Research on the Theoretical Logic and Realization Path of the Value of a Healthy Labor Force

People's health is an important indicator of a nation's prosperity and a country's strength. Marxist economics, especially its theory of labor power value, can provide a more essential research perspective for analyzing the healthy development of workers. Therefore, this article introduces health factors into the classic Marxist theory of labor power value and proposes the theoretical category of healthy labor power value, which is determined by the necessary labor time for reproducing healthy labor power and is manifested as the value of the necessary means of subsistence, education and training, and health restoration products and services for maintaining healthy labor power. On this basis, it distinguishes between the “should be” healthy labor power value and the “actual” healthy labor power value, and based on the quantitative relationship between the two, depicts two different “health-economy” interaction models, namely, the vicious cycle logic of workers' health deterioration and economic unsustainable development, and the virtuous cycle logic of workers' health promotion and high-quality economic development. It clarifies that the leap from a health-deteriorating society to a health-promoting society requires the full play of the coordinated role of “government-enterprise-society”. Finally, starting from three aspects: constraining the formation of health damage, ensuring full compensation for already occurred health damage, and increasing preventive health expenditures, it puts forward countermeasures and suggestions for promoting China to accelerate the realization of a health-promoting society.