LABOUR-POWER ONCE MORE

 LABOUR-POWER ONCE MORE

Labour-Power Once More

PREFACE

This was my first attempt at getting one of my articles published. It failed. The referees and editors at Radical Philosophy rejected it. It was lost for many years. Then, in 2011, while sorting out some papers from old box files not looked at in decades, I came across it. Indeed, there were three copies of the article – at various stages in the writing process! One copy seemed more advanced than others as it rectified problems and issues thrown up by the other two copies. However, it was not the final copy: there were notes in the margins regarding changes to be made.

Thus, what we have here is a reconstruction of this third copy that includes the changes as suggested by the marginal comments. I do not expect to find the final copy, but then I did not expect to find these three drafts 20 years after the article disappeared! It definitely won’t emerge on some old floppy disk: the article was originally written on an Amstrad PCW 9512 dedicated word processor, with floppy disks smaller than the standard floppy disks, and a daisywheel printer. These disks, along with my Amstrad PCW 9512 went to Newham’s Jenkins Lane Reuse and Recycling Centre 20 odd years ago. You can still buy the Amstrad PCW 9512, with daisy-wheel printer, on e-Bay though!

I have decided to present this paper here as it has some material, especially on the subjective aspect of labour-power, that does not appear elsewhere in my work. In addition, for me it was a transitional article between Rikowski (1990) and my later work on labour-power (Rikowski, 2000, 2002 and 2024). I hope readers find it useful.

You can see ‘Labour-Power Once More’ at ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/414016573_Labour-Power_Once_More and at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/173605281/Labour_Power_Once_More

YES, TAX THE BILLIONAIRES!

 

YES, TAX THE BILLIONAIRES!

My book review of ‘We Need to Tax Billionaires! by Gabriel Zucman is now available at ResearchGate. It was published in ‘Post-16 Educator’, No.124 (July – September), 2026, pp.22-23. You can see it at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/410602470_Yes_tax_the_billionaires

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

YES, TAX THE BILLIONAIRES!

 

YES, TAX THE BILLIONAIRES!

My book review of ‘We Need to Tax Billionaires! by Gabriel Zucman is now available on Academia. It was published in ‘Post-16 Educator’, No.124 (July – September), 2026, pp.22-23. You can see it at: https://www.academia.edu/170487441/Yes_tax_the_billionaires_

Glenn Rikowski

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Libraries inHigher Education

 

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) AND LIBRARIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION

This is a new article by Ruth Rikowski that has been published in ‘Post-16 Educator’ No.123, and is now available at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/169932344/Artificial_Intelligence_AI_and_Libraries_in_Higher_Education

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Marx's Sausage Factory and Marx's Road: Education and the General Class of Commodities

Marx's Sausage Factory and Marx's Road: Education and the General Class of Commodities

This is a paper I have prepared for the London Historical Materialism 22^nd Annual Conference, SOAS, 6–9 November 2025.

You can now view this paper at Academia:  

https://www.academia.edu/144648586/Marxs_Sausage_Factory_and_Marxs_Road_Education_and_the_General_Class_of_Commodities

 

Abstract

This paper complements the presentation I gave at HM London Conference 2024 where the focus was on labour-power and its social re/production. Labour-power is the unique commodity, the ‘class of one’; the only commodity that has the capacity to generate more value – surplus-value – than what it takes to reproduce itself when it is transformed into labour in capitalist labour processes. For this 2025 presentation, the focus is on the general class of commodities; that is, all commodities excluding labour-power. In particular, educational commodification and value production in educational institutions are explored. Can education be a commodity? Is education productive of value? If education is a commodity why does it matter? These perennial questions regarding educational commodification, questions that bedevil mainstream sociology and liberal thought as much as Marxist educational theory, are at the centre of this presentation. The first section of the paper lays the ground by drawing from Marx’s ideas on the commodity and value production. It also presents some of the hand-wringing statements and nebulous arguments regarding whether education can be a commodity, or not. Section two visits Marx’s metaphor of education as a ‘sausage factory’ in Capital. It indicates how, under certain conditions, what goes on in educational institutions results in commodity and value-production. The third section focuses on ‘Marx’s road’; his discussion on the roles of State, Money and ‘capital as capital’ in the production of value in Notebook V from the Grundrisse. The conclusions from this section are then dragged back to the ‘sausage factory’ to give a fuller account of educational commodification and value production. The Conclusion revisits questions of whether education is, or can be, a commodity, if it produces value, and why such questions are important. This last point draws on the work of Mike Neary.    

Glenn Rikowski, Forest Gate, London, 27^th October 2025

Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski  

ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn-Rikowski

Marx's Sausage Factory and Marx's Road: Education and the General Class of Commodities

Marx's Sausage Factory and Marx's Road: Education and the General Class of Commodities

This is a paper I have prepared for the London Historical Materialism 22^nd Annual Conference, SOAS, 6–9 November 2025.

 

You can now view this paper at ResearchGate, at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/396921162_Marx's_Sausage_Factory_and_Marx's_Road_Education_and_the_General_Class_of_Commodities   

 

Abstract

This paper complements the presentation I gave at HM London Conference 2024 where the focus was on labour-power and its social re/production. Labour-power is the unique commodity, the ‘class of one’; the only commodity that has the capacity to generate more value – surplus-value – than what it takes to reproduce itself when it is transformed into labour in capitalist labour processes. For this 2025 presentation, the focus is on the general class of commodities; that is, all commodities excluding labour-power. In particular, educational commodification and value production in educational institutions are explored. Can education be a commodity? Is education productive of value? If education is a commodity why does it matter? These perennial questions regarding educational commodification, questions that bedevil mainstream sociology and liberal thought as much as Marxist educational theory, are at the centre of this presentation. The first section of the paper lays the ground by drawing from Marx’s ideas on the commodity and value production. It also presents some of the hand-wringing statements and nebulous arguments regarding whether education can be a commodity, or not. Section two visits Marx’s metaphor of education as a ‘sausage factory’ in Capital. It indicates how, under certain conditions, what goes on in educational institutions results in commodity and value-production. The third section focuses on ‘Marx’s road’; his discussion on the roles of State, Money and ‘capital as capital’ in the production of value in Notebook V from the Grundrisse. The conclusions from this section are then dragged back to the ‘sausage factory’ to give a fuller account of educational commodification and value production. The Conclusion revisits questions of whether education is, or can be, a commodity, if it produces value, and why such questions are important. This last point draws on the work of Mike Neary.    

Glenn Rikowski, Forest Gate, London, 27^th October 2025

Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski  

ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn-Rikowski

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Libraries: A PowerPoint Presentation by Ruth Rikowski for CILIP-in-London

 

                                                                        Ruth Rikowski

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Libraries

A talk by Ruth Rikowski at CILIP-in-London

The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professional (CILIP)

Wednesday 11th September 2024

This presentation critically explores consequences of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for libraries, library organisation and library staff development and employment

Ruth's talk is now on Youtube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OleU9tvuPoc

For more on Ruth's work, see: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski