Producing Labor-Power

Abstract

In a contemporary developed economy, the production of labor-power is not left to the “laborer's instincts for self-preservation and of propagation,” as in Capital, but is made subject to large-scale institutional investment and control within, primarily, the educational system. Some therefore of the laborer's consumption of goods and services has no longer a “final” character but directly enters into the production of the most important producer commodity, labor-power itself. This constitutes a partial closure of the circuit of producers’ capital and, as corollary to the latter, a significant absorption of the once distinct sphere of circulation, or exchange, into that of production, and with it a historical change in the relationships holding between the overall sphere of production and society itself.