Modern approaches to the labor process owe much to the work of Karl Marx. For Marx (1990 [1867]), the capitalist production process involves a labor process, or a specific mode of work organization, and valorization, in which surplus value is appropriated by capital. Valorization is possible because capital owns the products and/or services created by labor as a result of their acquisition of labor power, or the capacity for work which the worker sells for wages. The products and services that result from the application of labor power are sold for profit by capital within the marketplace. Productive labor thus creates value, which is associated with the use value of the products they make or services they provide, while capital is parasitic on the value labor creates through its control of the means of production. Labor is “free” only in the sense that it can choose to sell its capacity to work to anyone, and this may be preferable to alternatives such as slavery, serfdom, or starvation. However, laborers cannot then work as they choose. Labor is commoditized within the capitalist mode of production and organized by capitalists to ensure that value is extracted. Indeed, the continued existence of capital, in any form, depends on this ongoing exploitation: the alternative is the flight of capital.