time. When regimented along the lines of the socially necessary labor-time governing a specific production process, labor-power inserts its own extracted value, which is measured in scientific time units, into the things it has been socially regimented to produce. For Marx, things acquire a value because labor-power, which has been bought for a period of time from the laborer by the capitalist, is worked into a finished product within the production process, a process that is regulated by socially necessary labortime, i. e. the average labor-time required within an economic sphere in order to produce a given commodity. As Marx states,
socially necessary labor-time is the labor-time required to produce any use-value under the conditions of production normal for a given society and with the average degree of skill and intensity of labor prevalent in that society. Commodities which contain equal quantities of labor, or which can be produced in the same time, have therefore the same value.[ 8 ]
Any thing produced at the average expenditure of labor-time, at the average intensity of labor-power can be said to have been produced according to the parameters of socially necessary labor-time, and is thus valuable, i. e., it possesses a certain quantifiable value reflecting the socially necessary labor-time indicative of a particular sphere of production. Of course, there are many factors that go into determining socially necessary labor-time. Marx names a few, such as“ degree of skill, the level of development of science and its technological application, the social organization of the process of production”[ 9 ] and competition etc., which influence production and socially necessary labor-time in a feed-back loop that continually stimulates production to expand and to refine its productive capacities, by stimulating scientific innovations, technological innovations and organizational innovations etc.
According to Marx, socially necessary labor-time is a law-like socio-economic-mechanism that regulates capitalist-production, driving this capitalist-production towards greater expansion, greater amelioration and greater levels of value-exploitation of the workforce via the coercive law of competition, which itself influences the parameters of socially necessary labor-time. For Marx, competition stimulates individual capitalists, within a particular sphere of production, to ameliorate their individual production processes in order to produce below the level of socially necessary labor-time. To do so means that these capitalists are more cost-effective and thus more apt to cultivate greater levels of surplus value and profits because they have cut costs, in relation to price, below the levels dictated by the regulating mechanism of socially necessary labor-time. As a result, these capitalists have expanded the ratio between cost of production and price at a greater level than that produced by the regulating mechanism of socially necessary labor-time, which translates into greater profits in relations to competitors. This drive to produce below the socially necessary labor-time, within their specific sphere of production, enables these cost-efficient capitalists to reap greater profits then their competitors who continue to produce at the socially necessary labor-time. As Marx states,
There is a motive for each individual capitalist to cheapen his commodities, by increasing the productivity of labor … The increased production of surplus-value arises from the curtailment of the [ socially ] necessary labor-time, and the corresponding prolongation of the surplus labor. [ In essence ], Capital... has an immanent drive, and a constant tendency, towards increasing the productivity of labor, in order to cheapen commodities... The process both cheapens commodities and augments the surplus value contained in them.[ 10 ]
This cheapening of commodities via increased productivity enables capitalists to appropriate higher profits by producing below the socially necessary labor-time within their specific economic branch. By producing below the socially necessary labor-time, these cost-effective capitalists are able to sell their