Labour power

Labour power (in German: Arbeitskraft; in French: force de travail) is a crucial concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of capitalist political economy. Marx distinguished between the capacity to do work, labour power, from the physical act of working, labour. Labour power exists in any kind of society, but on what terms it is traded or combined with means of production to produce goods and services has historically varied greatly.

Under capitalism, according to Marx, the productive powers of labour appear as the creative power of capital. Indeed, "labour power at work" becomes a component of capital, it functions as working capital. Work becomes just work, workers become an abstract labour force, and the control over work becomes mainly a management prerogative.

Marx introduces the concept in chapter 6 of the first volume of Capital, as follows:

He adds further on that:

A much shorter, to-the-point explanation of labour-power can be found in the introduction and second chapter of Marx's Wage Labour and Capital.

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:

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