liquid asset, even more illiquid than shares and land. He does not sell his skills, but contracts to utilize those skills, in the same way that an industrialist sells his produce, not his machinery. The exception here are slaves, whose human capital can be sold, though the slave does not earn an income himself. An employer must be receiving a profit from his operations, so that workers must be producing what Marx (under the labor theory of value) perceived as surplus-value, i.e., doing work beyond that necessary to maintain their labor power. Though having "human capital" gives workers some benefits, they are still dependent on the owners of non-human wealth for their livelihood. The term appears in Marx's article in the New-York Daily Tribune "The Emancipation Question," January 17 and 22, 1859, although there the term is used to describe humans who act like a capital to the producers, rather than in the modern sense of "knowledge capital" endowed to or acquired by humans. Neo-Marxist economists have argued that education leads to higher wages not by increasing human capital, but rather by making workers more compliant and reliable in a corporate environment. The reasoning of which being that higher education creates the illusion of a meritocracy, thus justifying economic inequality to the benefit of capitalists, regardless of whether the educated human capital actually provides additional labor value. Risk When human capital is assessed by activity based costing via time allocations it becomes possible to assess human capital risk. Human capital risks can be identified if HR processes in organizations are studied in detail. Human capital risk occurs when the organization operates below attainable operational excellence levels. For example, if a firm could reasonably reduce errors and rework (the Process component of human capital) from 10,000 hours per annum to 2,000 hours with attainable technology, the difference of 8,000 hours is human capital risk. When wage costs are applied to this difference (the 8,000 hours) it becomes possible to financially value human capital risk within an organizational perspective. Risk accumulates in four primary categories: Absence activities (activities related to employees not showing up for work such as sick leave, industrial action, etc.). Unavoidable absence is referred to as Statutory Absence. All other categories of absence are termed "Controllable Absence"; Collaborative activities are related to the expenditure of time between more than one employee within an organizational context. Examples include: meetings, phone