| This question <107|107> overall <106|108> Bronco: <1356|168>. (graded B–) |
| Exam Question 128: What is the difference between labor and labor-power? |
| [107] Bronco: In his discussion of labor, Marx emphasizes that there is a clear difference between labor and labor-power, and even goes as far as calling them different kinds of labor all together. It is important to distinguish their differences, as they both serve vital roles in the labor market. |
| Labor is the clear measure of work produced by humans and strictly relates to the three factors of production, along with land and capital. It is an actual activity and can also be defined as a working effort to provide goods and services that can ultimately be use-values. The obvious intended result of labor is to produce a commodity of value that can be exchanged with other goods or services. |
| Labor-power is defined on an individual level, and highlights an individual's ability to work with their skills and abilities. This clearly differentiates the two, as labor is something that everyone is capable of, but with most jobs available to man all labors provided are not equal. One human will be more trained and can perform on a higher level than another, thus producing a greater level of labor-power. It is at this point that labor-power becomes a commodity in any competitive market. All labors are the cost of human labor-power. |
| Marx also defines labor-power as a commodity as it is ultimately bought and sold in the competitive market. One sells labor-power in exchange for wage, and in turn provides the goods or services desired by the capitalist. |
| Hans: Labor-power is not a kind of labor. |
| I'd also like to say here that Marx would not consider capital to be a factor of production. But in our reading haven't yet arrived at the definition of capital. |
| You are saying that labor-power became a commodity when some laborers had more skills than the unskilled laborer. Marx is saying exactly the opposite. Unskilled laborers do not exist in societies in which everybody works with their own means of production and sells their product instead of their labor-power. Unskilled labor developed only after labor-power had become a universally traded commodity. |
| All this was not really asked. This is an exam question, which means a simple answer exists. Your answer gives much more than a definition, and your elaborations do not always coincide with what Marx says about the same issues in future reading assignments. |
| Going back to the definition of labor-power, your answer is repeating an error which has been occasionally made in the archives too. See my [1997WI:37] for a brief explanation, and [2005fa:1383] for a more emphatic one. |
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