This question <100|115> overall <101|103> Hans: <99|103>.

Exam Question 86: What is the difference between labor and labor power?

[102] Hans: Labor value asserts itself even if consumers don't think about labor content   PowderNow's [100] is very good except for the last sentence which says:

So when products are exchanged, people look for the quantity of labor power in that commodity.

This is not necessarily the case. People may decide to buy a commodity for all kinds of reasons, without giving any consideration to the labor in that commodity. But if social demand for a certain commodity is so high that it bids up the price above the level justified by the labor content of the commodity, then production will be shifted from other commodities to that commodity, and this increased supply will depress prices. Only when prices are proportional to labor will there be no reason to shift production.

I said something similar in message [7] where the mechanism PowderNow is postulating was called mechanism (1), while the mechanism I described was called mechanism (2).

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