Human labour contains an uncommodifiable part beyond its market price
Evidence
In the world we take for granted today, labour seems like any other commodity. Desperate to make a living, people promote their skills like vendors advertising their wares. They accept a market-determined price (the wage) for their labour, which reflects its exchange value, i.e. what it is worth compared to other exchangeable commodities. This is commodity labour. However, as we have seen, unlike soap powder, potatoes or iPhones, which are nothing but commodities, labour is something else besides. … What I call experiential labour, the part which can never be sold, Marx called simply labour. And what I have labelled commodity labour, Marx defined as labouring power. But the idea is the same: ‘What the working man sells is not directly his Labour, but his Labouring Power, the temporary disposal of which he makes over to the capitalist.’ — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 68
Categorization
- DEFINE: Distinguishes commodity labour (labouring power, bought by wage) from experiential labour (the un-sellable part Marx simply called labour).
- XREF: Maps directly onto the reader’s platform-feudalism thesis: if platforms extract from experiential labour, this vocabulary becomes the analytic hinge. — connects to: Profit arises from labour’s uncommodifiable experiential dimension; Market relations are real yet structurally unable to express the underlying social labor; Experiential labour cannot be bought directly, only time and potential can — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 127 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Profit arises from labour’s uncommodifiable experiential dimension
#corroborates(0.95) - Experiential labour cannot be bought directly, only time and potential can
#corroborates(0.92) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 127 - Market relations are real yet structurally unable to express the underlying social labor
#qualifies(0.80) - Capital extracts value from unwaged domestic labor that remains formally outside value
#expands(0.78) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 123 - Capitalism profits most from labor it never commodifies or pays
#contradicts(0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 214