierarchy of wages, which allows the stable expression of quantities of labour into a common unit. The comparison of their relative earnings the agents make, and the consequently generated competition are at the origin of the stability of the hierarchy of wages. However, these principles do not rely on a robust theoretical basis: changes in the distribution and composition of capital on the one hand, changes in qualifications on the other hand could destabilize the hierarchy of wages. The notion of value of labour has to be reconsidered.

Keywords: Value; labour; measure; hierarchy of wages (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A10 B00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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