The Development Of Marx’s Concept Of Labour

The classical economists found that labour can be used as the general wealth in the first place when they were studying the source of value, while German classical philosophers trended to-wards the subjective activities of human and Hegel put the labour as the driving force of social development. The profundity of Marx’s method lies in the fact that he combined this two kinds of discourse theory and expounded the rich connotation of labour itself from the historical pro-cess of social contradictions. Marx resorted to the relationship between the social productive forces and social productive relations to explain the contradiction of labor and capital, suffer of the labourers, the inevitability of free labour. Labour is a basic concept in Marx’s theories of Surplus-Value and critique of political economy. This article mainly includes three aspects:l.the understanding of Labour in Marx’s early texts and his analysis method,2.the interpretation of relationship between Wage Labour and capital in both Grundrisse and Das Capital,3.the status of Social Labour in capitalist production process and the influence of Social Labour on the gen-eration of surplus value.In the early 19th century, the sociologists had already begun the study of labor alienation and product distribution, young Marx also started the criticism of the alienation of labour in the hu-manistic perspective which performed as labour to earn a living in 1844. Products of labor and labor of labourer are both to sell, which means labour, the basis of private property insofar is not free. With the establishment of historical materialism and further study in economics, Marx’s re-search on labor turned to material production process. He analyzed the social and historical basis of unfair distribution and found out the reasons for exploitation in the antagonistic relationship between labour and capital. On this basis, his analysis on the accumulation of capital, explained the expansion of wage-labor, the subsumption of capital to labour and, the inevitability of unpaid labor owned by the capitalists. As a special commodity, the labour-power is exchanged between the capitalists and workers which is never a simple, free or fair exchange. Marx pointed out the struggle of workers from the G-A process of the capital cycle. For remaining alive, the workers have to sell their labour, also be possessed of unpaid labour. On the contrary, the capitalists keep exploiting the surplus value for the reproduction of capital, which means wage-labor possesses the nature of both alienation and exploitation. Marx’s criticism focused on the reality of social contradictions that some people are bound to accumulate profit, some people are bound to be ex-ploited. This is the contradiction of the employment system. Further more, it is the contradiction of the capitalist mode of production. Wage-labor is a product of capital and a factor of capital, and it is the key to obtain the surplus value by the capitalists.The transformation of labour form is complementary to the development of productive forces and productive relations, and social labour is the result of the capital. Due to cooperation, divi-sion of labor and the combination of science and technology, the labour itself is socialized and organized into Social Labour by the capitalist mode of production, the value of the product is manifested as materialized social work. From manufacture to machinery and modern industry, the degree of socialization of labor are deepened, the relationship between man and man is changed into a relatively independent relationship which can be expressed as the exchange of goods. Capitalists save fixed cost and make profits by the prolongation of the working day, in-tensification and socialization of labour. The operation mechanism of capital has intensified the exploitation of social work, but not directly on an individual worker. According to Marx’s opin-ion, the contradictory development of capital will lead to the elimination of exploitation, the emergence of advanced social system and also the possibility of the development of Social La-bour in the realm of freedom. People will satisfy what they want in nature, not be ruled by the blind forces in a capitalism society.