Social vs. Individual Labour

Throughout the reading, I was overwhemed with all the new definition being thrown my way. When I saw that Marx was about to bring Robinson Crusoe into the picture, I was very excited. When Robinson is mentioned, Marx describes the labour Robinson did to survive alone on a deserted island. Marx writes, "He still has needs to satisfy, and must therefore perform useful labours of various kinds: he must make tools, knock together furniture, tame llamas, fish, hunt, and so on...personal dependence characterizes the social relations of material production as much as it does the other spheres of like based on that production...all Robinson's products were exclusively the result of his own personal labour and they were therefore directly objects of utility for him personally" (238). Crusoe's labour was personal, as he worked in order to survive. This personal labour is the direct opposite of the labour that the masses do to survive and achieve a surplus. Labour done by the masses is considered social labour because the masses produre commodities not necessities. This difference between commodity and necessity appears to the reader to be a subtle difference, but to Marx, these two different types of labour are very distinct.