Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

“The worker need not necessarily gain when the capitalist does, but he necessarily loses when the latter does.”

In theory, a growing economy should create employment opportunities for workers and higher wages, as a larger money supply should create demand for more goods and services. According to Marx, this is an illusion, tricking workers into thinking that higher wages can one day make them as rich as capitalists. If labor costs start to rise, capitalists can employ machinery or outsourcing to bring them back down. Also, as capitalists grow richer, they consolidate ever-greater social power until workers are dependent on them merely to stay alive.

“Even the wealthiest state of society leads to [the] suffering of the majority—and since the economic system (and in general a society based on private interests) leads to this wealthiest condition, it follows that the goal of the economic system is the unhappiness of this system.”

Having explained that no set of economic circumstances under capitalism can result in the general welfare of the worker, Marx goes on to explain that the misery of the workers is the point and not an unintended consequence. As he will explain in subsequent essays, the material deprivation of the workers is indicative of their broader alienation from authentic sources of human happiness and that the logic of capitalism aims directly at this severance. It seeks to establish money as the source of human fulfillment, which can only occur when money has become the means of satisfying every imaginable need, both physical and emotional.