Justice and Dehumanization

The Capitalist violation of the principle 'to each according to his needs' that is the primary focus of Marx' attention is the concept of Labor as a cheapest possible inert commodity. The more recent gap between living wage and minimum wage only begins to suggest the incommensurability of the two concepts of Retributive Justice. Another contemporary violation is in the derivation of the Need-Satisfaction relation from the Consumer-Product one, in which, e. g. the availability of medicine to a sick person is as much a function of market vicissitudes as is that of a pet rock to a wealthy person. A more contemporary formulation of the Marxist criticism of Capitalism is that the latter tends to dehumanize, even if it does not devolve into overt slavery.