CONTRADICTION, CRITIQUE, AND DIALECTIC IN ADORNO A ...

den Mann zu bringen, das heißt in dieser Kapitalistenklasse einen Käufer zu
finden. 123
While it is true that the capitalist and working classes each requires the other to
exist as a class, the individual capitalist does not depend on the working class for his
existence as an individual, whereas the worker depends on the capitalist class for his
survival.
And, according to the Marxian analysis, there is a further source of inequality,
which is the unfairness of the transaction that occurs between worker and capitalist. In
this transaction, the labor power of the worker is exchanged for wages given by the
capitalist. The labor power that the capitalist purchases from the worker is such that,
through its deployment, it produces additional value, a value that exceeds the pre-existing
value contained in raw materials and means of production. The capitalist keeps most of
the newly-created value, except for a small portion that he gives to the worker as wages,
and which is equivalent to the amount necessary for the continued survival of the
worker, 124 so that she may go on selling her value-creating labor power. So, in the
exchange of labor power for wages, what the worker receives in wages is just the
necessary means to get back to her starting point, still owning nothing but her labor
123 This quote and a few to follow are from Marx’s first analysis of capital-labor relations in the
short text entitled “Lohnarbeit und Kapital” [Wage Labour and Capital]. Though it dates back to 1847, this
text already contains the fundamentals of Marx’s argument in das Kapital. See Marx, “Lohnarbeit und
Kapital,” in Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels: Werke, Vol. 3 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1969), 401 (emphasis
in the original). English translation (mine):
But the worker, whose only means of livelihood is the sale of his labor power, cannot leave the
whole class of buyers, that is, the capitalist class, without relinquishing his existence. He belongs
not to this or that capitalist, but to the capitalist class, and it is up to him to dispose of himself,
that is, to find a buyer [for his labor power] in the capitalist class.
124 We could add to this analysis that the worker receives not only the means for bare survival but
also the means to consume and thus keep the economic system functioning and the capitalist’s profit
growing. This addition, however, does not change the essence of the analysis.
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