#KarlMarx never heard of Amazon or McDonald’s.

But his 150-year-old theory explains exactly how they operate—and why workers stay broke while billionaires get richer.

Here’s how Marxism maps perfectly onto modern capitalism:

🔁 Surplus Value

Workers at Amazon or McDonald’s create way more value than they’re paid.

That gap—the extra value they produce but don’t get—is what Marx called surplus value.

That’s where profit comes from. Not innovation. Labor.

📦 Amazon

A warehouse worker might pick, pack, and ship hundreds of orders per shift.

They get paid $17/hour.

But that labor creates thousands in revenue.

The surplus flows up—to Bezos, to investors, to stock buybacks.

🍔 McDonald’s

Same thing. Workers flip burgers, take orders, keep things running.

But wages stay low while corporate pockets profits.

Each shift generates value far beyond what workers take home.

📉 Exploitation Isn’t a Buzzword

It’s a formula:

Value produced – wages paid = profit for the owner

The smaller your cut, the higher theirs.

That’s not broken. That’s the system working exactly as designed.

🤖 Mechanization

Amazon loves automation. Fewer workers, faster output.

Marx saw this coming too:

As machines take over, unemployment rises → labor becomes cheaper → profits increase.

🧊 Alienation

In both jobs, workers have no say in what they produce, how they produce it, or what it means.

You’re a cog in a machine.

That’s Marx’s concept of alienation—your work doesn’t belong to you.

💥 Crisis Ahead?

Marx believed capitalism would eventually collapse under its contradictions.

Soaring profits + sinking wages = rising unrest.

Sound familiar?

TL;DR:

Amazon and McDonald’s don’t just prove Marx right.

They’re the playbook for how modern capitalism squeezes the many to enrich the few.

Follow for more & remember,

“The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces.”

— Karl Marx