Chapter 5. Labor Units and Wage Units
We come now to a short chapter of Keynes's book called The Choice of Units.
It is less than nine pages long, but it repays close analysis because it strikingly illustrates the inconsistencies in his thinking,
Banking, as well as the loose, shifting, and sometimes self-contradictory concepts that
he considered basic, he begins by pointing out that the units in terms of which economists
commonly work are unsatisfactory.
He illustrates this by the concepts of the national dividend, the stock of real capital,
and the general price level, page 37.
The national dividend, for example, as defined by Alfred Marshall and A. C. Pigot, measures
the volume of current output or real income and not the value of output or money income,
page 38.
On this basis, Keynes goes on, an attempt is made to erect a quantitative science.
But it is a grave objection to this definition for such a purpose that the community's output
of goods and services is a non-homogeneous complex which cannot be measured, strictly
speaking except in certain special cases, as for example when all the items of one output
are included in the same proportion in another output.
This objection to the attempt to measure the national dividend, or, as Americans would
call it, the national income, in real terms, is perfectly valid as far as it goes.
So too are Keynes's further objections to the way Pigot attempts to deal with the factor
of obsolescence.
As Keynes points out, when Pigot deducts for obsolescence where there has been no change
in the physical quantity of the factories or equipment under consideration, he is covertly
introducing changes in value.
Page 39.
Keynes goes on to make the further objection that Pigot is unable, in real terms, to evaluate
New Equipment Against Old When, owing to changes in technique, the two are not identical.
And Keynes concludes that, though Pigot is aiming at the right and appropriate concept
for economic analysis, until a satisfactory system of units has been adopted, its precise
definition is an impossible task.
He adds that the attempt to compare real outputs of non-homogeneous commodities or equipment
presents conundrums which permit, one can confidently say, of no solution.
These criticisms of the quantitative indeterminancy, page 39, of such concepts as the national
To say that net output today is greater, but the price level lower, then the general price level, must be accepted as correct.
Keynes adds that such concepts properly belong only in the field of historical and statistical description,
for which perfect precision is neither usual nor necessary.
To say that net output today is greater, but the price level lower than ten years ago, or one year ago, is a proposition of a similar character to the statement that Queen Victoria was a better queen, but not a happier queen, than Queen Elizabeth.
A proposition not without meaning, and not without interest, but unsuitable as material for the differential calculus.
Our precision will be a mock precision if we try to use such partly vague and non-quantitative concepts as the basis of a quantitative analysis.
Page 40
Having made all these perfectly valid criticisms, Keynes does an astonishing thing.
After pointing out that we cannot add non-homogeneous commodities or non-homogeneous capital equipment
together to get any meaningful total in real terms, but only in terms of monetary value,
He blandly assumes that we can add non-homogeneous labor together to get a meaningful total of real labor units.
Surely it ought to be clear that the labor of different individual workers is not only as non-homogeneous as commodities or capital equipment, but infinitely more so.
True, it is not possible to add a ton of sand to a ton of gold watches and get a total that
is meaningful in any other sense than as a weight, which is of no economic significance.
But it is quite legitimate to add together millions of bushels of wheat of the same commercial
When we try to add labor units together in real terms, however, we are completely without
any common standard of measurement.
How can we add an hour's labor of a great surgeon to an hour's labor of a shoe clerk?
How can we add an hour's work of a Yahudi menuhin to an hour's work of a bricklayer?
From a strictly scientific standpoint, even an hour's labor by a file clerk is never
strictly equal in real terms to that of another file clerk.
Differences in speed, accuracy and intelligence must be taken into account.
There may even be significant differences in real terms between the first hour's work
of the same file clerk in the morning and his last hour's work in the afternoon.
None of these problems seem to give Keynes the slightest concern.
Oblivious of all he has written a few pages back about the mock precision of attempts
In order to add commodities and real terms, he writes,
In dealing with the theory of employment I propose, therefore, to make use of only two
fundamental units of quantity, namely, quantities of money value and quantities of employment.
The first of these is strictly homogeneous, and the second can be made so, for in so far
are as different grades and kinds of labor and salaried assistants enjoy a more or less
fixed relative remuneration, the quantity of employment can be sufficiently defined
for our purpose by taking an hour's employment of ordinary labor as our unit, and waiting
an hour's employment of special labor in proportion to its remuneration, i.e. an hour
More of special labor remunerated at double ordinary rates will count as two units.
