Definition
Marx introduces the concept in chapter 6 of the first volume of Capital, as follows:
- "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."
He adds further on that:
- "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."
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:
Read more about this topic: Labour Power
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“I’m beginning to think that the proper definition of “Man” is “an animal that writes letters.””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity?
Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all?
Is the eternal truth man’s fighting soul
Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?”
—Richard Eberhart (b. 1904)
“The very definition of the real becomes: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction.... The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced. The hyperreal.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)