Labor power

Labor-power is the capacity for labor which the laborer, to secure his means of subsistence, must be able to sell to the capitalist. Labor-power is a potential force only; it does not become exercised unless and until its seller, i.e., the laborer, is set to work by its buyer, i.e., the capitalist. An unemployed worker possesses labor-power; one cannot speak of his labor, which does not exist. “When we speak of capacity for labor, we do not speak of labor, any more than when we speak of capacity for digestion, we speak of digestion. The latter process requires something more than a good stomach” (Marx).

“The capitalist buys labor-power in order to use it; and labor-power in use is labor itself. The purchaser of labor-power consumes it by setting the seller of it to work. By working, the latter becomes actually what before he was only potentially, labor-power in action, a laborer” (Marx).

Labor, therefore, being labor-power in action, i.e., producing commodities for the market, is the creator of value.

Wage Labor: The sale and purchase of labor-power, which characterises the relation between the capitalists and the workers. With the advent of capitalism, labor-power itself becomes a commodity. Historical development made the workers “‘free’ in a double sense of the term; free from any constraint or restriction as regards the sale of their labor-power; free from the land or from the means of production in general, i.e., the propertyless workers, or ‘proletarians,’ who cannot maintain their existence except by the sale of their labor-power” (Marx). The workers, Marx said, ought “to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: ‘Abolition of the wages system’!” (Leontiev). (See Wages.)

“The interests of capital and the interests of wage-labor are diametrically opposed to each other” He continues, “To say that the interests of capital and the interests of the workers are identical signifies only this, that capital and wage-labor are two sides of one and the same relation. The one conditions the other in the same way that the usurer and the borrower condition each other” (Marx).