Karl Marx Response Paper

Max Rodrigues
Response Paper on Karl Marx
10/23/10

According to Karl Marx, wages are a representation of one’s potential value of labor, however company owners necessarily get more money from one’s labor than an individual is paid in wages, for wages are based upon what is considered the minimal amount of money needed to sustain a worker’s life. This makes it a structural necessity in capitalism to feel as though we are paid less than the amount of work we put in. Given the author’s arguments, going through a retraining program in order to find a fulfilling career goes with Marx’s claim that we sell our labor for a wage in order to live, but he does not take into consideration the satisfaction received in a fulfilling career such as
However, no matter the career, by auctioning off our labor, we sell one of the very things that make us human. Former factory worker Alan Moniz went through a retraining program after he was laid off and found a job as an occupational therapy assistant, which pays the same as his previous job which he worked at for thirty years. Part of the training program meant Moniz had to go back to school in order to obtain the degree necessary to find a job related to health care, which is the field he wanted to get into in order to help make the lives of other individuals better. Moniz’s job can be seen as virtuous since he is working to help others and it is fulfilling because he enjoys bringing help to others. Moniz used retraining as a means to guide his life to finding a self-satisfying career which integrates his want to help others with his labor, which is what Marx believes all individuals should strive
The satisfaction Moniz gets from helping others in his job is something few careers offer, and it is this same satisfaction that explains why people volunteer to help others outside of the workday. While Moniz was working as a factory employee, Marx would consider him an exploited worker who was being underpaid for his labor, especially considering he earned the same wage after thirty years of work as he did for his starting salary as an occupational therapy assistant. Moniz’s old job did not have the same value of fulfillment as he gets now, for his job required simply to perform the same repetitive task day in and day out. Marx says that all products generated during the workday by a company’s workers are property of the company. So in Moniz’s case, the aid he gives to the elderly and impaired are products of the rehabilitation center. However, the happiness Moniz receives from helping others by working at the rehab center is something he would not gain in most other careers. It can therefore be said that when a career creates virtue for the employee, the worker is integrating their life with their labor for virtue is something normally acquired outside of the work