Am I going crazy or something? Because I distinctly remember reading somewhere that the labor-power of a human, their capacity to perform labor is the economic analogue of the horse-power of an engine, it’s ability to do work.
I also remember reading somewhere that Marx modeled the concept of labor-power after it’s thermodynamic counterpart (hence the name, labor-power)
Now I’ve been searching for a source from Marx’s own writings, and although the way marx treats labor-power is entirely analogous to how one might treat an engine with the capacity to do work, I haven’t yet found an explicit comparison in his writings. Reading through chapters of capital is taking some time …
So my question to the comrades here is, am I hallucinating this connection between political economy and thermodynamics, or is it real (and where in marx’s writings should I look).
For additional context: I was banned from a certain place for using this analogy (oddly harsh punishment perhaps). I don’t really care about being unbanned, but I do want to know if I was wrong.
That’s a bad analogy. Horsepower is a unit of power in the physics sense, just as the watt is. Labor power isn’t using “power” in that sense. In fact, the engine is what increased human labor power in the industrial revolution, because humans could use them for physical power instead of their own bodies or horses or windmills or water wheels.
Labor power isn’t using “power” in that sense.
Just as power is the ability to transfer/transform energy per unit time, I was using labor-power in the sense of being able to produce labor per unit time.
In fact, the engine is what increased human labor power in the industrial revolution, because humans could use them for physical power instead of their own bodies or horses or windmills or water wheels.
This seems confusing to me, since increasing the amount of labor-power implies a greater ability to generate surplus value/profit, and yet the increases in productivity of production cause the rate of profit to fall. From chapter 8 of capital:
Let us assume, that some invention enables the spinner to spin as much cotton in 6 hours as he was able to spin before in 36 hours. His labour is now six times as effective as it was, for the purposes of useful production. The product of 6 hours’ work has increased six-fold, from 6 lbs. to 36 lbs. But now the 36 lbs. of cotton absorb only the same amount of labour as formerly did the 6 lbs. One-sixth as much new labour is absorbed by each pound of cotton, and consequently, the value added by the labour to each pound is only one-sixth of what it formerly was.
I can’t really speak to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall; it’s slightly above my pay grade. But that Marx quote shows that labor power isn’t power in the physics sense, because the worker using the new invention is spinning more cotton in a given unit of time without burning any more calories in his body. What increased productivity was the invention itself and the capital investment in manufacturing the invention for use by labor.
Edit to add: As to TRPF: It has to do with the increasing capital costs for labor-saving technology like the invention above. It increases capital (“constant”) costs in order to lower labor power (“variable”) costs per unit of product, and it decreases prices for the products. The capitalists, in price competition with each other, are compelled to continue repeating this cycle.
I see how I have miscommunicated. I never meant that labor-power is literally power in the physics sense in my original post (that got me banned). I only meant that the relationship between labor-power and labor is analogous to the difference between the horse-power of an engine and the energy it outputs. Labor-power is the capacity to do labor at some rate.
Is that still a bad analogy though? Perhaps since labor is social, the labor-power of a single individual might not be well defined
Whether or not the analogy is sound, it seems to be problematic pedagogically because of the easy conflation among the two distinct senses of power used. It also can cause confusion between constant capital, e.g. the cost of an engine, and variable capital, meaning labor power, measured in e.g. cost per worker-hour.
I don’t think that section of Capital is discussing the rate of profit, but rather the labour value of a given product. The labour value falls as productivity increases, but since capitalist market prices are abstracted from labour value this has at least initially little effect on exchange value and thus surplus value.
- Labour power = capacity to work
- Labour = the actual activity of working
- Labour > labour power
- Surplus value = the difference between (2) and (1)
(Labour power is the “commodity” sold by the worker to the capitalist crystallised as the wage.
The difference between Marx/Engels and economists before them such as Adam Smith is that these classical economists effectively equated labour with labour power ie assuming workers sold their labour directly implying wages paid the full work done. Marx and Engels were able to understand this difference, and therefore understand where profit ie surplus value as defined above comes from, and uncover this hidden exploitation.
This difference has multiple ramifications - M/E were interested in the differences between say feudal and slavery systems vs capitalist system; not just some dynamic between the exploited and their exploiter, but how that exploitation happens.
It’s the appreciation of this difference and how (and why) this difference occurs that separates marxists from utopian socialists and anarchists.
It is why, for example, Lenin denounced reformist errors such as asking for fairer wages alone without seeking abolishment of the wage-labour system, and highlighted why targeting the latter is important for revolution.
It was why China was able to advance so rapidly. First under Mao and then thereafter with Deng and his successors by effectively understanding that in the early stages of socialism if the wage-labour systems are tackled at the “individual-level” you will end up prolonging the effects of capitalism on the global stage (and its effective siege domestically), but if it is tackled collectively through a proleteriat state then you have a hope of repurposing that surplus value for the greater peoples, and in expanding the forces of production and automation, you end up organically eventually destroying the wage-labour system more permanently)
Labor is not a constant. Horsepower is.
So one horsepower will always be a horsepower regardless of whether you are moving one feather or a 33000 pound rock if you exert one horsepower on it it will move a certain distance per minute. The rock will move one foot that feather will move much much farther.
Labor is not a constant. The constant is productivity. A linen shirt takes a certain amount of time depending on the tools used to make it and the skill of the labor. The product remains constant while the labor and tools that are used change how long it takes.
