KARL MARX’S CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY AND

MEASUREMENT OF GENDER INEQUALITY

Pradip Baksi

Abstract

Karl Marx‟s critique of political economy is a sublation or Aufhebung of classical

political economy, for opening up the frontiers of its future as a science, aimed at

self-emancipation of the wage-labourer. He divided his corresponding task into 6

topics: capital, landed property, wage-labour; the state, foreign trade and, world

market. His output continues to be published within the Marx-Engels-

Gesamtausgabe[MEGA] I-IV. Some of these materials are in the publication

mode; the rest are either in the research mode or, are contained in his

correspondences. Everything therein is open ended. One of the open issues here is

that of wage-labour. Wage-labour and wageless-labour together constitute the

universe of discourse of labour in the world as a whole. Both kinds of labour can

be taken care of by time use studies. This paper proposes a research programme for

extending the wage-labour related component of Marx‟s critique of classical

political economy, by utilizing the data generated on wageless-labour in gender

inequality revealing time use studies.

Keywords: Critique of political economy; wage-labour; wageless-labour; time use

studies; Measurement of Gender Inequality.

Introduction

Karl Marx began his Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political

Economy (1859) with the following statement:

“I examine the system of bourgeois economy in the following order: capital,

landed property, wage-labour; the state, foreign trade, world market.

The economic conditions of existence of the three great classes into which

modern bourgeois society is divided are analysed under the first three headings;

the interconnection of the other three headings is self-evident. The first part of

the first book, dealing with Capital, comprises the following chapters: 1. The

Commodity, 2. Money or simple circulation, 3. Capital in general. The present

part consists of the first two chapters. The entire material lies before me in the

form of monographs, which were written not for publication but for self-

clarification at widely separated periods; their remoulding into an integrated

whole according to the plan I have indicated will depend upon circumstances”

[Marx/Engels, Collected Works(MECW), 29: 261].

Some 40 years ago, while writing in another context, Maximilien Rubel had

reminded us of this master plan of investigations [Rubel, 1973]. Today, more than

150 years after the above indicated sentences were written by Marx, we have his

first book on Capital, indicated above, in the shape of 15 volumes [23 books] of

the MEGA, Section II.

This section of the MEGA contains 6 different editions of the Capital, Volume I

[MEGA II. 5-10], published during the years 1867-90; containing 1092, 1741,

1441, 1519, 1183 and 1286 pages, respectively; 4 of these editions are in German,

1 in French and 1 in English. In the English edition of 1887, MECW 35, Part VI,

Chapters XIX-XXII, pages 535-64 are titled: Wages. At the very beginning of

Chapter XX of the Capital, Volume I subtitled: Time Wages, Marx again stressed

that an exposition of all the forms of wages “…belongs to the special study of

wage-labour, not therefore to this work” [see Note 1]. It has not been possible for

me to personally check the variations, if any, in the texts of the Part/Section on

Wages in the other 5 editions of the Capital, Volume I, owing to lack of access.

However, I have been informed by Shree Paresh Chattopadhyay, who has the

necessary access: that in the first German edition of 1867, Section 4 of Chapter 5

has the title: „Value, respectively price of labour power in the transformed form of

wage.‟ This section has been divided into the sub-sections: (a) Change of Form

and, (b) The Two Basic Forms of Wage: Time Wage and Piece Wage. In the

Second German edition of 1872 there is an entire Part: Part 6, on Wage. There the

corresponding four chapters follow exactly as one reads them in the later editions:

the third German edition of 1883, the French edition of 1875 and, the fourth

German edition of 1890; according to Maximilien Rubel there are a few minor

changes in the French version of 1875 [see note 2].

Hints about some other parts of Marx‟s other five planned books remain scattered

in the various, already published or yet to be published volumes of MEGA I-IV. It

has been observed that Marx‟s corresponding lifelong investigations for self-

clarification involved the study of about 12 sciences and technologies and, the

current affairs of about 15 countries [Rojahn, 1998; Einführung, MEGA IV/32,

1999].The materials that he collected for self-clarification, for his second book on

Landed Property, have been partly published as his notes and excerpts on

ethnology (1974) and, on comparative history of landed property (1977). These

already published materials and the rest of it are slated to be included in some of

the volumes of MEGA IV.

