In any human society, despite race, ethnicity or cultural background, people must use their labour to create use-values -or simply, produce via labour things that are of use to them. For example, there is no human society yet that does not have to labour in order to produce clothing, food, shelter, etc. Now, a use-value is one thing, but at that point in history -thousands of years ago- as soon as one isolated tribe happened to bump into another isolated tribe, the process of trade or exchange began (bear with me, this is relevant to this post); that is to say, that each tribe (locality is irrelevant, this applies everywhere) specialised in the building of particular use-values. As a result, the process of exchange developed and each tribe, in exchanging with the other began to develop needs for the use-values of other tribes and therefore had to build surpluses of their own use-values, beyond their own consumptive needs for that use-value, in order to obtain that which is produced by their neighbor tribe. Hence, as this expands we achieve the gradual evolution and intesification of human needs, the increasing complexity of human tools and labour, and the development of more complex monetary systems.

With the development of exchange in the earlier days of human interaction we also see the birth of the commodity. A commodity is any object that has both a use-value AND an exchange-value. But how is exchange-value determined? On a very unconscious, yet if given enough thought, necessary level the exchange value of commodities is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour-time required to produce that commodity. In other words, if one produces linen and a certain amount of linen required x hours of labour time to produce, the producer of linen who wishes to obtain, say corn, would trade that linen for enough corn to compensate for the labour time spent on producing the linen. The same is true for the producer of corn. Under capitalism, this system of value does not change, but there are certain tricks up the capitalist's sleeve in the masking of this relationship and the appearance that profits are determined by commodity circulation in the market.

Now, for those of you who have bothered to read up to this point, here is how all of this applies to this topic. Under a system of capitalist production, labour-power is a commodity. Keep in mind that labour-power and labour are two different things. Labour is the act of doing work, while labour-power is the capacity to do that work; labour-power is the capicity to do work and is also made up of a workers whole life of skills, education, training, and physical and mental abilities. When one sells their labour-power, their ability to do work, on the market, one is in fact selling their potential. One does not not sell their labour on the market, they only sell their labour-power -their ability to perform. Having said this, how does capitalism determine the value of labour-power as a commodity on the market?

Remember earlier that as a rule the value of any commodity is determined by the amount of average, socially necessary labour-TIME required for its production. The education system therefore is a process of socially necessary labour that, over time, produces labour-power. Therefore, under the capitalist system of production, your value on the labour market, or the value of your labour-power, is determined by the socially necessary amount of labour time required to produce YOU. The education system under capitalism is not designed in order for you to gain knowledge and become a wiser, more well-rounded person. It is designed to produce commodities, namely labour-power, to be sold to capitalist at a certain value for the production of capital -profits for the pockets of capitalists.

Further, in deciding the value of labour-power as a commodity, it gets more interesting. Under capitalism, the monetary value of buying labour-power is determined by the cost of the means of subsistence for maintaining that labour-power. In other words, the cost that is required for the worker to reproduce him or herself so that s/he can return to the labour market the next day and perform the same work is the monetary value of labour-power. The amount of training and education that goes into the production of labour-power very much determines what this level of minimum subsistence is. Different levels of education in individuals develop different psychological needs and this is why educated labour, on average, costs capitalists more money. The means of subsistence is also a level of needs that vary from nation to nation.

The point of this long post is to show why, despite our thirst for learning, so many of us feel so disenchanted by the education system under a capitalist mode of production. Despite all our illusions that we just want to learn, the system contradicts our conceptions of education and continues to reproduce us as commodities for capitalists to use in their production of profits/surplus-value. It is pointless for anyone to think that we can reform the education system in capitalist countries so that they offer us a more quality "learning experience" because that runs in contradiction to the purpose of the education system under this establishment. However, interestingly enough this is also one of the reasons why Marx believed that Capitalism creates its own "grave-diggers". As unemployment and underemployment rise, society is left with a reletively educated working class that will no longer need the capitalists to produce use-values. When the working peoples revolt, we will produce for ourselves and rid ourselves from exchange-value, thus destroying commodity relations. With the abolition of private property this will bring us back to a system of necessity where human beings are, again, producing use-values to meet the needs of the whole society.