Marxological query

[Charles Brown <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

*       From: Walt Byars <

>From Ch. 6 of Capital when Marx is listing the conditions for the sale of
labor power

"The second essential condition to the owner of money finding labour-power
in the market as a commodity is this - that the labourer instead of being in
the position to sell commodities in which his labour is incorporated, must
be obliged to offer for sale as a commodity that very labour-power, which
exists only in his living self."

i.e. People won't sell labor power if they can sell the goods actually
produced with their labor.

Does this imply that a condition of selling LP is that as soon as a
use-value is produced it must be PHYSICALLY out of the posession of the
laborer (or that there is a tendency towards this happening) ? To
illustrate, say a worker must screw the head on a doll. Does this imply that
they have to put the head on the doll on a moving assembly line that they
can't stop and the doll quickly moves out of their possession? The
alternative would be that in the capitalist's factory, using the
capitalist's materials, the worker screws the doll's head and keeps them in
a box by his side.

Obviously, no LP would be sold in the physically identical case that the
worker purchases the doll materials, assembles them himself, and sells the
finished product. And aren't formal property rights reflecting underlying
material relations? So would LP still be sold if the same physical process
happened under conditions of capitalist property?

^^^^^^
CB: Under a capitalist private property regime , the capitalist as owner of
the means of production - which includes the instruments and raw materials,
and the labor power which is sold to that capitalist - owns the commodity
produced by all these. The physical possession of the commodity by the
worker during the production process is specifically _not_ nine-tenths of
the law under these property relations.

It's more accurate to say the use-values must be legally out of the
ownership of the laborer, i.e. for the laborer to take it and sell it is
recognized as stealing by the state.