Labor and Labor Power as Natural and Social Forces

Abstract

For Marx, labor is the creative, subjective factor in production conceived as a necessary part of the material metabolism between people and nature. Individual and collective human labors take place and evolve in and through definite social relations. Human production is thus constituted jointly by social production relations and the material characteristics of nature itself (see Chapter 2). Marx often emphasizes the jointly material and social character of production by characterizing human labor and labor power as natural and social forces. Hence he describes labor power as a “natural force of human beings,” or as a “living . . . social force,” and human labor as “a social and natural force,” or “human exertion as a specifically harnessed natural force” (1967a, III, 813, I, 239; 1977, 1056; 1973, 400, 612). While insisting that human laboring capacities are socially developed, organized, and utilized, Marx still emphasizes that “labour . . . is only the manifestation of a natural force, human labour power” (1966, 3).