- Labour power = capacity to work
- Labour = the actual activity of working
- Labour > labour power
- Surplus value = the difference between (2) and (1)
(Labour power is the "commodity" sold by the worker to the capitalist crystallised as the wage.
The difference between Marx/Engels and economists before them such as Adam Smith is that these classical economists effectively equated labour with labour power ie assuming workers sold their labour directly implying wages paid the full work done. Marx and Engels were able to understand this difference, and therefore understand where profit ie surplus value as defined above comes from, and uncover this hidden exploitation.
This difference has multiple ramifications - M/E were interested in the differences between say feudal and slavery systems vs capitalist system; not just some dynamic between the exploited and their exploiter, but how that exploitation happens.
It's the appreciation of this difference and how (and why) this difference occurs that separates marxists from utopian socialists and anarchists.
It is why, for example, Lenin denounced reformist errors such as asking for fairer wages alone without seeking abolishment of the wage-labour system, and highlighted why targeting the latter is important for revolution.
It was why China was able to advance so rapidly. First under Mao and then thereafter with Deng and his successors by effectively understanding that in the early stages of socialism if the wage-labour systems are tackled at the "individual-level" you will end up prolonging the effects of capitalism on the global stage (and its effective siege domestically), but if it is tackled collectively through a proleteriat state then you have a hope of repurposing that surplus value for the greater peoples, and in expanding the forces of production and automation, you end up organically eventually destroying the wage-labour system more permanently)
Pick a youtube video where you think you are learning something... and then write a bullet point essay on it by hand from the perspective of things you are interested in (or even just general critique), with further questions for research in the margins or in parantheses.
If you wanted to make a regular thing about this then get a blank/lined/square (squared is sometimes better for diagrams and what not) notebook, leave the first two pages blank for the contents section. Every page gets a number and you title the essays - write that title in the contents page with with its corresponding page number so you have a reference - and as you write your essay you can reference other essays you have done.
This will slow down how much youtube you watch, you will be more selective about what you watch, and you will find learning/retention accelerate. And hopefully get rid of the burn out feeling.
Then you can write essays on your essays (say a theme or a new idea or analysis you have picked from parts of other essays). And if you feel any of them are good enough then upload them to say substack or medium etc. Then critique those essays you have written, let's say in 6 months time.
With stock footage and videos, and even AI (or personally shoot videos/animate), you could turn the essays into youtube videos yourself.
Or you know... don't watch youtube :)