Labor and Alienation

The term "fruits" of Labor is actually from Psalms; Marx uses "product".  In any case, as has been previously discussed, if anything is one's ownmost, it is exertion, and, hence, any Locomotility that ensues.  Thus, one's Labor is one's property by nature, not by convention.  But, the product of one's Labor, which consists in a modification of some material, is not equivalently one's property; for, the material is not also one's own.  In other words, as Hegel better than Marx recognizes, the new form of a product is one's own, but not the matter of the product, e. g. the shape of a table that one has made is one's own, but not the wood that has been re-shaped.  But, if the product is not one's own, then it cannot be alienated from one.  Nor can one's Labor itself be alienated from one--at every moment that it is transpiring, one's exertion is singularly one's own.  However, what can be alienated is the profits from the sale of the product.  For, profit is created by surplus-value, which is created by the Labor that transforms some raw material, to which no wage is commensurate.  So, the fundamental alienation with respect to Labor is that between the wage for Labor and the sale of its product, an Ontological or Psychological difference, not a quantitative one.