labour power

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labour power

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• labor power (US)
• labour-power, labor-power (US)

Calque of German Arbeitskraft.

labour power (uncountable)

1. (Marxism) The capacity to do work (as opposed to labour, the physical act of working) which becomes a commodity under capitalism.

• Ben Fine, Alfredo Saad-Filho (2010) “Commodity Production”, in Marx's Capital, 5th edition, Pluto Press, →ISBN, pages 19–21: “To distinguish the workers themselves from their ability or capacity to work, Marx called the latter labour power, and its performance or application labour. […] The most important distinguishing feature of capitalism is that labour power becomes a commodity.”
• Karl Marx (1887) “The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power”, in Friedrich Engels, editor, Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production‎^[1], volume I, London: Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey, & Co., pages 145, 149:

  By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description. […] Labour-power, however, becomes a reality only by its exercise; it sets itself in action only by working. But thereby a definite quantity of human muscle, nerve. brain, &c., is wasted, and these require to be restored.