In the present paper I propose that we extend Marx‟s critique of political economy

in the domain of wage-labour. It is the topic which he wished to cover under his

third book. Marx had stated that the desired remoulding of the materials he

collected and wrote for his self-clarification will depend upon the circumstances at

hand. In the circumstances of the first quarter of the 21st Century, the principal

form among the still surviving, historical „siblings‟ of wage-labour happens to be

the wageless-labour of women and children in patriarchal families. In many areas

of our planet some forms of precapitalist relations of production still exist. That

issue is mainly related to the forms of land relations and landed property, which

Marx had planned to tackle in his second book. However, even in those societies

where the transition to capitalism has been completed in the main, there too the

wage-labour in the marketplace and, the domestic wageless-labour in the

patriarchal households complement each other and, together they constitute the

universe of discourse of labour in the world as a whole. It may be added here that:

(1) wherever an entirely or partially bonded patriarchal family works on contract or

on piece rate , within the capitalist system of production – for instance, during the

sowing and harvesting seasons in agriculture, in the salt mines, brick fields, stone

quarries, artisanal fisheries etc. or, (2) when wage-labour is performed under

conditions of total or partial bondage of the individual worker, as it happens, for

instance, in the sexual services sector in many countries; or, (3) when an entire

emerging capitalist economy and civil society operates under the overarching

constraints imposed by an entrenched caste system, as in the case of the South

Asian countries like India or, (4) under the diktats of an imperial partocratic

bureaucracy, as in the case of countries like the erstwhile USSR or, (5) when

capitalist production is conducted within the penal colonies, prison systems and,

sweatshops of the special economic zones, where the individual worker is

practically a bonded labourer, then it becomes difficult to disentangle wage-labour

and wageless-labour at a given time.

In the face of all these complexities a path has been opened up for a common time-

measure of both wage-labour and wageless-labour by the time use surveys

conducted during the last 100 years [see Appendix I.]. This path may be further

extended today in the domain of critique of political economy, by using the data

sets of time-budgets or time use studies, available at the Centre for Time Use

Research – Information Gateway, the International Association for Time use

Research and, their publications like the Electronic International Journal for Time

Use Research, eIJTUR.

Section I

Marx‟s critique of political economy is aimed at the final self-emancipation of

wage-labourers from the system of wage-labour. That is the goal of communism

or, of the future human society, based on a sublation of state and civil society.

However, the arrival of such a condition must be preceded by a precondition,

where no one remains bound to any form of wageless-labour. Right now

patriarchal family is the largest and strongest citadel of wageless-labour. Marx

wrote in his excerpts from L.H. Morgan‟s Ancient Society (1877): “The modern

family contains in embryo not only slavery, but also serfdom … It contains within

itself in miniature all the antagonisms which later developed on a wide scale within

society and its state” [Marx, 1974: 120]. Humankind cannot pass out of the schools

of state and civil society and, graduate into human society or communism, with

this familial baggage of slavery and serfdom. In fact, a modern civil society and its

state are incompatible with all forms of wageless-labour.

In the modern era, these requirements were first understood from a legal-

constitutional standpoint by some of the leading thinkers of the first French

Revolution (Condorcet, 1790; Gouges, 1791). Subsequently, Fourier (1808) and,

Marx and Engels (1848) articulated the social-economic contents of these

requirements.

The formation of a civil society and the corresponding system of some kind of

rule-governed wage-labour all over the world, for all people, has to precede the

sublation of capitalism, its civil society and, state. This task has not been

accomplished till date.

It is known for at least the last 2000 years that human labour produces wealth in

human society [Manusmriti, 9.44; quoted in: Kovalevsky, 1879: 93; quoted in:

Marx 1977: 49].

Let us take a look at how that wealth-producing labour is itself produced.

Everywhere in the world the unpaid familial goods and services enter into the

commodity chain only as end products: as the wage-labour-time of the child

worker and adult worker, as nutrition for the worker, as the health and vigour of

the rested, cared for and, sexually serviced worker etc. etc. However, even when

the sum total of the unpaid familial goods and services [= labour-power of the

worker] enters into the labour market, nobody pays for the past unpaid familial

goods and services, for the unpaid dead labour of the mothers/wives/other familial

care givers embedded in the body and consciousness of the worker, whose labour-

time is available for hiring out in the market. In other words, the child bearing,

child rearing and, adult caring/servicing related familial unpaid labour still remains

outside the zone of exchange value everywhere, even in the more industrially

developed capitalist economies of the world.

