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Abstract labour and concrete labour refer to a distinction made by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy.It refers to the difference between human labour in general as economically valuable worktime versus human labour as a particular activity that has a specific useful effect within the (capitalist) mode of production.
In Das Kapital Marx normally thinks of the quantity of labour that determines product-value as the ratio between the average total amount of labour-time required to produce a reproducible good, and the corresponding average amount of labour required to produce a unit of gold (see also gold standard).
Labor-power might be seen as a stock which can produce a flow of labor. Labor, not labor power, is the key factor of production for Marx and the basis for earlier economists' labor theory of value. The hiring of labor power only results in the production of goods or services ("use-values") when organized and regulated (often by the "management ...
Ricardo, but not Keen, used a "labor theory of price" in which a commodity's "innate worth" was the amount of labor needed to produce it. "The value of a thing in any given time and place", according to Henry George, "is the largest amount of exertion that anyone will render in exchange for it. But as men always seek to gratify their desires ...
At the heart of the argument is the labour theory of value and the related premise that profit represents surplus value created by labour working above and beyond the amount needed to reproduce itself, as represented by wages and the buying power of wages viz. the price of commodities (particularly necessities). In other words, profit is what ...
Work or labor (labour in British English) is the intentional activity people perform to support the needs and desires of themselves, other people, or organizations. [1] In the context of economics , work can be viewed as the human activity that contributes (along with other factors of production ) towards the goods and services within an economy .
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Consequently, labour power may be hired not "because it creates more value than it costs to buy", but simply because it conserves the value of a capital asset which, if this labour did not occur, would decline in value by an even greater amount than the labour cost involved in maintaining its value; or because it is a necessary expense which ...