Comments on Sept. 29 Class Surplus Value

Value
- Worth, nothing is worth anything until value is put into it.

For example: A rock has no value, unless it is turned into ore than the work/ labor/ effort that has been put into the production of the product creates value.

Surplus Value
- Difference between what a product costs to produce and what it sells for

For example: Profit, which could be explained in some terms as cost needed for machinery, the amount the owner takes home or how much the workers get "ripped off".

These are a couple of terms that have come up in the course in the past week. They are important to our "society" because we are a capitalist country that puts a lot of importance on capital gain. Capitalism is the main ideology of the dominant class in Canada and therefore is seen as essential and important.

The dominant ideology is transmitted through institutions such as schools. Schools are a place of instilling loyalty, compliance, respect, work ethic, perhaps docility and tolerance for tedium? Why? To help students function in "society". Or in other words, to prepare kids going out into a workforce where there job is going to be tedious and they will be expected to comply to their employers desires. It is for the good of "society" and to maintain the needs of the means of production.

This view so far seems to be quite functionalist. It explains how capitalism "works" in our "society".

My question is, how early do children learn these values? I am beginning to think almost too soon. A couple of weeks ago I was at work, which is an after school program for primary schoolers, we had an incident with "value".

Were you aware that hazel nuts can have a value near to diamonds on the playground?

I noticed that a group of children were all gathered in a general area of the trees. When I went to investigate I found a child quite high in a tree retrieving nuts for the people on the ground. His plan was to get enough so that each child got one. Of course once he got back to the ground there was a surplus of nuts. That seemed all fine, until the children relocated and realized this. There was grabbing, raising of voices, complaints and stealing. All of a sudden when there was a surplus value, the demand rose above product availability. There were small groups supporting that everyone should get an equal share, then there were groups saying "we harvested the nuts we should get them", and finally, the oldest children of the group said "we are the oldest we deserve more than you little guys". The oldest children ended up stealing the majority and running off with them to hide them in what we will call the "bank". Once this area was discovered the oldest students relocated their lot to an area that was beyond anyone's reach, through a chain link fence which was out of bounds. They assumed that because they were of highest status that they could hoard the nuts and could also access them while no one else could.

By this time myself and the other staff had intervened and reinforced the boundaries of their play area and that no one was to touch the nuts any longer because they only caused chaos and "public unrest".

But isn't it interesting how the children have this concept of capitalism understood by the time they reach first grade? Even at this age there were minority groups which wanted what would be best for the group as a whole, yet the children with the highest status were the dominant group and were smallest in numbers.