👤💬👤 6. Social Reproduction: Interactive Exercises

Making pasta

You make pasta bolognese for yourself, family and friends. at home. It tastes great. They slurped it all up. You feel a great sense of satisfaction. 

Next day, you work at a cafe making pasta. Boss pays you $25/hour. Your boss takes that pasta, sells it for $90. After other expenses, your boss makes a tidy profit of $40 an hour from your labour. In this scenario:

1. That $40 profit your boss made is called ...
2. You don't feel as satisfied making that pasta for the boss as you did for yourself, your friends and family. Maybe it's because you don't have the same level of control over or connection to it. This is what Marx calls...
3.  Your boss's profit is based on the ... of your labour.
4. You, your boss, and the customers are part of the ...

All the concepts are interconnected, but which of the following matches best with 1-4?

• capitalist system
• exploitation
• alienation
• surplus value

Sorry if the above was difficult--the concepts are so inter-related that none are absolutely wrong, just one is better than the others, I think.

How working is making pasta at home for friends and family different?

So on the basis of the above we can say that:

1. While a capitalist economy produces a profit, a gift economy produces...
2. When you present a gift, you also give the recipient an obligation to...
3. Accordingly, to refuse a gift is to refuse a...
4. While it might be a physical present, a service like cooking pasta or providing care can also be a...

As with before, the concepts are interconnected, but which of the following matches best with 1-4?

• gift
• reciprocate
• relationship
• social relations