Page 41.
That an eminent economist should be capable of using such a concept and writing such a
paragraph in 1936 seems incredible.
This is precisely the concept that Karl Marx used in his attempt to establish his famous
labor theory of value in Das Kapital in 1867. This concept was demolished unanswerably by
Boehm-Bawerk in 1896. Marx attributed all the value of commodities to the labor that
went into them. When asked what he meant by this labor and how he measured it, he called
called it simple average labor.
Skilled labor, he wrote, counts only as intensified or rather multiplied simple labor, so that
a smaller quantity of skilled labor is equal to a larger quantity of simple labor.
Experience shows that skilled labor can always be reduced in this way to the terms of simple
Simple Labor No matter that a commodity may be the product
of the most highly skilled labor, its value can be equated with that of the product of
simple labor so that it represents merely a definite amount of simple labor.
Boehm-Bawerk travestied this in a passage in his Carl Marx and the Clothes of His System,
English Edition, 1898, page 162.
With the very same reasoning one could affirm and argue the proposition that the quantity
of material contained in commodities constitutes the principle and measure of exchange value,
that commodities exchange in proportion to the quantity of material incorporated in them.
10 pounds of material in one kind of commodity exchange against 10 pounds of material in another kind of commodity.
If the natural objection were raised that this statement was obviously false,
because 10 pounds of gold do not exchange against 10 pounds of iron, but against 40,000 pounds,
or against a still greater number of pounds of coal,
We may reply, after the manner of Marx, that it is the amount of common average material that affects the formation of value that acts as unit of measurement.
Skillfully wrought, costly material of special quality counts only as compound, or rather, multiplied common material,
so that a small quantity of material fashioned with skill is equal to a larger quantity of common material.
that this reduction is constantly made experience shows.
A commodity may be of the most exquisite material.
Its value makes it equal to commodities formed of common material
and therefore represents only a particular quantity of common material.
Keynes's quantity of employment in terms of labor units
is as inescapable of physical or real measurement as is Marx's quantity of labor.
It is my belief, writes Keynes, that much unnecessary complexity can be avoided if we limit ourselves strictly to the two units, money and labor,
when we are dealing with the behavior of the economic system as a whole.
Page 43 Yet these supposedly independent units of quantity,
namely quantities of money value and quantities of employment, are both merely quantities
of money value.
If ten laborers each working for $8 a day are dismissed, and two specialists each working
According for $40 a day are taken on, there is no change in the volume of employment according
to Keynes's method of reckoning in the quotation on page 62.
Keynes's quantity of employment is not a quantity of employment.
It is the quantity of money received by laborers who are employed.
This interpretation is not shaken but proved by the very arguments that Keynes puts forward
to defend his so-called labor unit.
He writes,
This assumption of homogeneity in the supply of labor is not upset by the obvious fact
of great differences in the specialized skill of individual workers and in their suitability
for Different Occupations, for, if the remuneration of the workers is proportional to their efficiency,
the differences are dealt with by our having regarded individuals as contributing to the
supply of labor in proportion to their remuneration, pages 41 through 42.
If this remarkable assumption were valid, we should be equally justified in assuming
Homogeneity in the Physical Supply of Goods and Services
For if the market price of every article or service is proportional to its value,
then the differences are dealt with by regarding each commodity or service
as contributing to the total physical supply in proportion to its price.
We could follow Keynes through the still further logical ledger domain by which he seeks to defend his labor unit concept.
But this would be superfluous and tedious.
The plain truth is that Keynes's labor unit concept is open not only to every objection that he himself makes to the quantitative measurement of commodities,
of the national income or of the level of prices, but to objections of an even more serious and fundamental nature.
He leaps out of the frying pan into the fire.
He rejects concepts with a limited usefulness in order to embrace a concept that is worthless for any purpose.
After having explained to us that such things as net real output and the general level of prices are unsuitable as material for the differential calculus,
he blandly proceeds to apply algebraic symbols and the differential calculus to his invalid concept of quantity of employment.
The chapter ends with some pretentious mathematical formulas and equations attempting to show that one of his nebulous and ill-defined quantities is a function of the other.
It is a perfect example of mock precision of an inappropriate and worthless application of mathematics to economic analysis.