Labor Power: The Unique Commodity of Capitalism

Our fourth episode covers chapters 4-6, where Marx offers the first definitions of capital, surplus-value, labor power, as well as the relationship between the legal superstructure and the economic base. Picking up on the introduction of money into the exchange process and the contradictions between use-value and exchange-value, we begin by distinguishing C-M-C from M-C-M’, before questioning where the increase in M (or surplus-value) comes from. The answer? Labor power! The end of the episode discusses the unique properties of labor power, how its value is determined, the conditions under which it’s exchanged, and how the buying and selling of labor power alone can’t explain surplus-value.

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