According to Marx, socially necessary labor time is constituted by the essential hours of labor required in the production of a commodity. In theory, if a worker spends twice as much time as other workers producing an identical commodity, the product should be worth twice as much. Obviously, this is not what is actually observed in commodity markets. Since there are other workers producing the same commodity in half the time, the socially necessary labor time is only half that spent by the original worker. The other half is wasted time. Marx uses the example of a spinner when he