MARX'S LABOR THEORY OF VALUE

Karl Marx, champion of the fabled proletariat, criticized capitalism as a means of alienating man from his labor. Specialization and the division of labor, bourgeois control over the means of production, and the advent of machine-powered industry all combined to establish capitalism as the enemy of the common workingman. In the new configuration, capitalism concentrated wealth and property in the hands of the few, while the labor of the many sustained the system. Marx's Labor Theory of Value deals with the nature of proletarian labor, and how it suffers under the capitalist construct.

In "The Communist Manifesto" of 1848, Marx explains that "Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labor, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character"(p. 69). He has, essentially, become merely "an appendage of the machine"(p. 69). Because his trade has become a function of mass-industry and hence, machine-assisted labor, therefore his personal skills are no longer valuable, for any man or woman may operate a machine with the same modicum of training and expertise. Ultimat

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