Marx in his scientific study of the expropriation of surplus value (Capital VOL 1) uncovers the one and only source of profit - surplus value! Put simply, workers create more value than they receive back in pay, that extra wealth they have created becomes their free gift to the capitalist.

And does the latter say thanks? Well, NO, he tries to extort even more! Marx has either been maligned or ignored by modern economists, who merely rationalise capitalism on behalf of their capitalist bosses, but his findings are indisputable for they can be tested successfully against reality - his analysis checks out, scientifically and mathematically, because he got it right! This is why Marx, or rather his findings, are so maligned - the capitalist class don't want their trick to be found out on any scale. Read the book(or chapter) and check it out for yourself! There is, therefore, no such thing as a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.

The class struggle is present all the time, though workers will be more, or less, successful at fighting it at differing times. But it reaches into our lives all the time, every day - our income and our debts, our health, our access to education that is not biased, our experiences at work, the stresses we end up enduring (or not) and even our life expectancy. Never mind what it does to our hopes, dreams and aspirations, not only for ourselves but for our fellow human beings with whom we share this planet. Capitalists are impelled to make more and more profits, they cannot do so if workers are eating into them asking for more money, even if that is to keep up with the bills and the ever increasing cost of actually living.

So the capitalist must always be trying to depress wages and salaries to the lowest levels they can. This is not in any workers interest, ever. What with Blair following the fatten - the - fat - cats policies of his predecessors, and trade unions becoming eunuchs in the industrial harem, many being led by "Uncle Toms", the capitalist class is winning hands down at the moment. The new reality - work insecurity, more low payed work, more temporary and short term jobs, more attacks on benefits, armies of the unemployed hidden by sleight of hand and description - is nothing more than the old reality carried out more ruthlessly. It is only set in stone if we let it be.

Of course the working class are helping to support all this. Capitalism can only work with the (willing or unwilling) support of the working class. Are you supporting it, willingly? If so your fellow workers have nothing to thank you for, at all. It may seem fair enough if you are voting for the politicians who are wanting to administer capitalism if you think there is something in it for you. On the other hand it is other workers who have to suffer the repercussions of what you are supporting.

Might the problem be that you never think about what class you really are, or you don't care? There are many people around who imagined themselves as comfortably middle class and now find themselves unemployed, redundant or persuaded to take early retirement (very often harassed to take it!)Ill health can be enough to shatter illusions of what class you think you're in. If you have no choice of whether you work, and somebody else has the right to exploit you against your will as regards work conditions and remuneration(and a whole raft of other things),then you are working class. It's not a state of mind,or a lifestyle choice, it's an economic fact!