Karl Marx Works Like a Dog

On May 4, 1886, workers in Chicago rallied in Haymarket Square to support laborers' rights. After the demonstration, an unknown person threw a bomb into the crowd, killing eleven and wounding dozens. The event was a watershed moment in the fight for U.S. labor rights. This weekend we check in with Karl Marx about workers, production, and that ever-elusive capital.  Eight Days a Week 1854: It is true that labor produces for the rich wonderful things—but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces—but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty—but for the worker, deformity. It replaces labor by machines—but some of the workers it throws back to a barbarous type of labor, and the other workers it turns into machines. It produces intelligence—but for the worker idiocy, cretinism... When we ask, then, what is the essential relationship of labor, we are asking about the relationship of the worker to production. Man (the worker) no longer feels himself to be freely active in any but his animal functions—eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc. And in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal.   READ THE ENTIRE STORY Lines of Work Spring 2011