Labor power has become a commodity.  Its uses are no longer organized according to the needs and desires of those who sell it, but rather according to the needs of its purchasers, who are, primarily, employers seeking to expand the value of their capital.  And it is the special and permanent interest of these purchasers to cheapen this commodity.  The most common mode of cheapening labor power is exemplified by the Babbage principle: break it up into its simplest elements.  And, as the capitalist mode of production creates a working population suitable to its needs, the Babbage principle is, by the very shape of this “labor market,” enforced upon the capitalists themselves (57).