Quibbles with Karl

Marx predicates his entire argument on the alienation of labor on an idea of exploitation. According to Marx, in other words, the capitalist must exploit the worker in order to accrue a profit. He uses the labor theory of value (i.e. the "just" price of something is directly proportionate to the amount of labor put into it) to justify this conclusion. If the marginal cost of a commodity, for example, is $100 per unit in Marx's scheme, the capitalist pays the worker only $90 per unit and pockets the extra $10. 

Marx is surely not arguing that the act of creation is a personally destructive process. Rather, he argues that labor is destructive to the worker when the value of his labor is worth more than the worker receives in return. Here's the rub though--the labor theory of value is false. Value is not absolute, it is subjective. There is no such thing as a "just price" for something. Rather, the price of a good is determined by its utility to the person buying it. To quote the Austrian economist Carl Menger (courtesy of Wikipedia):

Whether a diamond was found accidentally or was obtained from a diamond pit with the employment of a thousand days of labor is completely irrelevant for its value. In general, no one in practical life asks for the history of the origin of a good in estimating its value, but considers solely the services that the good will render him and which he would have to forgo if he did not have it at his command. (Principles of Economics).

Once we debunk his theory of value, Marx's entire exploitation scheme falls apart completely. Real wages and standards of living have risen, not fallen, over the last 150 years for the vast, vast majority of the worlds peoples, even during the Industrial Revolution that inspired Marx. His failure to grasp the subjectivity of value underscores his misunderstanding of capitalism.