On the Cover of The Soil and the Worker

Volume 25, no. 1, The Soil and the Worker

The capitalist transformation of the process of production also appears as a martyrology for the producer; the instrument of labor appears as a means of enslaving, exploiting and impoverishing the worker; the social combination of labor: processes appears as an organized suppression of his individual vitality, freedom and autonomy. … All progress in capitalist agricul­ture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress towards ruining the more long­ lasting sources of that fertility. … Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth—the soil and the worker.

—Karl Marx, Capital: Volume One