Aristotle made a distinction between poíesis (the creation of works from nature) and praxis (self-determined action)

This relation was however considered necessary for progress; its potential sublation was not seen as a historical potential enabled by the development of the productive forces

[...] Labour is a necessarily alienated form of work, in which humans do not control and own the means and results of production. It is a historic form of the organization of work in class societies. Work in contrast is a much more general concept common to all societies. It is a process, in which humans make use of technologies for transforming nature and society in such a way that goods and services are created that satisfy human needs. [...] The realm of freedom really begins only where labour, which is a form of work that is determined by necessity and external expediency, ends.

[...] labour faces a dialectic of poverty and wealth: it "is absolute poverty as object" (labour does not own what it produces) and at the same time "the general possibility of wealth" (only labour, not capital, produces and is a necessary condition of wealth) [...]

Herbert Marcuse (1955) argues that the performance principle means that Thanatos governs humans and society and that alienation unleashes aggressive dreams within humans

[...] Heinrich's basic point is that value does not exist in the individual commodity, but only in exchange, and the all-sided exchange of commodities (in contrast to the exchange of isolated products) exists only as reference of commodities to money" [...] Money is "not simply a formal translation of an immanent magnitude of value that has already measured the quantity of value. It is rather the necessary and above all the only possible form of the appearance of the commodity value, there can be no form of appearance of value that is independent of exchange" [...]

[...] Capital aims at lowering the price of wage labour (wages) and increasing the price of commodities in order to increase profits. Workers can refuse work in the form of strikes and thereby attack the wage mediation and money profit, and they can refuse or eliminate prices by trying to obtain use-values below market prices or for free (e.g., by refusing to buy certain products and producing them together with others). So money is not only a medium of circulation, but also a "mediator between the classes" [...] and an object of class struggle.

[...] prices cannot simply be derived and calculated from labour values, but depend on the politics of class struggle. [...]