We as humans have come to a conclusion that labor is our life-activity, Marx says “that is what keeps us alive, and that is what makes us humans”. For him, labor is for someone else, that we really do not receive benefits from our labor, that is to say we sell that labor to someone else that benefits for our labor. As society progresses, labor has simply become a commodity, just like any other commodity. One sells his labor to the highest bidder there is, which is its employer. Labor is useless unless there is external goods for us to work on, our job which is adding values to the external goods. We call that added value our labor, which we exchange that value for money, in order to survive. I think the only valuable thing to us is our body, Locke says “The only thing that really belongs to us is our body and the activities our bodies do”.

Nike, Wal-Mart, Adidas, and many other corporations that are involved in the clothing industry, they all have one thing in common. That’s paying for cheap labor in order to fulfill their hunger for maximum profit. They have hired so much cheap labor overseas, and sweatshops are a product of it. Their one-day wage might not even be able to afford a McDonald meal here. They do not work there so they can buy a car or any other luxury products; they work there so they can afford meals, in other words, the basic needs for life. Someone might argue that they could find other jobs with higher wage, why would they sell their labor, their life activity, for uneven reward? The answer is simple, in order to live.