Travail simple et travail complexe chez Marx

Jean-Louis Cayatte

Revue Économique, 1984, vol. 35, issue 2, 221-246

Abstract: [fre] Cet article a pour objet de montrer qu'il est vain de chercher, dans les écrits mêmes de Marx, une définition (et, a fortiori, une mesure) du degré de complexité de la force de travail. De 1847 à la version française du Capital, on le voit escamoter la question. Sans doute a-t-on des éléments d'explication d'une telle attitude. Mais le résultat est que la comparaison systématique des passages où il évoque la question donne, notamment, deux définitions du travail simple, et cinq du travail complexe. Il convient donc, à notre sens, d'aba'ndonner le texte même de Marx, au profit de la logique de la théorie de la valeur travail, si on veut établir une loi de réduction du travail complexe en travail simple. [eng] Simple labour and complex labour according to marx. Jean-Louis Cayatte.. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the impossibility of establishing, from Marx's writings themselves, a satisfactory definition (not to mention a measure) of the degree of complexity of a labour force. Between 1847 and the French version of the Capital, there is no doubt that Marx avoids the issue. His reasons for doing no are open to discussion. Howecer the result of it all is that a systematic comparison of the passages in which he tackles the difficulty leads to two different definition.of simple labour and five different definitions of complex labour. Should one be willing to establish a law of reduction of complex labour to simple labour. Marx',s text should not be followed too closely and the inner logic of labour theory of value seem.s to be the one and only reliable guideline.

Date: 1984
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.persee.fr/doc/reco_0035-2764_1984_num_35_2_408777 (text/html)
Data and metadata provided by Persée are licensed under a Creative Commons "Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0" License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:prs:reveco:reco_0035-2764_1984_num_35_2_408777

Access Statistics for this article

Revue Économique is currently edited by Presses de Sciences-Po

More articles in Revue Économique from Programme National Persée
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Equipe PERSEE ().