Abstract
This article aims to reconstruct the idea of skilled labour on the Marxian political economy.
Since Das Kapital, we have supposed that a labourer has simple and unskilled labour power in the
theory. Our recent discussion on labour and labour process, however, faces the problem about the
difference of labour productivity that is based on each labourer’s skill. It means we also face the
need to rethink the idea of skill. On section 1, we analyse the traditional usage of the term‘ skilled
labour’ with contrasting the terms‘ complicated labour’,‘ unskilled labour’, and‘ average labour’.
On Section 2, we shall inquire into the acting point of skill in the labour process. It shows a
labourer take a role of process controlling that has no fixed pattern. As a consequence of it, they can
operate in various ways and lead to various results. And, the potential of various control implies the
room to perform not only skilful operation but poorer work, called unskilled labour. For coping with
it, there are two capitalist’s behaviours on organising labour process: utilising skilled labour and
eliminating unskilled labour.
