Clune and Keen, by contrast, cannot account for the source of surplus value, since they do not grasp that
only living beings generate a surplus of time through the activity of self-maintenance, which can be transformed into surplus value only through the social form of wage labor.
Such exploitation of living labor is not optional under capitalism. As long as the measure of value is socially necessary labor time, machines cannot produce any value by virtue of their own operations. No matter how efficient a machine becomes, we cannot extract any surplus value from its operation except by exploiting the lifetime of someone who is operating the machine.
By contrast, if we measured value in terms of socially available free time, then machines would produce value for us by virtue of their own operations, since they would give us more time to lead our lives and thus make us wealthier in an existential sense. Under capitalism, however, the ultimate purpose of technologies is the exploitation rather than the emancipation of human labor.
Under capitalism, we must find ways of employing people in wage labor, regardless of whether the work they do is needed and regardless of whether the work is meaningful for the ones who labor. Moreover, we must get people to consume ever more commodities, regardless of whether they need the goods they consume and regardless of whether consuming the goods is fulfilling for them.
The principle “from each according to her ability, to each according to her needs” is not the imposition of an anonymous collective will, but a condition of possibility for owning the question of what matters to us and how we should care for one another.
That our collective purpose is profit is not reducible to an explicit ideology, a conscious belief, or a psychological disposition. Profit is our collective purpose not because of what we have to think but because of what we have to do under capitalism. We cannot maintain ourselves — cannot reproduce our lives — without the surplus value of wage labor that is transformed into profit and accumulated in the form of capital.