Labor Force Has Always Been a Prime

¶ … labor force has always been a prime concern amongst classical political economists, starting with Petty and continuing to theorists such as Adam Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, and Marx. Labor implies the activity of production that goes into producing the good of value but whilst some theorists, such as Smith, have focused on the outcome of the labor activity, others, such as famously Marx, have considered the conditions of the laborer himself. Some theories too, such as those of Ricardo have been primarily descriptive. Others, such as those of Marx and Malthus, have included prescriptive components. Ultimately, all classical political economic theories have included prescription of better understanding and dealing with the human race on an economic scheme.

William Petty, observing Dutch laborers at their shipyards, noticed how they performed their work better than anyone else and how employing the method that they used, owners could utilize cheap and unskilled labor thereby doubling their profits. The Dutch shipping laborer, in contradistinction to the method employed at the time would divide their work into several tasks with groups of workers performing the same task on several ships at oen go. The common method during that period was for the entire team to work on oen ship and at its completion to move to another. Stuck with the cost and time-cutting efficacy of the Dutch method, Petty experimented its possibility with a survey in Ireland and found similar beneficial results. He went on to introduce this tool as efficacious way of conducting business.

Adam Smith, founder of Western capitalism, popularized his method of the 'Invisible hand' in the Wealth of Nations, 1776. To Smith, influenced by French writers, countries succeeded and became wealthy via competition. Each individual was out for his own good. There was no spirit of benevolence. Each sought to protect and fend for himself. And by doing so, they struggled to compete and better themselves (or differentiate themselves) against the other in order to attract customers. Unintentionally, therefore, the nation profited from their activity and, due to accumulation of superior and advanced products, became wealthier as a result.

Smith advocated that governments refrain from involving themselves in monitoring and restringing business enterprises unless their doing so would be for the regulating of business and for the country's good. Lack of government interference would allow competition to continue unchecked culminating in more money in national coffers.

Ricardo, a disciple of Smith, used his labor principle to reduce the essence of the commodity of exchange to the principle of labor. Smith, too, had seen labor as the prime principle of value (seeing it as inflexible and consistent and, wishing to base his theory of exchange on a consistent unfluctuating variable). Smith had, however, added his Adding-up Theory of Value where rent, profit, and wages defined value in a capitalist system that depended on the intangibles of proprietorship and landlords. This led to contradictions in that Smith's Adding-up Theory of Value was not addressed to explain the actual day-to-day fluctuations in market price. So what you have is a differnce between market price and natural price, and the measure of value becomes equivocated with the cause of value. Ricardo solved that dilemma by pointing out that labor had manifold definitions and varied according to a spectrum. Labor could be qualitative and intense existing on a significant duration of time, or it may be short-lived and accomplished by machines. According to Ricardo, therefore, the value of labor (and hence the value of a product or service -- commodity of exchange) depended on the quality and quantity of invested labor.

Malthus was the gloomy theorist seeing society as demarcated in two: The wealthy upper class that could rationally deal with their ranks, thinning them when need be and rationally allocating and transferring their wealth to their particular generations, and the poorer, less 'moral' disadvantaged class who sucked up the resources of the earth. The poor liberally engaged in unrestrained breeding taking rather than contributing to the world's resources.

Nature interceded in two ways to thin down its population via preventative checks and positive checks. Preventative checks reduced birth rate and positive checks introduced death in the form of war, plague, famine, and other catastrophes. However, Malthus foresaw a time when scarcity would become increasingly more common in the world, and he advocated more deliberate strategies to expand resources. To modern-day ears, some of these sound notorious.

What Malthus did not foresee, however, was the introduction of technology that would work towards increasing resources in the world.

Marx provided an approach that was the counter-opposite of Smith's. Whilst Smith was the founder of Western capitalism, Marx introduced socialism that still dominates certain parts of the world today. Marx's focus was on the bourgeoisie and wealthier classes, one of these being the factory owner, exploited worker whom he insisted. The owner compelled his workers to work at lower wages for more dangerous oppressive work and at longer hours whilst the owner befitted from the work. Marx predicted that worker would rise against owner leading to Worker's revolution and demarcation of two classes ("Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation will lead, sooner or later, to the transformation of the whole, immense, superstructure" (Marx, 1977, p.265). Whilst this prediction never came about, Marx's prediction of increasingly greedy and powerful corporate conglomerates (due to government reluctance to interfere in their business) did evolve.

Marx foresaw too the increasing rationalization of machines taking over man's work.

With this insight, Marx overturned the understanding of earlier theorists who assumed that competition would result in enhanced workmanship and greater opportunity for employment. Marx saw the reverse: haste to meet demand would result in more shoddy workmanship, particularly since wages would decrease due to the choice that owners would have of being able to select potential workers. Workers would fight over the opportunity to work even for minimal pay. Much of the work would be done too by machines resulting in even less employment slots for people. The result would be social conflict rather than the social harmony that Smith foresaw. To Marx, capitalism was not advantageous for the laborer. Instead, he recommended a situation where the government administrates jobs and resources to all its citizens in an adumbrated, equal manner. Socialism was more idealistic than practical and, therefore, failed in its purest form. As practiced today, for example in parts of Asia, it combines diluted forms of capitalism to survive.