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If we subject the category SNL (Socially Necessary Labour) to closer examination, we observe that two totally disparate elements have here been thrown together under the one heading. On the one hand it contains the simple determinative element that a specific form of labour satisfies a specific social need and is therefore socially necessary; on the other hand, insofar as a temporal aspect (labour-time) is involved, it gives expression to an element of economic regulation. Thus Kautsky, for instance, speaks of the socially necessary labour which is contained in a particular product "from its first origins through to its final completion, including transport and other auxiliary operations", and which cannot be estimated "even with the help of the most colossal and perfected statistical apparatus". Even though, according to Kautsky, it is theoretically possible to calculate this category in full, in practice this is unrealisable and therefore, as far as any purposes of budgetary control are concerned, it must, according to Kautsky, be rejected as practically useless.
Turning now to Varga, it is his intention that Socially Necessary Labour (SNL) should also have a defined regulatory and accounting role to play. It is even his wish that this should find expression in the name given to the term, and for this reason he speaks of an "inherent social cost price": "By this we understand the inherent cost price plus an additional increment for the maintenance of the non-labouring sections of the population, plus a further increment for the realisation of social accumulation. This is the solution in principle". (E.Varga: Die wirtschaftspolitischen Probleme der proletarischen Diktatur, p.147). (Varga's emphasis).
This "solution in principle" does indeed appear an attractive proposition. Adopting Varga's "formula for inherent costs" into the overall theoretical scheme, one arrives at the following:
Unfortunately, however, Varga does not provide any information as to how the additional increments for the GSU establishments and accumulation are to be determined or in what magnitude they are to be brought into relation with the rest of the schematic. For that reason it is not possible to subject the formula to any further examination. Speaking in general terms, we can only observe here the difficulty arises as with Kautsky, and that for the realisation of these "formulae for inherent costs" a monstrous giant brain would be necessary such as would be needed for the drawing up of the well-known "world equation" enunciated by Laplace; expressed in plain terms, this is as much to say that these "inherent cost formulae" are complete nonsense. It is for this reason that it should not cause us any astonishment if the much-prized "solution in principle" was found to be incapable of any practical application in Hungary, and that the demands of reality imposed upon their situation something quite different. In practice, the theory of inherent social costs was pushed aside by a price policy, from which we can draw the conclusion that in this case also the category of inherent social costs was dethroned and shown to be useless.
It would appear that, in the end outcome, the economists have applied the term Socially Necessary Labour (SNL) over far too wide a sphere, and that they have also included in its summation all those general costs of administration, etc., (See K. Marx: Critique of the Gotha Programme), which do not properly belong in the sphere of production at all; or else, at the opposite extreme, they have focused their attention too exclusively upon the collective end product, with the result that all the myriad different production-times adhering to hundreds of different products have been irretrievably mixed together (cf. Kautsky). In this particular form the category of Socially Necessary Labour (SNL) is indeed quite useless. Nevertheless, all labours performed in both reproduction and distribution are socially necessary. They must therefore be reproduced. The only possible solution is for each economic group to produce independently, whereby the entire SNL is reproduced.
We see, then, that the category SNL can find application only in respect of real use-value producing labour, and not in any administrative-accounting function. Reproduction of SNL is thus based upon and reflects the reproduction of each productive operation in the economy, and for that reason it is not the category SNL at all which is applicable to each separate work activity or particular division of the labour process; on the contrary, the decisive category applicable to each separate activity is that of Average Social Reproduction Time (ASRT). This is amenable to application in its widest sense by all "producers" and it is in this way that the problem of average social labour-time simultaneously finds its solution.
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