抄録
This article examines complicated labor and explores the theoretical implications of productive labor without value formation. Previous studies on complicated labor have exclusively focused on the aspects of the reduction problem in which the value produced by complicated labor is reduced to the value produced by simple labor. However, due to their lack of awareness of the multilayered concepts of value and labor, the controversy seems to have come to a standstill. This article instead argues that the theoretical significance of complicated labor lies in the impossibility of reducing such value to simple labor. By closely examining the theory of "patterned cost," it is shown that the division of labor market into regular employees and reserve army of labor is necessary because the sale of labor power involves "patterning."
