Exploitation and Equality: Labour Power as a Non-Commodity

The theory of surplus value contrasts ‘pay for labour power’ (for proletarians) and ‘pay for labour services’ (for independent, self-employed ‘professionals’). Unlike labour services (living labour, living labour, i.e., work itself) but like all commodities, labour power has a specific economic value (it contains a specific amount of embodied labour) and it exchanges at this value. Unlike that of other commodities, the consumption of labour power results in the creation of more value than the commodity itself contains. Surplus value arises from the gap between the labour needed to sustain a day’s work, to keep the worker going for a day, and the labour performed in that same time. By the labour theory of value, the amount of labour needed to sustain a day’s work (necessary labour) confers one value on the means of subsistence the worker requires, and thereby on the labour power the worker sells to her employer, whereas the day’s work itself (necessary and surplus labour) confers another larger value on the product marketed by the employer.