How big is the share of this unpaid domestic labour on the world scale? In spite of

various kinds of efforts aimed at measuring and understanding it (for example:

Strumilin, 1923-25; Szalai, 1966, 1972 and 1975; Goldschmidt-Clermont, 1982

and 1987; Krishnaraj and Deshmukh, 1993; Ironmonger, 1994 and 2004; Razavi,

2007; Budlender, 2007 and 2008; Vogel, 1994 and 2008; Dong and An, 2012) we

have only very rudimentary and fragmentary direct data.

What is further disturbing is the fact that so far the experts and students of Marx‟s

Critique of Political Economy have generally ignored the study of data sets

generated by gender inequality revealing time use studies. Many among them are

themselves Marx-innocent and, remain under the spell of various shades of Marxist

confusions of the last century. In the absence of their interest in this area, the field

is largely Marx-innocent and, remains beholden to some social-democratic,

welfarist, pseudo-liberal or, neo-classical ideologues. Often a part of paid and

unpaid domestic (for instance, child care related) services are lumped together in

the interest of window-dressing of the final national income related statistics.

Investigators, who make promising starts, often cave in after sometime, under the

career pressures generated by the dominant academic ideologies of the peer groups

and, waste their lives in trivial exercises that are only marginally useful for the

critique of political economy. However, even within the circumstances of such

prevailing disorientation, there appear silver linings beyond the clouds. Reports

and results are produced that are comparable to the Blue Books used by Marx in

his critique of the classical political economy of his time. Let us consider one

example.

A study of the Australian child care time for the year 1997 shows that when the

time spent in secondary activities is included, then childcare becomes the largest

industry in both the household and market economies. It absorbs more labour time

than any other paid or unpaid economic activity. The total amount of time

Australians spent in child care in 1997 was equivalent to about two-thirds (63%) of

the entire labour time absorbed in that year by the Australian economy

(Ironmonger, 2004: 105-06). It is very likely that when the child care and other

domestic activities related labour time of the vast majority of less affluent, less

industrialized and, less commoditized economies will be computed, then the

measure of unpaid labour in the world economy as a whole, will go up

considerably.

We may also consider an example. Consider a Heterosexual Patriarchal Household

(H) consisting of only two persons: though both of them have the same skills and

capabilities, only one of them (generally the male member) is gainfully employed

in the labour market (let us call him M) and, the other one (generally the female

member) is totally engaged in unpaid domestic activities (let us call her F). Such

patriarchal families do exist among the labouring people in many countries. Let us

assume that M earns only one unit of a given currency per day. M gets the

opportunity to earn this wage because F does all the unpaid or wageless domestic

work. In any formally fair exchange F should get at least that one unit of that given

currency from the government and/or from M. However, that does not happen. For

a part or whole of the wage of any given day, M gets the best food, care, sexual

services etc. etc. from F. In exchange F loses the chance of earning at least one

unit of a given currency as wage in the labour market. Thus the total wages for the

unpaid or wageless domestic services of F becomes one unit of a given currency

as lost wage, plus the market price of the wageless catering, laundry, caring, sexual

etc. services provided to M, in that given market; that will certainly add up to more

than the daily wage of M. In this example we did not include any children.

However, even in the case of single-child patriarchal families the measurement of

unpaid or wageless domestic labour has to include: the market price of womb

rental, child bearing and child rearing, plus the wages of unpaid domestic services

performed by the child as s/he grows old enough to do some work.

Section II

In the previous section I have tried to draw the attention of our reader to the task of

measuring wageless-labour in the context of critique of political economy as a

science. I propose now, that this task may be tackled through the following

STAGES.

II.1 Short Run [Time Frame: 1-2 years, ending in December 2015]: A survey of the

already published evaluations of gender sensitive time use studies [in part indicated

in the Bibliography of Appendix I], by a team/teams of concerned investigators.

Such team/teams should ideally include: textual scholars of MEGA II, statisticians

expert in Time Use Studies and, social scientists interested in investigating

wageless-labour.

II.2 Medium Run [Time Frame: 5 Years, ending in December 2020] : In light of

the results obtained in stage II.1, larger teams may be formed to investigate the

already existing and emerging country level Time Use studies, archived as

Electronic Texts and Data Files by the major research initiatives in the field [listed

at the end of Appendix I ].

