Wage and Labor

In Karl Marx's "Wage Labor and Capital" there were so many ideas that I agreed with due to the fact that laborers are actually underpaid. "Workers put more value in to a commodity or good than they are paid for"(659). His idea of what wealth is and where it comes from also presents a good basis of the underpaid worker. "When goods are sold for more than they cost to make"(659)is when that extra profit becomes the wealth of the capitalist/employer."Karl's idea of concentration of wealth is that people who are rich are rich because they get ideas on how to make something better than the next guy does"(Neill).
When an employee goes into work and their job is to package food supplies to be delivered to grocery stores, the faster they package the quicker they will finish to load the truck and deliver to the store. However, what is the point of efficiently packaging these boxes of food when the labor cost is going to be the same with what the employee started with. The capitalist is going to continue to pay the laborer without any dent in their wage despite the fact that the employee packaged the box a little faster than before. I'm sure my example of wage and labor is an understatement overall but I believe the idea of wage and labor is clearly stated. If a packaging laborer packages boxes of food everyday, he does not do so just to have boxes of food ready to be delivered but he does it to produce capital. "Does a worker in a cotton factory produce merely cotton textiles? No, he produces capital. He provides values which serve afresh to command his labor and by means of it to create new values..."(664).The employee gets paid 2 shillings a day to work in cotton textiles. He works all day long and the shillings double. The employer not only gets the "value replaced that he as to give the day laborer; but he doubles it" (664).Building value and capital is what the employer does while the laborer works for him.
Marx also explains that when people work it is their natural instinct that they work. They are not aware that they are laborers because it is so natural that it has become "his life-activity...[and] it is a means for him to exist. He works in order to live. He does not even reckon labor as part of his life, it is rather a sacrifice of his life"(660). The whole point of laboring duties for one is but one way to survive. It is survival, "this life-activity he sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of subsistence."(660). The majority of people that work, work for themselves and for their families to achieve the greatest good of life which is survival. It is but a mere fact that his labor is for himself-to achieve the most remarkable amount of happiness and that is in his "life-activity" to work for the means of continuing subsistence.

Neill, Kenneth. "Marxism: The Science of Society an Introduction." Massachusetts: Bergin & Gavey, 1985.
Marx, Karl. "Wage, Labor and Capital." Realism and Marxism. St. Martin's Press. New York, 1990.