Labour Power and its Value

It is problematic to comprehend workplace relations without affording due attention to the notion of labour power as a commodity, since the theory of labour process itself is founded on Marx’s distinction between labour and labour power (Thompson, 2010; Smith, 2016; McIntyre, 2017a; Olsen, 2017). While labour refers to the actual activity directed at

Conflict and Consent around

the double indeterminacy of labour power

Wage-Effort Bargain Mobility Power (i.e. Appropriations of time, work and production)

Workers

resistance/ misbehaviour

Managerial Control

Accumulation and Competition compel

producing a use value, the labour power or the capacity for labour as defined by Marx ([1867] 1990: 270) is:

the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in the physical form, the living personality, of a human being, capabilities which he sets in motion whenever he produces a use-value of any kind.

Given that labour power is embodied in workers (i.e. part of the person of the worker), its consumption is unlike the consumption of any other commodity (own it then consume it). Labourers possess the commodity of labour power and capitalists consume it by setting workers to work under their direct command or through agents (i.e. managers) (Smith, 2016).

Under capitalism, labour power appears in the market as a commodity only when its owner (the worker) decides to sell it to a capitalist for an agreed period of time in exchange for a money wage. This is unlike slavery where the slaves themselves were the properties that were sold and bought. If labourers own the means of production, they can consume their own labour power to produce commodities to be sold in the market for a profit. Capitalism, however, has a tendency to divide societies into two classes: those who own the means of production (capitalists) and those who do not (workers). Therefore, to ensure their survival, the latter group are compelled to sell their labour power to the former in exchange for a fixed money wage (McIntyre, 2017a).

Similar to all other commodities, labour power has a use-value and a value; the latter represents its exchange value. While use-value is determined by the value valorised at work (i.e. the living labour it can perform), its value is determined by the cost of maintaining the labourer at a given standard of living. Harvey (2017: 7) confirms that what workers are paid in the form of wages, to a great extent, represents the value of their labour power.

Marx ([1867] 1990) retains that the average cost of maintaining labour power, which is its value, contains a historical and moral element. By this, he urges us to recognise that the value of a worker’s labour power is not simply a physical quantity6 _{but is determined by the}

6 _{Marx links the qualities and quantities of labour power using the term simple average labour, since the} value of a commodity represents a specific quantity of the simple labour power embodied in it. To clarify, if a commodity is produced by a small quantity of complex\skilled labour, it is still a productive expenditure of human organs (brains, muscles, nerves etc.) possessed by an ordinary worker, which makes up labour power pure and simple. Therefore, in the production of commodities, Marx ([1867] 1990: 135) argues that ‘more

basket of commodities labourers need to survive, which is dependent upon various volatile social factors, such us the level of civilisation in a country and the dynamics of its class struggles. Therefore, the natural indispensable needs for human survival (e.g. food, clothing, fuel and housing) vary based on the physical conditions of the country that the worker lives in, but they are fixed at a given place at a given time. As Marx ([1867] 1990: 275) puts it:

The number and extent of his so-called necessary requirements, as also the manner in which they are satisfied, are themselves products of history, and depend therefore to a great extent on the level of civilization attained by a country; in particular they depend on the conditions in which, and consequently on the habits and expectations with which, the class of free workers has been formed.

Recognising how Marx configured the value of labour power is invaluable to the understanding of the geographical movements of both capital and labour at a global level (Rainnie, McGrath-Champ and Herod, 2010; Hewison, 2016; Kofman, 2016). This is an aspect which is much more obvious and relevant now than it was in Marx’s time. The last few decades have witnessed an enormous shift of production from the global North to the global South – deindustrialisation and reindustrialisation respectively – where lower wages and little labour organisation prevail. Where the latter exists, it is mostly repressed by authoritarian states (see Stewart and Garvey, 2016). This shift in capital has been associated also with labour movements. According to Harvey (1982: 381), ‘in search of employment and living wage labour, the labourer is forced to follow capital wherever it flows’. Labour has been moving from rural to urban areas, from the global South to the global North, and from one country to another within the global South, which is known as ‘South-South dynamics’ (Poster and Yolmo, 2016: 578). For example, Saudi Arabia, as the rest of the Arab Gulf countries, mostly relies on the sale of oil, gas and petrochemical products that are extracted and produced by an overwhelming migrant majority drawn from around the globe, especially from South and East Asia (APMM, 2014). These migrants are often highly exploited. Therefore, the purpose of the following section is to elaborate on the relations of exploitation.

complex labour counts only as intensified, or rather multiplied simple labour, so that a smaller quantity of complex labour is considered equal to a larger quantity of simple labour’.