This paper aims to reconstruct Marx’s concept of labor power within a historical-materialist framework adapted to the digital age. Its core task is to distinguish between two forms of labor power that belong to different historical strata. The first is the traditional labor power defined by Marx in Capital – “the sum of physical and intellectual capacities” that is procedurable, standardisable, quantifiable, reproducible, and capable of being mass-produced through educational systems. The second is “consciousness as labor power,” which emerges from the internal fissure of labor power against the background of artificial intelligence systematically replacing the above-mentioned traditional forms of labor. Consciousness as labor power refers to the capacity to make context-specific judgments, to make non-replicable decisions, to attribute unique meanings, and to set original directions.
The paper consists of five chapters.
Chapter One returns to Marx’s classical definition of labor power and re‑examines its four conditions: labor power is an anthropological constant; it inheres in the living human body; its deployment serves the production of use-values; and it is the sum of physical and intellectual capacities. Under the productive forces of the digital age, these conditions reveal new internal dimensions. Crucially, labor power is not a monolithic entity. The traditional labor power deployed in physical and intellectual labour is being progressively displaced by intelligent machinery and artificial intelligence. In contrast, the capacity for unalgorithmisable and unprocedurable judgment, aesthetic discernment, and decision-making begins to differentiate itself from the “sum of physical and intellectual capacities.” This differentiation is not a conceptual evolution but the manifestation of a latent difference made visible by changing historical conditions.
Chapter Two systematically defines the two forms of labor power. The labor power deployed in intellectual labour possesses nine characteristics: procedurability, standardisability, reproducibility, quantifiability, a high correlation with the subject’s level of education, exploitability by capital, substitutability, predictability, and relative stability of the production process and its output. These features enable it to undergo formal subsumption (becoming a commodity) and real subsumption (the labour process controlled by capital). In contrast, consciousness as labor power exhibits diametrically opposed characteristics: high specificity and individuality, very low or no correlation with educational level, non-quantifiability, universality of output combined with randomness and unpredictability, non-directionality of output (positive or negative cannot be known in advance), non-reproducibility and non-procedurality, and, most fundamentally, unexploitability.
Chapter Three demonstrates the limits of capital’s rule. Exploitation is the foundation of the capitalist relation of production, and its realisation depends on two conditions: formal subsumption (labour power must be able to become a commodity) and real subsumption (the labour process must be controllable by capital). Consciousness as labor power ontologically resists both conditions. It is non-quantifiable and therefore cannot be priced or bought and sold. Its output is non-directional and unpredictable, so it cannot be incorporated into any system of planning and control. It is non-reproducible and therefore cannot be used in a standardised, batch manner. Faced with this form of labour power, all of capital’s managerial instruments fail. Yet the developmental trend of the productive forces precisely demands that this unexploitable labour power increasingly participates in the production process: the more artificial intelligence replaces routine labour, the more the only variable left in production that only human beings can provide is consciousness as labor power. This contradiction – the productive forces demand the emergence of consciousness as labor power, while the relations of production reject it – constitutes the fundamental impasse of capitalism in the digital age and the intrinsic ground for its inevitable demise. This is not a moral critique but the self-negation of capital’s own logic of motion.
Chapter Four advances the analysis to the stage of socialism. By abolishing private ownership of the means of production, socialism cuts off the commodified buying and selling of labour power and thereby breaks the framework of exploitation. This provides the first institutional precondition for consciousness as labor power to be formally treated and experimentally deployed in history. However, socialism has not yet accomplished the supersession of the factorisation of labour power. Education remains the pre-production of labour power; distribution according to work still reduces labour to a measurable quantity; workers are still treated as substitutable units in macroeconomic allocation. This factorisation framework is in fundamental conflict with the nature of consciousness as labor power (non-measurable, non-arrangeable, non-substitutable). Consequently, socialism’s attempts to organise this capacity encounter a deep predicament: any effort to “manage” it through quantitative indicators, planning schedules, or performance appraisals either fails or distorts its essence. This predicament is not a design flaw but a determination of the transitional stage itself.
Chapter Five sets out the final liberation of consciousness as labor power under communism. The core is the complete supersession of the factorisation of labour power – labour power no longer exists as a reified factor that can be separated, measured, arranged, and appropriated; it becomes the natural expression of human life activity. The paper distinguishes between social production and life production. Social production meets the needs of the community’s survival and progress; it takes consciousness as labor power as its dominant force, with concrete executable tasks performed by advanced production tools, and its organisation is through deliberation. Life production comprises two levels. The first level is the production in which producers directly produce the means of subsistence they need for themselves, using socially owned means of production. The second level is embodied labour – labour that is voluntary, self-directed, and an end in itself, in which the producer deploys the sum of physical and intellectual capacities. Within this framework, “from each according to his needs” is reinterpreted as a principle of production rather than distribution: the individual judges his own needs, leads his own production, and society acts only as a provider of conditions. The paper concludes by noting that this liberation is not automatically brought about by technology; it presupposes the first-stage revolution (the abolition of private property and exploitation). The emancipatory potential of technology can be realised only under the conditions of public ownership.
Starting from Marx’s concept of labour power, through a concrete analysis of the contradiction between productive forces and relations of production in the digital age, the paper deduces the necessary emergence of consciousness as labor power, then argues why capital cannot master it, how socialism initially accommodates it but falls into an organisational predicament, and how communism finally achieves its liberation. This argument attempts to carry out a paradigm shift that is neither a rejection of Marx nor a departure from historical materialism, but rather the development of concepts according to new historical conditions along the path that Marx opened up.
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