Economic powerEconomic power refers to the ability of countries, businesses or individuals to improve living standards. It increases their ability to make decisions on their own that benefit them. Scholars of international relations also refer to the economic power of a country as a factor influencing its power in international relations. Economists use several concepts featuring the word power: Market power is the ability of a firm to profitably raise the market price of a good or service over marginal cost.
Class consciousnessIn Marxism, class consciousness is the set of beliefs that a person holds regarding their social class or economic rank in society, the structure of their class, and their class interests. According to Karl Marx, it is an awareness that is key to sparking a revolution that would "create a dictatorship of the proletariat, transforming it from a wage-earning, property-less mass into the ruling class".
Child labourChild labour refers to the exploitation of children through any form of work that deprives them of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, or is mentally, physically, socially and morally harmful. Such exploitation is prohibited by legislation worldwide, although these laws do not consider all work by children as child labour; exceptions include work by child artists, family duties, supervised training, and some forms of work undertaken by Amish children, as well as by indigenous children in the Americas.
Primitive accumulation of capitalIn Marxian economics and preceding theories, the problem of primitive accumulation (also called previous accumulation, prior accumulation, or original accumulation) of capital concerns the origin of capital and therefore how class distinctions between possessors and non-possessors came to be. Adam Smith's account of primitive-original accumulation depicted a peaceful process in which some workers laboured more diligently than others and gradually built up wealth, eventually leaving the less diligent workers to accept living wages for their labour.
Socially necessary labour timeSocially necessary labour time in Marx's critique of political economy is what regulates the exchange value of commodities in trade and consequently constrains producers in their attempt to economise on labour. It does not 'guide' them, as it can only be determined after the event and is thus inaccessible to forward planning. Unlike individual labour hours in the classical labour theory of value formulated by Adam Smith and David Ricardo, Marx's exchange value is conceived as a proportion (or 'aliquot part') of society's labour-time.
To each according to his contribution"To each according to his contribution" is a principle of distribution considered to be one of the defining features of socialism. It refers to an arrangement whereby individual compensation is representative of one's contribution to the social product (total output of the economy) in terms of effort, labor and productivity. This is in contrast to the method of distribution and compensation in capitalism, an economic and political system in which property owners can receive income by virtue of ownership irrespective of their contribution to the social product.
