Living labor (n.) serves bourgeois society only as a means to increase accumulated labour, so the past dominates the present; in communist society accumulated labour widens the labourer's existence, and the present dominates the past.
Living labor (n.) is the only source of surplus-value: if a capital of 90 parts machinery and 10 parts wages yielded as much as one of 10 and 90, political economy would lose any rational basis.
Living labor (n.) is the only source of profit, yet to each capitalist it looks like the most expensive item on his books, to be cut to the bone — competition sees everything standing on its head.
Living labor (n.) preserves machines just by using them — a gift of nature provided gratis: idle machinery rots, and English law counts uncultivated farmland as waste.
Living labor (n.) is what the capitalist buys with dead, objectified labour, and it is the only thing that turns the value in his hands into self-valorizing value.