Labor Power - Labour-power Versus Labour

Labour-power Versus Labour

According to Marx, there is a clear distinction between labour and labour-power. "Labour" refers to the actual activity or effort of producing goods or services (or what Marx calls use-values). Neoclassical economists sometimes refer to this as "labour services." On the other hand, "labour-power" (or "labouring power") refers to a person's ability to work, his or her muscle-power, dexterity and brain-power. Marx took over this distinction from Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right and gave it a new significance.

In some ways, this concept is similar to that of "human capital". However most likely Marx himself would have considered the concept of human capital a reification, the purpose of which was to convince the worker that he was really a capitalist. The evidence for this interpretation is the following quote from Capital Vol. 2:

"Apologetic economists... say:... labour-power, then, represents his capital in commodity-form, which yields him a continuous revenue. Labour-power is indeed his property (ever self-renewing, reproductive), not his capital. 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. The fact that a man is continually compelled to sell his labour-power, i.e., himself, to another man proves, according to those economists, that he is a capitalist, because he constantly has “commodities” (himself) for sale. In that sense a slave is also a capitalist, although he is sold by another once and for all as a commodity; for it is in the nature of this commodity, a labouring slave, that its buyer does not only make it work anew every day, but also provides it with the means of subsistence that enable it to work ever anew." - Marx, Capital Vol. 2, Chapter 20 section 10

The distinction Marx introduces between labour and labour-power was intended to solve a problem which David Ricardo failed to solve - the problem of explaining how surplus value could arise out of the exchange between capital and labour.