I am contemplating which I should use: Locke’s work or Adam Smith’s work. Both address the issue of labour and how labour has value. In Locke’s work, money is a tangible thing that doesn’t go to waste.  I just think it is appropriate to use either Locke or Smith’s texts to support that money has value but people have different views of value so that is why money is a challenge to use.

However, since I am going to use “value,” I want to use Swift’s poem to support that people view value differently. Yet, then I would have to tie in that idea with money. So I may or may not use that poem.

I don’t have a clear, concrete idea of what I’m going to do with the essay and I’ll probably change my initial approach.

This topic is interesting to me because we rate the value of others’ labor constantly in our purchases and hiring of services, and the decision can still be challenging due to any existing uncertainty in the value. The implications of our decisions are large, having impacts on the free market economy we are immersed in, yet the decisions we make can hang on a thread of certainty as we rate the labor needed to produce our desired product or service. The value placed on different types of labor determines payment, recognition from society, and social status. These are important factors to consider in any career choice, and greatly affect the economy and the lives of those in it.

Based upon these early ideas, I would like to claim that labor is difficult to establish because we are conflicted by our perceptions of what labor actually produces and who is doing it.

I have decided to answer the question “what makes labor value difficult to establish?” for Major paper one.  I think this question has a lot of depth to it and is very broad so the answer to it does not have to be a cliché response. I would like to take on the point of view that labor value is difficult to establish because there are many aspects of labor that are done in different fashions, even if it’s the same task. There is some labor that can be completed by humans, and then there is some that machines are able to do. The difficulty level fluctuates depending on who is performing the task, thus making the value of the work increase or decrease as well.

I am going to use Collier as well as Duck together to argue this point; I feel that although they have opposing arguments, they together can support my view on labor as a whole.  In addition to those two readings, I would like to incorporate the reading “Money” by Stein, because the value of money, as well as the value of the work has to be established to truly understand the value of the labor that is being done. So the points that I want to argue are… 1) That labor value is difficult to establish because the difficulty labor of that work changes depending on who is performing the task, whether it be man, woman, machine, or even animals, making the value change. And 2) I would also like to argue that the value of the money, or item of value being used to pay for that labor makes it difficult to determine the value of labor.

I chose to use these two works because I feel that they are the two papers we have read that most directly address the issue of labor value. Beyond that, they are also in conflict with each other. In his paper Locke talks at great length about the high value of labor. On the other hand, Duck is a lowly field laborer, seeing little from his long hours working in the field. This conflict between the two authors is extremely important because it shows that there can be very different values placed on labor and that this is a question that deserves to be written about.

As of now, there are a few points I plan on making in my paper:

• Labor cannot have an intrinsic value because not all labor is the same. For example, in Thresher’s Labour, Duck describes how the women working in the field do significantly less then he and the other men do. Clearly, labour by some individuals is much more valuable.
• In Locke’s paper, he mainly discusses an individual working to collect what is necessary to survive. In this case, that individual is the only benefactor from this labor, so they are the ones to place value. This is why Locke is able to say that labor has such a high value and that it brings property.
• The reason that Duck doesn’t feel that he benefits directly from his labor is that he is not working for himself, rather he is working for someone else. Duck’s labor holds more value to the owner of the field than it does to Duck himself.

Montague is a good voice to use for this topic because the main conflict of her piece is a man who thinks that the fruits of his academic labors are good enough to buy a prostitute without paying her. This is essentially a difference in opinion on labor value. His social standing is his value and his peer group highly values it. He thinks he is being cheated because she didn’t do the work he paid her for, she didn’t labor for him. The two people in the poem have completely different views on what labor is and how value is assessed which supports my answer.

Duck will be useful because he is a laborer with obvious issues as to what his labor is worth. He not only gives his landlord the labor he provides during the day but he lives his whole life in servitude to them, his youth his health, even (though I’m not sure Duck specifically talks about it) the production of children is intended to produce more workers for the family. There is at least one section in his poem about how he and the landlord disagree about how hard the laborers have been working. Another is when the women come to work in the fields as well, he values his own labor but not that of the women’s at all even though it is the same work. The part about women I think will have to be an acknowledged as a difference in labor value just because they are women and therefore kind of annoying. That’s a whole different essay about labor value of the sexes that I’ll have to be careful to stay off my soap box.