II.3 Long Run [Time Frame: about 10-15+ years or, attainment of the UN

Millennium Development Goals, whichever is earlier]: Time Use Data for all the

regions of all the countries of the world does not exist as of now. Generation of

such data presupposes universal Literacy, Matheracy and Technoracy

[D‟Ambrosio, 1998; Appendix II], up to a level when everyone in the world will

become literate and motivated enough to keep and submit a Personal Time Diary

for at least 1 week [=7 days and nights]. Once obtained, these global data may then

be analysed to draw appropriate conclusions. This is a long term task for all the

people, organisations and, governments of the world. It is possible for this

campaign for Universal Literacy, Matheracy and Technoracy to be initiated by the

BRICS group of countries. Here are my reasons.

For decades now, Brazil is a major centre of the movements for mass literacy as

conceptualized by Paulo Freire, for the Ethnomathematics movement

[D‟Ambrosio, 2006; Knijnik, 2006] and, for the concept of a new Trivium of

Literacy, Matheracy and Technoracy conceptualized by Ubiratan D‟Ambrosio

(1998). Russia is one of the pioneering countries in Time Use Studies since the

time of Stanislav Gustavovich Strumilin‟s time-budget studies of the 1920s; a vast

amount of data has been intermittently, and still continues to be, generated there.

India is a very strong, perhaps the strongest, citadel of patriarchy in the whole

world; it is a veritable laboratory for conducting intensive and extensive studies on

wageless-labour in patriarchal households. As of now, China has the strongest

institutional infrastructure for conducting further studies on the critique of political

economy along the paths opened up by Karl Marx. South Africa is the home of one

of world‟s currently leading specialist - Deborah Jean (known by her nickname of

Debbie) Budlender - in the application of the data generated by Time Use Studies,

on gender inequality related issues.

The currently emerging Infrastructure and Sustainable Development oriented

BRICS Bank may be sounded out, through the BRICS Think Tank Council, with

the aim of seeking support for creating the Literacy, Matheracy and Technoracy

related sustainable human resources base necessary for Stage II.3 of this research

programme.

Strumilin, a pioneer of time-budget studies in Russia, motivated the planning

commission of his country in 1919, to pay more attention to education of the

human resources component, in the interest of infrastructure development

[Prabhakar, 1995, online text: 6]. Development with justice and equality demands

that we take comparable steps for global social evolution and development now.

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Notes

1. See: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch20.htm, para1.

2. Personal mail from Shree Paresh Chattopadhyay dated 18 April 2013.

Appendix

I. A SHORT NOTE ON TIME USE STUDIES

[This note is mainly based on “eIJTUR and Time Use: Past, Present and

Future” and, “Editors‟ Introduction”, eIJTUR, volume 1, 2004: i-vii.]

Time is the measure of various forms of change, motion and activities. Time

Use Studies/Researches have been used throughout the 20th

Century, for

measuring the activities of human individuals in various parts of the world, with

the aim of understanding the social life of people, on the basis of the patterns of

their time use. Time Use Studies produce an empirical data-base, leading to

some theoretical perspectives that help analyze hitherto uninvestigated or less-

investigated social and economic phenomena and, help generate corresponding

policies.

Time Use or Time-Budget Studies arose out of the nineteenth-century practical

and theoretical interests in the working hours, leisure time and, life styles in

Western Europe; see: Engels (1845) in the Bibliography below. From 1913 till

about the second half of the 20th

Century Time Use Studies were mainly

focused on the distribution of time across daily activities and, that of the leisure

time of certain specific social groups, like the industrial workers, farmers and

service sector workers. It may be mentioned in passing, that the first Time

Signal sent around the World was broadcast from the Eiffel Tower of Paris, in

July 1913; that the first time use study came out in the USA also in 1913; and,

that Count Helmuth von Moltke of Germany used Standard Time to put into

effect his war plan in 1914. Thus the emergence of World Standard Time and,

that of Time Use Studies appear to be simultaneous. The first exhaustive large-

scale study of 24-hour time budgets of the workers of Moscow was carried out

by S.G. Strumilin in 1924.

By the middle of the twentieth-century Time Use Studies were taken up in the

more industrialized countries like the U.K., U.S.A., U.S.S.R., France and Japan.

