Karl Marx: Epitome

Abstract

The laborer becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, indeed, the more powerful and wide-ranging his production becomes. Labor does not only produce commodities, it produces itself and the laborer as a commodity and in relation to the level at which it produces commodities. The product of labor is labor, which fixes itself in the object, it becomes a thing, and it is the objectification of labor. The objectification of labor manifests itself so much as a loss of objects, that the laborer is robbed of the most necessary objects, not only to maintain his own life, but even objects with which to labor. Indeed, labor itself becomes an object, which only with the greatest effort and with random interruptions can be acquired. Appropriation of objects manifests itself so much as estrangement, that the more objects the laborer produces, the fewer he can own and so he plunges deeper under the mastery of his product: Capital.