---
Title: Labor power
Description: Set of physical and intellectual capacities that a person applies when generating use values in a productive process. Its sale for a certain time in the market as a commodity by those who cannot produce by themselves and have no other commodity to sell is the basic condition and institution of capitalism.
Author: School of Marxism
URL: https://dictionary.marxismo.school/Labor%20power
---


> Set of physical and intellectual capacities that a person applies when generating use values in a productive process. Its sale for a certain time in the market as a commodity by those who cannot produce by themselves and have no other commodity to sell is the basic condition and institution of capitalism.

## Meaning of labor power

> By labor power or capacity for labor we understand the set of physical and mental faculties that exist in the corporeality, in the living personality of a human being, and which he sets in motion whenever he produces use values of any kind.
>
> Karl Marx. [Capital](https://www.marxists.org/espanol/m-e/1860s/palp67s.htm), 1867.