in order to survive; in this, each individual workerÆs labor is systematically undervalued, as that labor is worth more to the capitalist than it is to the laborer. The surplus value of the labor is retained by the capitalist and reinvested in the system, allowing that system to expand and in turn exploit more workers. This phenomenon, called the labor theory of value, provides the foundation for bourgeois exploitation of the proletariat working class (Gregory & Stuart 69). The alienation of the worker is near-total. As explained by George Ritzer, the worker becomes alienated not only from his ôproductive activityö, that is, his labor, but also from the product of that labor, from his fellow man, and from his own potential as a conscious human being (51-52). So complete is this alienation that the worker forgets that it is his labor that gives a commodity its value in the first place (called by Marx the
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