Necessary Labour, labour expended by the workers in material production on creating the necessary product for the satisfaction of personal needs and reproduction of labour power. Under the primitive communal system, with its low labour productivity, virtually all labour was necessary labour and provided only scanty means of subsistence for the workers. In slave-owning, feudal and capitalist societies, the necessary labour constituted only part of the working day, as a result of the growing labour productivity, while the rest of it was surplus labour, the results of which were appropriated without compensation by the owners of the means of production. The latter tried to reduce the necessary labour, lower the living standards of the workers and increase surplus labour, the result being increased exploitation of the working people. Under modern capitalism, the duration of necessary labour is considerably less than that of surplus labour. In a slave-owning system, the division of labour and of its results into necessary and surplus was camouflaged by the production relations of slave-owning exploitation. Since the slave-owner got all the product, the impression was that all the slave’s labour was surplus. Under feudalism, the necessary labour of the serf on his plot of land was clearly distinguished from surplus labour on the feudal estate, both temporally and territorially. The division of labour into necessary and surplus under capitalism is disguised by the wage form, which superficially acts as payment for all the labour of the wage worker. In fact, the wage corresponds only to that part of the value of the output newly created by the worker which is 245 produced by necessary labour: its volume varies around the value of labour power. In socialist society, there are no antagonistic contradictions between necessary and surplus labour. The division of labour into necessary and surplus reflects the specifics of the distribution of the aggregate product in the interests of all members of society. This division means that, during part of the working day, necessary labour creates output satisfying the comprehensive development needs of the worker in material production, and during the other part, surplus labour creates output for satisfying society’s requirements for extended reproduction, maintaining workers in the nonmaterial sphere of production and for satisfying other social requirements. This, in the final analysis, is also necessitated by the need for the comprehensive development of every member of society.