Complex Labor, Value and the Reduction Problem

The “reduction problem” concerns the treatment of exceptionally skilled labor-power, known as “complex labor” within Marx’s value theory. Marx’s own writings on this subject are sparse and have been subject to extensive criticism. Here a solution is proposed drawing on the work of Jacques Bidet. It involves shifting away from individual workers to focus on the collective laborer and treating the resulting combination of specialisms through the framework of productivity increases. In this analysis most labor can be treated as “simple” rather than “complex,” whatever skills it happens to possess, with no enhanced value-creating potential. The notion of complex labor is reserved for those forms of labor where an adequate material basis does not yet exist for their real subsumption.