Surplus Product and The Social Valuation of Labour
Although it is nowadays possible to measure the number of hours worked in a country with reasonable accuracy, there have been few attempts by social statisticians to estimate the surplus product in terms of labour hours.
Very interesting information has become available from time use surveys however on how people in society on average spend their time. From this data, it is evident just how much modern market economies in reality depend on the performance of unpaid (i.e. volunteered) labour. That is, the forms of labour that are the subject of commercial exploitation are quantitatively only a sub-set of the total labour which is done in a society, and depend on non-market labour being performed.
This in turn creates a specific and characteristic way in which different labour activities are valued and prioritised. Some forms of labour can command a high price, others have no price at all, or are priceless. Nevertheless all labor in capitalist society is influenced by value relations, irrespective of whether a price happens to be imputed to it or not. The commercial valuation of labor may not necessarily say anything though about the social or human valuation of labor.
Read more about this topic: Surplus Product
Famous quotes containing the words surplus, product, social and/or labour:
“The Indian is one of Nature’s gentlemen—he never says or does a rude or vulgar thing. The vicious, uneducated barbarians, who form the surplus of overpopulous European countries, are far behind the wild man in delicacy of feeling or natural courtesy.”
—Susanna Moodie (1803–1885)
“Culture is a sham if it is only a sort of Gothic front put on an iron building—like Tower Bridge—or a classical front put on a steel frame—like the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street. Culture, if it is to be a real thing and a holy thing, must be the product of what we actually do for a living—not something added, like sugar on a pill.”
—Eric Gill (1882–1940)
“It is always a practical difficulty with clubs to regulate the laws of election so as to exclude peremptorily every social nuisance. Nobody wishes bad manners. We must have loyalty and character.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
““To be born woman is to know—
Although they do not talk of it at school—
That we must labour to be beautiful.””
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)