In the 1950s-1960s Time Use Research became more frequent and widespread,

often involving large governmental and non-governmental statistics gathering

organizations. The most important event of the 1960s was the Multinational

Time Use Study conducted in 12 countries [namely, Belgium, Bulgaria,

Czechoslovakia, Federal Republic of Germany, France, German Democratic

Republic, Hungary, Peru, Poland, U.S.A., U.S.S.R. and Yugoslavia] , under the

direction Alexander Szalai (1972) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and

United Nations Institute for Training and Research. A few more countries

undertook such studies in the 1960s-1980s. The new entrants in this period

included: Canada, South Korea and Ivory Coast. During the 1990s the reach of

Time Use Research was extended to Italy, Sweden, Norway, Israel, Austria,

Australia, Dominican Republic, New Zealand, South Africa and India. China‟s

first large-scale Time Use Survey was conducted in 2012.

In India, at first some small-scale Time Use Studies were taken up by individual

scholars and kindred research groups in the period 1970-1996. Then, from July

1998 to June 1999 a pilot survey was conducted by a Technical Committee set

up by the Department of Statistics of the Government of India, in the six states

of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Meghalaya, Tamilnadu, Haryana and Orissa.

Time Use Studies are poised for a tremendous upsurge all over the World. This

coincides with the real time connectivity of global finance, stock exchanges

and, business process related services in the present century.

Our daily, weekly, monthly and yearly time use cycles increase or decrease our

capacities, and hence determine our life-chances, help shape our social and

economic position. What we do with our time determines who we become. A

desired balance of work time and leisure time is a basic desideratum both for

individual and for social well-being.

Time use indicators help map the supply and demand of labor and leisure; have

implications for national accounting practices and, for understanding the

structure, function, and dynamics of social advantages and disadvantages of the

different generations, genders, tribes, castes and classes of our societies. Time

measurements provide a basis for integrating the multifaceted phenomena of

paid and unpaid production and consumption in complex and multiform

societies, into a general framework, that may help understand the processes of

change affecting our cultural and socio-economic ground realities.

Historically, the increasingly more and more fine-tuned measurement of the

time parameters of natural phenomena (like, durations, frequencies, cycles,

rates of change, simultaneity, sequences etc.) has been of great importance for

the development of the natural sciences. The emergence and development of

Time Use Studies have created conditions for similar development of the social

sciences. Under present day conditions of accelerated socio-economic

transformation, time is of prime concern for technology, organization and

management of work, economics, sociology/anthropology, health, schooling,

education, media and, for the analysis and development of public policy in

general.

A BIBLIOGRAPHY

Artemov, Viktor et al (1999), The past was rich, the present is difficult, will

there be a future: from vanguard to rearguard? A retrospective of time budget

surveys carried out in Russia in the 20th-century. Paper presented at the 1999

conference of the IATUR, Colchester, U.K.

Bailey, I. (1915), “A study of management of farm homes”, Journal of family

and economic issues 17(3/4): 409-418.

Bevans, G.E. (1913), How workingmen spend their time. New York: Columbia

University Press.

Bryant, Keith W. et al. (1992), The Dollar Value of Household Work. Cornell

University.

Budlender, Debbie (2007), A Critical Review of Selected Time Use Surveys.

Geneva: UNRISD. Available at:

http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/httpNetITFramePDF?ReadForm&

parentunid=169A34EDDF90D43DC12573240034E24E&parentdoctype=paper

&netitpath=80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpAuxPages)/169A34EDDF90D43DC125

73240034E24E/$file/Budlender-paper.pdf

__ (2008), The Statistical Evidence on Care and Non-Care Work across Six

Countries. Geneva: UNRISD. Available at;

http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/httpNetITFramePDF?ReadForm&

parentunid=F9FEC4EA774573E7C1257560003A96B2&parentdoctype=paper

&netitpath=80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpAuxPages)/F9FEC4EA774573E7C1257

560003A96B2/$file/BudlenderREV.pdf

Converse, Philip E. (1968), “Time Budgets”, in: the International Encyclopedia

of the Social Sciences [Ed. David L. Sills], Volume 16: 42-47. London and New

York: Collier-Macmillan etc.

