lotka: objective standard of value 449 



to fix one of these units arbitrarily — but then the other is fixed, 

 in the objective system. 



Let us, then, arbitrarily fix the unit rate of labor (per unit of 

 time) at one (average) man-day (as actually practised at the 

 present time) per man per day. The value of this, in objective 

 units of value, is in the system here discussed -1 ; this means that 

 doing one such unit of labor per day represents a loss of one unit 

 of value per day. If the wages received just compensate for this 

 loss (as would be the case with entirely open competition and 

 absence of all monopoly — one of our fundamental assumptions), 

 then the value of the average daily wage received (under actually 

 existing conditions) would be + 1 objective unit of value. But 

 the average daily wage actually received under existing conditions 

 is, in dollars, + 2 units, say. Hence one objective unit of value, 

 as defined above, is (to the degree of approximation attainable by 

 our rough method of estimation) equal to 2 dollars, or 1 dollar is 

 equal to 0.5 objective units of value. 



Now if the rate of doing labor is measured in objective units, we 

 have 



-^ = - 1 (27) 



If, on the other hand, it is measured in dollars per day, then, 

 since 2 dollars per day is equal to 1 objective unit per day, we 

 shall have 



-^ = -0.5 (28) 



dL 



Let us consider by the aid of a numerical example what this 

 means. With the same assumptions as before, and an average 

 daily wage of 2 dollars per day for one man-day per day of labor, 

 let us suppose that the rate of labor were increased until it cor- 

 responded to a fair wage of 2.01 dollars per day; that is to say, we 

 are supposing that the rate of doing labor is increased by 0.005 

 objective units of value. 



Then we should have 



6Zr = ^ dL = -1 X 0.005 = -0.005 (29) 



