Relation of Wage-Labour to Capital: Wage Labour and Capital

by Karl Marx

What is it that takes place in the exchange between the capitalist and the wage-labourer?

The labourer receives means of subsistence in exchange for his labour-power; the capitalist receives, in exchange for his means of subsistence, labour, the productive activity of the labourer, the creative force by which the worker not only replaces what he consumes, but also gives to the accumulated labour a greater value than it previously possessed. The labourer gets from the capitalist a portion of the existing means of subsistence. For what purpose do these means of subsistence serve him? For immediate consumption. But as soon as I consume means of subsistence, they are irrevocably lost to me, unless I employ the time during which these means sustain my life in producing new means of subsistence, in creating by my labour new values in place of the values lost in consumption. But it is just this noble reproductive power that the labourer surrenders to the capitalist in exchange for means of subsistence received. Consequently, he has lost it for himself.

Who Needs an Editor? Not Fidel…

by Sabina Becker

…but the unnamed snotball who wrote this for the Canadian Press? Oh yes.

Look, CP presstitute-person, whoever you are, hiding behind your tradition of unsigned editorial cowardice…I understand that you may not like Fidel Castro, but it’s still a fact that he is FAR more popular in all the Americas than Harpo is up here. And the reason for his popularity, not that it matters to the likes of you, is simple: He has kept mafias and monopolies from dominating Cuba. In other words, he stands for Cuban sovereignty. Or, to put it another way: He kicks Stephen Harper’s sweater-vested ass.

Obviously our silly scribes up here in the no-longer-so-great North have no idea how popular the Cuban Revolution actually still is. They seem to think that it was only popular for the time it took to drive out Fulgencio Batista. And that once Fidel revealed himself to be a Marxist-Leninist, it all went downhill.

WRONG.