Abstract:

The essence of capitalistic production is the production of surplus value. As both the key purpose of capitalistic production and the internal motivation constantly driving its development, the production of surplus value is necessarily the result of this production process. In the value-increasing process of capitalistic production, neither the raw materials of labor nor the means of production change themselves. They remain invariant in the commodity through value transfer and compensation. The only variable in value-increasing comes from the living labor of the workers, and once its activity of using the means of production to change the raw materials has taken place, the living labor itself disappears without a trace. This already involves a profound inversion of social relationship, just as man falls on his knees before his own creation, i.e., God. Although it is obviously the workers’ labor that creates the product in the capitalist production, it is the product that dominates and rules the workers in reverse. This is the reverse of the relationship between the creative subject and the created object, and this is the hostile alienation of the labor relation.

Key words: Karl Marx, Economic Manuscripts (1863-1865), capitalist mode of production, alienated labor