s with respect to their independence. Marx first notes that capital is a social product, that is, capital only exists within some social system. The result of this is that capital is not a personal but a social power. Making property public then, as the communist wants to do, is not changing the private to the social; it is only modifying its already inherent social character. Returning to the condition of the wage laborer, Marx argues that "the average price of wage labor is the minimum wage, i.e. the quantum of the means of subsistence which is the absolutely requisite to keep the laborer in bare existence as a laborer" (97). The proletariat, then, is absolutely dependent on the capitalist for his very survival. He does not acquire any property because his wage must be given immediately to his own subsistence. Communists want to ensure that the laborer exists for more than merely the increase of bourgeois capital. Labor should not be directed towards the accumulation of wealth on the part of the capitalist. Rather, capital, or property in general, should be directed toward the enrichment of the laborer's life. Abolition of private property means, then, only the abolition of bourgeoisie property. The freedom that the bourgeois believe is underwritten by private property is a very narrow freedom, one available only to a very small subset of the population. Moreover, this form of property depends on its radically unequal distribution. The ultimate point, as Marx says, is that "communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that is does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such appropriation" (99). Marx also considers the criticism that a communist society would promote general idleness. This strikes Marx as laughable considering that in bourgeois society those who work do not acquire anything while those who acquire things do not work. In the end, the force of thi...
