Labor and History

According the Marx, Labor is the source of all Economic Value.  Now, Labor, as he conceives it, can be most generally defined as 'the deliberate effort to modify some given material'.  Furthermore, modification spans degrees of differentiation, from mechanical repetition, to radical transformation.  Accordingly, History can be interpreted as the production of Labor, e. g. the bare repetition of stable hereditary rule, the complete destruction and reconstruction effected by an invader, etc.  Thus, what is distinctive about a Socialist revolution is not that it is a product of Labor, but that it is the perhaps unique case of the Working Class being the agent of modification, rather than its sufferer.  So, a Labor Theory of History does not under-appreciate the rise of Socialism, while it escapes some of the problems that beset Dialectical Materialism, e. g., notably, reconciling the concept of an immanent necessary force with that of the self-determination of the insurgent class.  Likewise, a Labor Theory of History has the systematic advantage over Dialectical Materialism of deriving both an Economic Theory and a Theory of History from one principle--Labor.