Labor and Work
Alright. to better explain the difference between work and labor think about a village.
when you are in a village, you are living with a bunch of other people and trying to survive. you will still need to do labor in order to survive. the distribution of this labor becomes a problem because some people cannot do certain labor tasks or else they will die. Because you are all working together to help feed everyone in the village, who does the labor in most cases doesn’t matter because most people are trying to survive and will generally try to contribute if able. Since all necessary tasks for everyone to survive are completed, these people who cannot contribute at all do not risk the survival of the entire village. this is how societies can have distribution of labor without requiring a measurement of labor value.
however, work is specifically a relationship with labor value, because you are returned something for your work. you aren’t working to sustain a village, you’re working to get something in return. This creates an exchange of value which requires the quantification of that value, leads to an indirect social hierarchy of labor which is what capitalism is, specifically the hierarchy of labor isn’t based on whats important for us, but rather what makes the most money.
this is why some extremely important labor like childcare is neglected in a work society because it is hard to quantify the value of childcare. most disabled people are not completely laborless. Most do make contributions, in fact many famous philosophers were disabled themselves. the thing is though that their labor cannot be easily exploited because its either a social labor that maintains morale or it is in very small distributed quantities. Very rarely is someone doing nothing at all and even then the cost of such a person is over exaggurated on society because of the myth of work.
the reason why most people don’t understand this is because of capitalist propaganda that causes people to think that work is the same thing as labor, by associating unemployment with laziness and assuming that this labor value is the only value a person contributes towards society. This also has an effect on geopolitics as well. the value of labor in third world countries is valued lower which forces them to basically be slaves their whole lives to be able to afford to do anything.
As soon as you realize that the land being privatized is what restricts us from growing our own food and the fact you have to work for someone doing what you hate just to pay your government-backed landlord will be the moment that you realize hey maybe that karl marx guy was right about things.
theres a reason why pro capitalist people want everyone to believe that work and labor is the same thing and its because it funnels all labor into their liberal fantasy.
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