Dong, Xiao-Yuan and Xinli An (2012), Gender Patterns and Value of Unpaid

Work: Findings from China’s First Large-Scale Time Use Survey. Geneva:

UNRISD. Available at:

http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/httpNetITFramePDF?ReadForm&

parentunid=7CE1453DB093FB41C1257A8E004D6A57&parentdoctype=paper

&netitpath=80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpAuxPages)/7CE1453DB093FB41C1257

A8E004D6A57/$file/Dong%20and%20An.pdf

Engels, Friedrich (1845), The Conditions of the Working Class in England. In:

Marx /Engels, Collected Works, Volume 4: 295-596 [see therein, the references

to the WORKING DAY on pages 435-36,461-66, 481-82, 491-92, 499-500 and,

592-93]. Available at:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/cw/volume04/index.htm

Folbre, Nancy and Michael Bittman (eds.) (2004), Family time: the social

organization of care. New York/London: Routledge.

Guidebook on Integrating Unpaid Work into National Policies (2003). New

York: United Nations. Available at:

http://www.unescap.org/stat/meet/wipuw/unpaid_guide.asp

Hamermesh, Daniel S. and Gerard F. Pfann (2004), How People use their time:

economic approaches. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

INSTRAW (1995), Measurement and Valuation of Unpaid Contribution. Santo

Domingo: INSTRAW.

Juster, Thomas F. and Frank P. Stafford (1985), Time goods and well-

being. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Survey Research Center, Institute

for Social Research.

Merz, Joachim and Manfred Ehling (1999), Time use: research, data, policy.

Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag.

Petrosyan, Grachya Sarkisovich (1965), Внерабочее время трудящихся в

СССР [Out-of-Work Time of the Working People in the USSR]. Moscow:

Ekonomika.

Proceedings of the International Seminar on Time Use Studies (1999).

Ahmedabad, 7-10 December. New Delhi: Central Statistical Organization.

Proceedings of the National Seminar on Applications of Time Use Statistics

(2002). New Delhi, 8-9 October. New Delhi: Central Statistical Organization.

Prudensky, German Aleksandrovich (1964), Время и труд [Time and Work].

Moscow: Mysl.

Razavi, Shahra (2007), The Political and Social Economy of Care in a

Development Context: Conceptual Issues, Research Questions and Policy

Options. Geneva: UNRISD. Available at:

http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/httpNetITFramePDF?ReadForm&

parentunid=2DBE6A93350A7783C12573240036D5A0&parentdoctype=paper

&netitpath=80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpAuxPages)/2DBE6A93350A7783C125

73240036D5A0/$file/Razavi-paper.pdf

Robinson, John P. (1977), How Americans use Time. New York: Praeger.

Sorokin, Pitirim Aleksandrovich and Clarence Qinn Berger (1939), Time

Budgets of Human Behavior. Cambridge : Harvard University Press.

Strumilin, Stanislav Gustavovich (1964), “К изучению быта трудящихся в

СССР,” [On the Study of Lifestyles of the Working People in the USSR]

Изранные Произведения [Collected Works], T.3, Gl. VII: 165–249. Moscow:

Nauka. [The first large-scale study of exhaustive 24-hour time budgets of the

workers of Moscow was carried out by S.G.Strumilin in 1924.]

Szalai, Alexander (1966), Trends in Contemporary Time Budget Research.

Paris: UNESCO. Available at:

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001560/156021eb.pdf

__ [edited in collaboration with others] (1972), The Use of Time: Daily

activities of urban and suburban populations in twelve countries. The Hague:

Mouton.

__ (1975), “Women‟s Time: Women in the light of contemporary time-budget

research,” Futures, October: 385-99. Available at:

http://www.timeuse.org/files/cckpub/SzalaiA.Womens_Time.pdf

Zuzanek, Jiri (1980), Work and Leisure in the Soviet Union: A Time-Budget

Analysis. New York: Praeger.

ELECTRONIC TEXTS AND DATA FILES

May be accessed from the major time use research initiatives and journals like the:

Centre for Time Use Research – Information Gateway

http://www-2009.timeuse.org/information/studies/

International Association for Time Use Research

http://www.iatur.org/

Electronic International Journal for Time Use Research [eIJTUR]

http://www.eijtur.org/

United Nations Statistics Division

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/default.htm

EUROSTAT Time Use Project

https://www.h2.scb.se/tus/tus/

UNDP Gender Inequality and Development Related Indexes

http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/gii/

http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/indices/gdi_gem/

U S Bureau of Labor Statistics: American Time Use Survey

http://www.bls.gov/tus/

Das Forschungsinstitut Freie Berufe (FFB) [The Research Institute on

Professions], University of Lüneburg, Germany

http://www.leuphana.de/institute/ffb.html

Институт экономики и организации промышленного производства

Сибирского отдепения Российской академии наук (ИЭОПП СО РАН)

