Labour power
Labour power (German: Arbeitskraft; French: force de travail) is the capacity to work, a key concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of capitalist political economy.
[1] Human labour power exists in any kind of society, but on what terms it is traded or combined with means of production to produce goods and services has historically varied greatly.
[3] Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and David Ricardo's On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation already referred to the "productive powers of labour".
[7][8] For Marx, Arbeitskraft, which he sometimes instead refers to as Arbeitsvermögen ("labour-ability" or "labour-capacity") refers to a "force of nature":[9][10] the physical ability of human beings and other living things to perform work, including mental labour and skills such as manual dexterity, in addition to sheer physical exertion.
[11] By contrast, "labour" may refer to all or any activity by humans (and other living creatures) that is concerned with producing goods or services (or what Marx calls use-values).
[12] The distinction between labour and labour-power, according to Marx, helped to solve a problem that David Ricardo had failed to solve, i.e. explaining why the surplus value resulting from profit normally arises out of the process of production itself—rather than in the investment of capital (e.g. the advance of money-capital in the form of wages) in labour-power (acquired from labourers).
[14] However, Marx himself would most likely have considered a concept such as "human capital" to be a reification, the purpose of which was to suggest that workers were really capitalist investors.
2, Marx writes sarcastically: Apologetic economists... say:... [the worker's] labour-power, then, represents his capital in commodity-form, which yields him a continuous revenue.
It is the only commodity which he can and must sell continually in order to live, and which acts as capital (variable) only in the hands of the buyer, the capitalist.
If successful (the only alternative being unemployment), this exchange involves submitting to the authority of the capitalist for a specific period of time.
Normally, the worker is legally the owner of his labour power, and can sell it freely according to his own wishes.
The value of labour power is thus a historical norm, which is the outcome of a combination of factors: productivity; the supply and demand for labour; the assertion of human needs; the costs of acquiring skills; state laws stipulating minimum or maximum wages, the balance of power between social classes, etc.
Marx regards money-wages and salaries as the price of labour power (though workers can also be paid "in kind"), normally related to hours worked or output produced.
That price may contingently be higher or lower than the value of labour power, depending on market forces of supply and demand, on skill monopolies, legal rules, the ability of negotiate, etc.
An employer usually also has to pay taxes & levies to the government in respect of workers hired, which may include social security contributions or superannuation benefits.
So, in the United States for example, out of the total expenditure on labour by employers, the workers get about 60% as take-home pay, but about 40% consists of taxes, benefits and ancillary costs.
The compensation of workers in capitalist society could take all kinds of different forms, but there was always both a paid and unpaid component of labour performed.
At the end of the working day, labour power has been more or less consumed, and must be restored through rest, eating and drinking, and recreation.
Medical estimates of the average holiday time necessary for fulltime workers to fully recuperate in a physiological and psychological sense from work stress during the year differ from country to country; but as an approximate gauge, three weeks continuous holiday is physiologically optimal for the average worker.
[20] Marxist-Feminists have argued that in reality, household (domestic) labour by housewives which forms, maintains and restores the capacity to work is a large "free gift" to the capitalist economy.
Time use surveys show that formally unpaid and voluntary labour is a very large part of the total hours worked in a society.
This demand conflicts with the legal framework of the government in capitalist society, which usually assumes a financial responsibility only for the upkeep of "citizens" and "families" lacking other sources of income or subsistence.
Economist Shirley P. Burggraf's parental dividend concept proposes the replacement of existing government payments to the elderly based on an individual's payroll tax contributions (e.g.
[21] The state can influence both the value and price of labour-power in numerous different ways,[22] and normally it regulates wages and working conditions in the labour market to a greater or lesser extent.
It can do so for example by: Marx was very aware of this and in Das Kapital provides many illustrations, often taken from the Blue Books and factory inspector's reports.
He intended to write a separate book on the subject of wages and the labour market (see Capital Vol.
Or a larger period of oscillations in the market-price is taken, e.g., a year, and they are found to cancel one the other, leaving a mean average quantity, a relatively constant magnitude.
This question unconsciously substituted itself in Political Economy for the original one; for the search after the cost of production of labour as such turned in a circle and never left the spot.
as final and as adequate expressions for the value-relation under consideration, and was thus led, as will be seen later, into inextricable confusion and contradiction, while it offered to the vulgar economists a secure basis of operations for their shallowness, which on principle worships appearances only.
Marx only assumed that labour power traded at its value, in order to show that even if that was the case, the worker was still economically exploited.
