this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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Unpaid labour is still labour, and there are unfortunately billions of people living, and dying, in poverty who do an endless stream of labour for other people and their community, from caring for children, elderly, and disabled people, to cooking and cleaning, and providing a whole range of other physical, mental, and emotional support.
Them not being compensated for it is the feature of capitalism, not the need for labour itself, which leads nicely to
Actually, no, it isn't. Humans are interdependent and need each other to function as a society (even on the most a-social level - you're unlikely to be producing your own food, power, water supply, buildings, building materials, and so on, you need others to live, and at different points in life others will almost certainly need you in different ways). That's exactly why a hyper individualistic society like capitalism encourages leads to the kind of dystopia we have now.
https://theconversation.com/humans-arent-inherently-selfish-were-actually-hardwired-to-work-together-144145
I think you're defining "compensation" a bit too narrowly. Just because people are doing work of some kind in their community and not getting monetary wages for it doesn't mean they aren't being compensated. All human interaction is in some sense a transaction, it might just be more amorphous and unquantifiable than x many dollars. Friendships are trades. If a friendship isn't worthwhile for people, they generally end the friendship, even though most people wouldn't dream of assigning a dollar amount of value to a friendship.
And I think you're missing the fact that we're talking about surviving under capitalism, and that you can't buy food and shelter with friendship 🙄
Of course you can. Lol. Stay-at-home moms and dads are doing this exact thing. Older parents who live with their kids are, too. They're probably doing something like labor in addition to just being in some kind of human relationship, but they are effectively getting paid for friendship. It would be hard to put an exact dollar amount to this, and most people including myself wouldn't really want to write an invoice for every hug they give or minute of conversation they're partner to, but since all human interaction is effectively a transaction that is informally what's happening.