Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.3, 2020

The Practical Effect of the Principle of Labor Ownership

(Abstract)

Li Zhi

Marx’s critique of the issue of ownership was not directly aimed at the principle of labor ownership itself, but at the negative effect this principle had on the social practice of the time. This effect included the moral censure of proletarians by practitioners of classical political economy and their apologia for capitalism, which derived from the confusion of hired labor with general labor; and also, under their influence, the overemphasis on the issue of wages and neglect of employment relationships and the true nature of surplus value in the European workers’ movement of the time. As a theoretical principle, labor ownership does not produce only negative effects in practice. It endows labor with nobility and workers with the indisputable right to possess and protect their own property when this principle is established and implemented in socialist practice. On this basis, the principle of labor ownership shifts the focus from ownership to labor itself, and finally completes the union of labor possession and labor ownership rights as fact and as value.