That was Ricardo if memory serves, Marx simply adopted the concept because it suited his claim that only labor (not capital) is the producer of value. Of course that statement may only be true in a labor-intensive economy where different jobs are relatively homogenous e.g. making a table takes about as much skill and effort (albeit of a different kind) as say making an iron plow.
Things get a bit more complicated where you have capital-intensive and labor-intensive industries operating side by side e.g. hospital care and computer mfg. *************
But of course, workers produce capital.
********
A claim that an hour of a surgeon's and an assembler's work produces a more or less equal value is ludicrous on its face.
Wojtek ******************
I think the point is that the surgeon would not be able to be a surgeon without the assembler making the surgeon's tools.
We're all dependent on a gigantic division of labour when it gets to the stage we're in now. It's a social product of labour which we are 'alienated' from. The contradiction is that the social product of labour is privately owned or capitalist class dominated State controlled.
Best, Mike B)
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