Both Smith and Mandeville agree that individuals are naturally lazy and aim to have the most gain from as little work as possible. Smith says we do this through the division of labour, and once we focus on one task, we will find the easiest/quickest way to do it. According to Mandeville, this easiest way is through cheat and deceit. He provides many examples of actual workers, from fashion designers to lawyers and doctors. When the quality of their work is poor, so is the quality of their goods and services. However, the hive thrives on this and the value of their community is very high. So can we put a value on their labour when it’s hard to decide if it’s even good or bad?

In Wealth of Nations, Smith demonstrates that when we specialize on one task, production efficiency increases. He uses pin-making as an example: when a few people specialize in each step of pin-making, they can make many more overall pins than if everyone made entire pins themselves. In this situation, each individual does a lot less and a lot easier work, but overall, the output efficiency is better so this type of labour is valuable. But if one person leaves, it will not significantly affect production so is each individual’s labour value decreased? It’s hard to define the value of labour because it’s value is different from each point of view.

One problem I have is that in chapter V of Wealth of Nations, Smith says that labour is the only accurate measure of value because it will never change. I feel like this contradicts my whole essay, so I’m not sure if I should just ignore it and not bring it up, or if I need to address it. And if I need to, I’m  not sure how I would go about doing that.

Men were seen as more valuable than women in that day and age simply because they would work more physically demanding jobs which in turn had higher monetary rewards, and provided food and shelter for his family.  In many cultures, especially western and mid eastern, men were also seen as favored by God, divinely placed in a position of leadership over their family, mirroring the divine authority given to kings.

Women were conversely seen as inferior since even though they were expected to keep house, bear and raise children, as well as work the less physically demanding jobs.  While their work was less obviously profitable, their labors as housekeeper were important in that they allowed the men in their household some time to rest from the field.

Both men and women had their individual essential roles in society, and while one could potentially function without the other, their complementary roles helped enhance the other’s effectiveness through dividing up the labor.

Swift’s poem The Lady’s Dressing Room is an ironic poem. The topic of the poem is just what the title says: he’s describing what happens in a lady’s dressing room. However, the first lines signal the ironic approach: five hours to get ready? This is hammered home by the suggestion of a goddess, as if the women were divine, an image Swift then contrasts with both agricultural byproducts (dung, hard work, smell) and a kind of industrial production. He’s saying how much work it is to make women beautiful, and how disgusting the work behind the scenes is.

Collier’s poem describes the double shifts of wage labor, home- and field-work, and work in others’ homes that make up the lives of the rural working women. Because of their toil in the fields, as domestics, and as care-givers, they have little time for rest, she explains, and even less to reflect or to dream. Collier also criticizes the exploitation of domestic labor and the dangers of seasonal work. These two texts show the hardship of developing labor value.

Mary Collier attacks Duck’s work by describing the range of a woman’s work. She refutes his complaints of the women resting, by saying this doesn’t take away from their work but instead makes it bearable. This supports my thesis because it looks at the relationship between men and women, and the expectation associated with each gender since the early days. Within her text, she also adds information about her paid job, such as how much she is paid and her feelings about if it good compensation for her toils. This is another important relationship to explore. This piece is a lot more implicit, so is there any ways it can be tied to my topic?

Adam Smith main idea is the progression of liking shiny things to trade to the division of labor. The interest in self-love which drives the economy is a good support for the foundation of personal value.  Another idea that Smith presents is genius or the development of a personal trade. The point I would like to pull out of this is how each individual strives to portray the necessity and superiority of their work. He provides a good example of the rural farmer, who has no one to trade with. This is an example of the need for community to accept value, and supply and demand. This idea may stray too far away from my original topic. Lastly, in chapter five, Smith is adamant about placing a price on labour. The price is directly related to the man who wants to save himself of the toils which supports my thesis of a general acceptance of a price. I am trying to say away from the conflict of pricing the outcome of work versus the notion of work.

From Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, chapter IV and V,  I want to utilize the many forms that money takes on through time to show how money can get complicated to the point that it becomes hard to use. It is rich with information on value and form and how money came to exist. Also there is a good example of how people used to procure their goods by selling their cattle or sheep that I would like to point into y paper to support my answer. I want to get through how difficult categorizing money is.

Defoe’s On Credit provides insight on how money can be substituted while Defoe’s On Trade provides an example of bartering. Credit is another form of money that we use today and how it can be used as a substitute for money will be important. Defoe’s On Trade is to provide support to how objects you trade is a sort of medium of exchange like money. Money is not limited to paper or coins and that is why money is hard to use.

My main point is that money is only a medium of exchange; it comes in many forms and changes with the times. This instability in form makes it a challenge for people to use.