Cameron Hughes
Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Cruz

In the Marxist critique of political economy, labor power is a concept distinct, though not wholly separate, from “labor”. Put quite simply, labor power is the ability to work. This is to say, as Marx posits in the sixth chapter of Capital, that labor power refers to a person’s mental and physical faculties, which they actively engage when producing any variety of use-values (Marx 1992). The distinction here is subtle, but important. Approaching the two concepts from another angle, we might think of labor power as a potential yet to be realized, while labor(ing) is the activity that realizes this potential and thus depletes it.

As anyone who has made use of their labor power comes to find out, it is not a spring from which we can draw indefinitely. In fact, Marx explicitly points out that the act of exercising one’s labor power uses up a quantifiable amount of their “muscle, nerve, [andbrain.” (Marx 1992). Work, therefore, can not be carried on without pause. In this way, while a capitalist may dream of a worker who does not need to eat, sleep, or use the restroom, the real existing human body imposes biological limitations on the production process. It is only by attending to the above mentioned needs that a worker can reproduce their labor power so that they may return to work.

Under a capitalist mode of production, the working class is dispossessed from the means to create its own subsistence (food, shelter, etc). It is through this process of deprivation (i.e. primitive accumulation) that the working class is created — its very existence being defined by ownership over nothing more than its labor power. Having been stripped of all else, in order to survive and reproduce itself within a capitalist economy, the working class is forced to secure its livelihood through the only avenue made available: the sale of its labor power on the market. Capitalists and ‘free’ laborers encounter one another in the market and enter into a contract that promises a definite amount of labor power for a certain price, which appears to us in the form of remuneration, or a wage. Thus, through this process, labor power becomes transformed into a commodity.

Like any other commodity, labor power has a value. Marx asserts that the value of labor power is determined in the same way that the value of any other commodity is determined: “by the labour-time necessary for the production, and consequently also the reproduction, of this special article” (Marx 1992). As we’ve explored above, labor power is the ability or potential for activity, which once realized, leaves labor power depleted, necessitating renewal through the fulfilment of a worker’s biological needs. It’s here that we can see how the value of labor power is formed. The cost of the socially necessary labor time required to fulfill the average biological needs of a worker forms the basis of labor-power’s value.

However, Marx takes care to point out that labor power is a strange commodity, different from others insofar as the determination of its value is subject to the specific historical-social conditions in which it is being or has been formed. This means that there will be some unevenness across geographies in what workers require or expect as necessary to carry out the reproduction of their labor-power.

While Marx’s analysis in Capital assumes an ‘ideal’ capitalist system, we must also pay attention to other externalities that can change and disrupt how the value of labor power is determined — for instance, by class struggle. Workers, acting in their own interest, will and have historically demanded an increase to the value of their labor power, usually via the concrete struggle for increased wages. A hyper-localized example of this can be found in the 2019-2020 Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) strike initiated by academic student employees across the University of California (Cowan 2020).

Bibliography

Cowan, Jill. “Why Graduate Students at U.C. Santa Cruz are Striking.” New York Times, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/us/ucsc-strike.html

Marx, Karl. Capital Vol. I: A Critique of Political Economy. Penguin, 1992.