Social Power - Marx's view

Marx's viewpoint appears to follow this line of thought:



Commodities are capital (partially). Labour is a commodity. As a commodity, labour has an exchange value. A labourer, without capital, must sell his labour to sustain life. But, what is the labourer selling? His life activity, hs very being. His life. He must sell his life in exchange as a means of subsistence. The self is sold when all labour has is itself, and must sell self to capitalists to live.



"Any amount of commodities when multiplied" become greater capital, and greater social power over those who have limited social power, labourers. As capital increases, greater social power is derived for those with capital, the number of labourers needed increases to sustain and produce more capital, competition increases, which in turn, once again, increases the number of labourers needed and concomitantly decreases the labourer's social power as the division of labor and the number of labourers increases, and the means of production changes and becomes more sophisticated. Commodities (including labour and labourers), held by the capitalists, become a social power in and of themselves. A social power held by few over many, a result of the exchange of "living labour power".



Must we be what others want us to be when we labor? Do we always give our social power away? Or, if one has a passion for their work, does that person "sell her/himself" to the capitalist? Marx would we all do and must, even if we have a great passion for our work, in the sense that we have given ourselves or created for ourselves something greater and beyond us, and decreased or eliminated ourselves as human beings, since we now live, and engage in a life-activity no longer ours, for it is work for an abstraction or mission that we have created to minimize our "sale of self" and the pain (i.e. sense of alienation from self) we may feel when we periodically think of our "sale of self".