[Institute of Economics and Industrial Engineering, Siberian Branch of the Russian

Academy of Sciences]

http://www.sbras.ru/sbras/db/show_doc.phtml?3+eng+22

Central Statistical Organization, Ministry of Statistics and Programme

Implementation, Government of India

http://statsinfoindia.weebly.com/index.html

II. Literacy, Matheracy and Technoracy for Justice and Equality

1. A desired reconstruction of the critique of political economy as a science of

the 24 hour totality of human work in the family-market continuum needs

time use data on a world scale. The collection of such data may become

possible in the course of attainment of universal or near-universal literacy,

matheracy and technoracy. Women and children constitute more than half of

the population of the world. They perform most of the unpaid work till date.

If all the people of the world do not get the skills and motivations for

recording and providing their own time use data, then the measurement of

gender-based and inter-generational inequalities will remain beyond the

grasp of the sciences. Search for justice and equality are very strong

motivations for learning. These motivations may be harnessed for attaining

universal literacy, matheracy and technoracy.

2. Many new technical devices and approaches, such as the evolving I-Slates

[Palem and others, 2009], Virtual Open Schooling [The Report…, 2013]

may be used to promote the required literacy, matheracy and technoracy on a

world scale.

3. The collected time use data are so far being analyzed with the help of

predictive analytics related soft wares, like the SPSS and/or STATISTICA,

which use some currently dominant understanding of statistics and

probability theory.

4. People of the whole world need to use these products of the presently

globally dominant and sacralized Mediterranean Basin Ethnomathematical

Culture, just as the prairie Amerindians needed to use the guns [D‟Ambrosio

and Rosa 2008: 103-04]. However, desacralization and demystification of

these concrete ethnomathematical disciplines, theories and products may

facilitate faster attainment of universal literacy, matheracy and technoracy.

5. To desacralize and demystify these ethnomathematical disciplines and

products, let us invert the entire presently dominant Mediterranean Basin

approach to elementary mathematics-statistics instruction. The dominant

practice of this instruction first introduces determinate constant numbers

0…9; then determinate unknown quantities; then indeterminate quantities x,

y etc., which assume successive values, for instance, 0…9; then algebraic

functions involving such quantities; then in the Cartesian application of

algebra to geometry the unknown quantities x, y etc., turn into variables and

the known quantities into constants [Marx 1994: 172-177: On the Concept

of Function], and, then, at some later level, a random variable is introduced

as a variable resulting from variations due to chance. Let us reverse this

entire course of instruction: let us at first introduce some concept of

interdependent random variables as primary, with the help of many

examples from the realms of nature, society and thought; then redefine

ordinary variables as special cases of abstractions from these interdependent

random variables; and, finally redefine constants as special cases of

abstractions from these ordinary variables. This approach may make

instruction of statistics-mathematics more compatible with our

understanding of nature, society and thought as complex and non-linear

living systems. It will be more truthful, more convincing and hence, more

easily comprehensible. If, some people feel such a need, then the details of

the proposed approach or, of other alternative desacralizing approaches to

statistics-mathematics instruction may be worked out by them.

References

D‟Ambrosio, U. and Rosa, M. (2008). A dialogue with Ubiratan D‟Ambrosio: A

Brazilian conversation about ethnomathematics. Revista Latinoamericana de

Etnomatematica, 1(2): 88-110. Available at:

http://www.etnomatematica.org/v1-n2-julio2008/DAmbrosio-Rosa.pdf

Marx, Karl. (1994). Mathematical Manuscripts [together with a Special

Supplement: Marx and Mathematics]. Calcutta/Kolkata: Viswakos Parisad.

Available at:

http://cfcul.fc.ul.pt/varios/Karl_Marx_FINAL.pdf

Palem, K. and others (2009).I-Slate, Ethnomathematics and Rural Education.

Available at:

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~lc6/visen/2009islate.pdf

The Report: Technical Workshop for Virtual Open Schooling, 2013. Available at:

http://www.nios.ac.in/media/documents/TWVOSFinal_Report.pdf

Kolkata

24 December 2013

pradipbaksi@gmail.com