Since work is the a collaborative effort of the whole of society, it is impossible to measure the individual value of labour
Services rendered to society cannot be valued in money. There can be no exact measure of value (of what has been wrongly termed exchange value), nor of use value, in terms of production. If two individuals work for the community five hours a day, year in year out, at different work which is equally agreeable to them, we may say that on the whole their labour is approximately equivalent. But we cannot divide their work, and say that the result of any particular day, hour or minute of work of the one is worth the result of one day, one hour or one minute of the other.
We may roughly say that someone who has deprived themelves of leisure during ten hours a day has given far more to society than the one who has only deprived themselves of leisure during five hours a day, or who has not deprived themselves at all. But we cannot take what they have done during two hours, and say that the yield of their two hours’ work is worth twice as much as the yield of another individual, who has worked only one hour, and remunerate the two in proportion. Thus It would be disregarding all that is complex in industry, in agriculture, in the whole life of present society; it would be ignoring to what extent all individual work is the result of the past and the present labour of society as a whole: Since every creation is the culmination of countless contributors, no single individual should be able to claim it as their own.
It is utterly impossible to draw a distinction between the work of each individual. To measure the work by its results leads us to an absurdity; to divide the total work, and to measure its fractions by the number of hours spent on the work also leads us to absurdity. One thing remains: to put the needs above the works, and first of all to recognize the right to live, and later on the right to well-being for all those who took their share in production.
References
- Kroptokin, Peter. (1892). The Conquest of Bread Chapter 13. The Collectivist Wages System (p. 228).