Productivity of Labor

The labor efficiency of a worker in producing a certain commodity, indicates a worker’s capacity of performing productive labor. It is generally expressed in terms of the quantity of products produced per unit of time or the necessary labor-time to produce a single product.

The level of the productivity of labor depends on various factors, among which the chief ones are: the average level of skills of workers, the level of scientific development, the scale and effectiveness of technical equipment, the state of the organization of labor and the management of production, the quantity and quality of the means of production, the natural conditions, etc. With the development of social production, the productivity of labor shows a general trend of continuous increase.

The level of the productivity of labor is the result of the combination of the above factors. A change in the productivity of labor also causes a change in the magnitude of value of a commodity. The magnitude of value of a commodity varies directly as the quantity, and inversely as the productivity, of the labor which comes to fruition in the commodity. That is to say, the greater the productivity of labor, the greater the amount of use-values produced by the same labor per unit of time, and the less the socially necessary labor-time required to produce a unit of commodity, the less its magnitude of value. This is the general law of commodity production and also the most fundamental relation between the productivity of labor and the magnitude of value. It should be made clear that the productivity of labor in referred to here means the average productivity of labor of a branch. If the productivity of labor of an individual enterprise increases, but the average productivity of labor of the branch remains unchanged, i.e., the magnitude of value per unit of commodities does not change, then the individual enterprise with a higher productivity of labor creates more social value at one and the same time.