Editing Labour power (section)

==Labour power and labour==
For Marx, ''Arbeitskraft'', which he sometimes instead refers to as ''Arbeitsvermögen'' ("labour-ability" or "labour-capacity") refers to a "force of nature":<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm|title=Critique of the Gotha Programme-- I|first=Karl|last=Marx|website=www.marxists.org}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=BIERNACKI|first=RICHARD|date=2001-06-01|title=Labor as an Imagined Commodity|url=https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329201029002002|journal=Politics & Society|language=en|volume=29|issue=2|pages=173–206|doi=10.1177/0032329201029002002|s2cid=154113394|issn=0032-3292|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230426070933/https://library.fes.de/libalt/journals/swetsfulltext/12590385.pdf |archive-date=2023-04-26|url-access=subscription}}</ref> the physical ''ability'' of human beings and other living things to perform work, including mental labour and skills such as manual dexterity, in addition to sheer physical exertion. Labour power is, in this sense, also the aspect of labour that becomes a commodity within capitalist society and is alienated from labourers when it is sold to capitalists.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Marxism Terms |url=https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/english/theory/marxism/terms/termsmainframe.html |access-date=2023-02-02 |website=cla.purdue.edu}}</ref>

By contrast, "labour" may refer to all or any activity by humans (and other living creatures) that is concerned with producing goods or services (or what Marx calls [[use-value]]s).  In this sense, the usage of labour (''per se'') in [[Marxian economics]] is somewhat similar to the later concept, in [[neoclassical economics]], of "labour services".<ref>{{Cite web|title=Glossary of Terms: La|url=https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/l/a.htm|access-date=2020-08-04|website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>

The distinction between labour and labour-power, according to Marx, helped to solve a problem that [[David Ricardo]] had failed to solve, i.e. explaining why the [[surplus value]] resulting from profit normally arises out of the process of production itself—rather than in the investment of capital (e.g. the advance of money-capital in the form of wages) in labour-power (acquired from labourers).<ref>{{Cite book|last=Ranganayakamma|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=c_XHDwAAQBAJ&q=Capital+volume+2+by+Karl+Marx|title=An Introduction to Marx's 'Capital': Volume 2|publisher=Sweet Home Publications|language=en}}</ref>

Acccording to Marx,

{{Quote|”The profit that the capitalist makes, the [[surplus-value]] which he realises, springs precisely from the fact that the labourer has sold to him not labour realised in a commodity, but his labour power itself as a commodity. If he had confronted the capitalist in the first form, as a possessor of commodities, the capitalist would not have been able to make any profit, to realise any surplus-value, since according to the [[law of value]] exchange is between equivalents, an equal quantity of labour for an equal quantity of labour. The capitalist’s surplus arises precisely from the fact that he buys from the labourer not a commodity but his labour-power itself, and this has less value than the product of this labour-power, or, what is the same thing, realises itself in more materialised labour than is realised in itself.”<ref>Karl Marx, ''Theories of surplus-value'', Part 1. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969, p. 315.</ref>}}

Marx's concept of labour power is sometimes compared to that of [[human capital]].<ref>[[Samuel Bowles (economist)|Samuel Bowles]] & [[Herbert Gintis]], "The Problem with Human Capital Theory—A Marxian Critique", ''[[American Economic Review]]'', vol. 65(2), pages 74–82, (1975) [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1818836]</ref> However, Marx himself would most likely have considered a concept such as "human capital" to be a [[reification (Marxism)|reification]], the purpose of which was to suggest that workers were really capitalist investors. In ''Capital, Vol. 2'', Marx writes sarcastically: 

{{Quote|Apologetic economists... say:... [the worker's] labour-power, then, represents his capital in commodity-form, which yields him a continuous revenue. Labour-power is indeed his property (ever self-renewing, reproductive), not his capital. It is the only commodity which he can and must sell continually in order to live, and which acts as capital (variable) only in the hands of the buyer, the capitalist. The fact that a man is continually compelled to sell his labour-power, i.e., himself, to another man proves, according to those economists, that he is a capitalist, because he constantly has "commodities" (himself) for sale. In that sense a slave is also a capitalist, although he is sold by another once and for all as a commodity; for it is in the nature of this commodity, a labouring slave, that its buyer does not only make it work anew every day, but also provides it with the means of subsistence that enable it to work ever anew."<ref>Karl Marx, ''Capital Vol. 2'', chapter 20, section 10 [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch20_02.htm]</ref>}}