Author of The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America. Delegate to the Troy Area Labor Council for UUP / AFT- Local 2190. Officer for Contingents, UUP Albany Chapter.
![Modern professionals, intellectuals and artists, insofar as they are members of the proletariat,
live only so long as they find work, and... fnd work only so long as their labor increases capital. These workers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. (479]
Thus they can write books, paint pictures, discover physical or historical laws, save lives, only if someone with capital will pay them. But the pressures of bourgeois society are such that no one will pay them unless it pays to pay them-that is, unless their works somehow help to "increase capital." They must "sell themselves piecemeal" to an employer willing to exploit their brains for profit. They must scheme and hustle to present themselves in a maximally profitable light; they must compete (often brutally and unscrupulously) for the privilege of being bought, simply in order to go on with their work. Once the work is done they are, like all other workers, separated from the products of their labor. Their goods and services go on sale, and it is "the vicissitudes of compe-tition, the Auctuations of the market," rather than any intrinsic truth or beauty or value—or, for that matter, any lack of truth or beauty or value-that will determine their fate. Marx does not expect that great ideas and works will fall stillborn for want of a market: the modern bourgeoisie is remarkably resourcetul in wringing profit out of thought. What will happen instead is that creative processes and products will be used and transformed in ways that will dumfound or horrify their creators. But the creators will be powerless to resist, because they must sell their labor power in order to live.
Intellectuals occupy a peculiar position in the working class, one that generates special privileges, but also special ironies.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4ec4i7k7upvxutj23xjktt53/bafkreiarsryrijeqqcuu6jbgkw7khk47x6ehgugljxtrcofsjgmuhqd5bu)
Author of The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America. Delegate to the Troy Area Labor Council for UUP / AFT- Local 2190. Officer for Contingents, UUP Albany Chapter.