Is a worker's labor power the private property of the worker?

rubber clown? care to use a more understandable analogy? I'm btw, just confused.

Okay, say I own an injection moulding machine that produces dildos. The dildos are made by worker machine operators, using silicone that i gave them. I bought the silicone, which was also mined by worker miners in a silicone mine. However, because the silicone baron owns the silicone mine and I own the dildo machine, he's entitled to the silicone that his workers produce and I'm entitled to the dildos.

Thus, he takes the silicone and sells it to me, and I take the dildos and sell them to consumers, despite neither of us actually producing the value of the silicone or the value of the dildos - they were both made by workers, but because they were using our tools to do so, we say that they belong to us. This is private property.

All right, that makes sense. I'm asking this because I'm curious if labor can be priced by market mechanisms even if MoP are socially owned.

So say in a commune someone needs me to do a job. Say I'm the only one with the expertise. I could demand a high price for my job, though my excess labor credits would drive others to gain the skills to compete with me. In this way doctors and specialists and such will become higher paying jobs as not everyone considers it worth the effort to enter those professions. It's just a way of organizing labor.

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You mean should it be his private property

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You can't own labour because it isnt a physical substance. Just like you can't own a foot massage or own 10km/h. You can perform it, pay people to perform it, or force people to perform it.

is time considered a commodity?
the most cringey thing i ever heard was from a clueless capitalist on the London Tube, telling me i was actually "buying" the hours i spent not working; another person on a different train, years earlier, told me "working is selling your time as you would sell a commodity you own".
What's the place of such positions in this debate?

is labor not a commodity under capitalism?

So it seems, but in this case i was directed more towards focusing on *time*, instead of labour - when the very *hours spent not working* are considered something to buy, there's something odd going on…

You are not buying the hours not spent working, that's absurd. Just ask the unemployed how much they are paying.

The other is correct. When doing wage-labour you are not selling the fruits of your labour or the actual work done, you are selling your labour power, i.e., time and skills. That's why the extraction of surplus value is possible: instead of paying for the actual work, you are only paid the amount necessary to reproduce your labour power.

No it's their OWN. :^)

sure, it's clear that such a position is absurd. what i find interesting is that it wasn't the last time i heard it stated. it seem to be growing more and more common to see it that way - the "machine maintainance time" being seen at something to buy for yourself…

ownership == right or ability to utilize something exclusively for your own purposes
if i can force someone to do something for me, i own their labor. if they do something for themselves, they own their own labor. this is the essence behind the concept of wage slavery.

Not as such, as one's own body is not private property.

Labor power cannot be owned, because it is an activity. One can only own its fruits, either in the form of money or a finished a good.
"Private property" in socialism has a very specific meaning. When the owner of property uses said ownership as justification for expropriating the product of another person's labor, it is private property. Lords used land as private property. The bourgeoisie use capital as private property. If you are not taking ownership of the product of another's labor (and excluding him from the same), then you are not talking about private property.

No. The renter doesn't take ownership of anything made with the rented property.

They take ownership of the surplus value accumulated through rent.

No. The rate charged for rent is (all else being equal) the marginal value of the next-most-profitable use of the rented item. Surplus value is revenue less wages.

Hobbes was a fag, natural rights are a meme.

Nobody is talking about natural rights, you ignoramus. They're talking about private property, which is a material relationship between people, disguised as a mutual relationship toward objects.

Rent stabilizes at the opportunity cost of not engaging in a transaction. Surplus extraction is capitalists renting MoP out to workers.

B-but muh self ownership!

False. In no circumstance does "rent" entail automatic ownership of anything produced with the rented property. Both rent and surplus value are unearned income; that's where their similarities begin and end.

Rent is much more general than you think it is. Surplus value extraction is a subset of it.

If the employer-employee relationship were rent, it would be possible for workers to make a net loss by working (rental rate exceeding revenues within a certain time period). This is, however, impossible.
Firms rent out capital to other firms all the time, and it's always a rate for time rented, never a situation in which the rental firm takes ownership of the entire proceeds of production less some fixed payment.

Then the workers would just quit. They pay the rent in labor value.

The premise is false; workers do not rent the means of production. In fact, private property is the inverse of rental.
When someone rents property from another, they can keep whatever they make with it, but must make a fixed payment to use the property.
When someone uses another's private property, they cannot keep whatever they make with it (the owner does), but they receive a fixed payment (wages).