The Abolition Of Labor Summary

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Marx: The Abolition of Labor

Capitalist production has lead to a universal negativity affecting all structural factors related to appropriation by the individual. Marx theorized that a universal revolution of economic forces and structural components will transpose the power of a capitalist society into the hands of the individual. By freeing the individual from the limitations posed upon them through capitalist production, the individual will be able to obtain potentiality for general satisfaction. This new universal order will structure the available productive forces for the power of the individual, and not just for capitalist production.
The distribution of labor itself created classes within society. The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor, on the changing state of business, and on the changes of the competition. The classes of the proletarians are the working class of the 19th century. Labor was more and more divided among the individual workers so that the worker who previously had done a complete piece of work now did only a part of that piece. This division of labor made it possible to produce things faster and cheaper.
Labor is a commodity, like any other, and its price is therefore determined by exactly the same laws that apply to other commodities. In a regime of big industry or of free competition, the price of a commodity is always equal to its cost of production. The price of labor is also equal to the cost of production of labor. But, the costs of production of labor consist of precisely the quantity of means of subsistence necessary to enable the worker to continue working, and to prevent the working class from dying out. The worker will therefore get no more for his labor than is necessary for this purpose; the price of labor, or the wage, will, in other w...