First of all, assessing how much labour value each worker contributes
to production is a very tricky business. Not only because skilled
labour should create more value than; unskilled labour and hence
because an adequate reduction procedure of complex to simple
labour is being presupposed. But even more because how much value
a worker contributes in a given time depends on how productive he
is compared to other workers producing the same goods.And while
this productivity can in principle be assessed in the case of workers
who independently produce identifiable products, it cannot, even in principle, in the general case in which goods are the joint products of
a large number of operations by a large number of workers. Conse-
quently, it is in most cases impossible to say whether the socially
necessary labour performed by a' particular worker (or group of
workers) was smaller or larger than the number of hours he actually
worked, or than the value embodied in the goods he consumes 1 2.
Secondly and more fundamentally, choosing socially necessary
labour, rather than actual labour, as an ethical principle of distri-
bution, is highly questionable. Why should someone who happens
to be less skilfull than average, or to work on particularly poor land,
or in a firm using obsolete machinery, be morally entitled for that
reason to a smaller part of the social product? Surely, if work is
relevant at all to the determination of how much a particular worker
is entitled to, it should be the work he has actually performed and
not the work which would have been necessary to someone with
average skill to produce the same goods under average technical
conditions.
Just think of a situa-
tion in which there are widely different kinds of labour: some labour
is pleasant, interesting and safe, while some other labour is un-
attractive, boring and dangerous. Would it not be deeply unfair to
reward both sorts of labour at the same rate? Surely, some way of
weighting different kinds of labour must be found if "To each
according to his labour" is going to be at all plausible as an ethical
principle. And what criterion could be found for this purpose other
than the average disutility associated with each kind of labour?
The proceeds of production, so the underlying principle should go,
are to be distributed according to desert, and desert is determined
by how much disutility each contributor to production has had to
suffer 1 3
Furthermore, even under equilibrium conditions, standard
exploitation need not derive from wealth ownership or coercion.
For suppose wealth is equally distributed, but preferences for leisure
vary across individuals. Some members of the society concerned may
be lazy, or disabled, or scornful of worldly goods. And they may
therefore be content to earn a modest living out of the interest they
get from lending their share of wealth to others. Despite the fact that
all are equally endowed (and hence that no one can take advantage
of his superior wealth position), the latter are standardly exploited
by the former. Indeed, such a situation could even arise if the' non-
workers had less than average wealth. They would be standard
exploiters, and still withdrawing with their per capita share of
social wealth would make them better off, i.e. they would be
capitalistically exploited in Roemer's sense 1 7. This shows that
(equilibrium) standard exploitation may derive from differences in
preferences as well as from differences in wealth or from coercion.
Even at equilibrium, therefore, standard exploitation may be present
while capitalist-or-feudal' exploitation is not. And even if it can be
shown that there is something wrong with the latter, it would not
ipso facto show that there is something intrinsically wrong with the
former.
That I knew but I didn’t know that whole day of physical work feels so good for me. Then I thought of the primal people adhd theories and maybe I need more physical style of life. I like to think that answers to present are in the past