capitalists have to reduce the level of wages. On the other hand, the same techniques create new and qualified positions (the counter-tendency) which, in their turn, are soon subjected to dequalification . . . At any moment in time we can observe both the tendency (the dequalification of certain positions and thus the devaluation of the agents' labour power) and the counter-tendency (the creation of new, qualified positions for which agents with a high value of labour power are needed}.31
Labour may not be reducible to socially necessary labour time instantaneously. But it is so reduced over time through the blind interaction of different capitals with each other. Again the law of value has to be understood as pressurising the individual components to operate in a certain way, not as a formula establishing fixed, fast frozen relations between them.
Marx's basic concepts survive all the criticisms once they are not interpreted through the static framework, ignoring the process of change through time that characterises the neoclassical system.
Marx and His Critics
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