ABSTRACT
The interpretation of the "right to the whole product" as an underlying tenet of Karl Marx's theory of value and distribution has been missed by professional economists. Reality in the Hegelian system is Spirit. In the Marxian, it is the sublimated material life of man in society, or labor in the abstract. In regard to a society where productive labor would be obligatory, a society which is certainly possible, the statement falls to the ground. Accordingly, in a capitalist society, the "condition of labor" is wage labor and the basis of appropriation is private property. The free and full development of the individual presupposes a society based upon human equality and human freedom. The chapter shows that Marx postulated an identity between human freedom and the emancipation of labor, between the servitude of labor and human inequality. This identity arises from the way he conceived the social world and individuality to be related to the labor process.
