A Sweatshop Romance

Abraham Cahan's "A Sweatshop Romance" is a short story which at first can be easily mistaken for a simple piece of work. However, upon closer inspection it is clear that this story is a Marxist text which explores many of the fundamental flaws of society that Marxism tries to identify. Several key passages hint at concerns related to class-consciousness which serves to reinforce the Marxist philosophy and although some could argue that this piece of text is propagandistic in nature, it does have several passages which lend moral credibility to the story. Further, the fact that the characters of Cahan's "A Sweatshop Romance" are Jewish-American has very little bearing on the story, which is more about a broad-based class critique.
The Marxist doctrine describes the concept of the Labor Theory of Value which contends that since all wealth in society is created by labor, the working class should be entitled to the rewards instead of the ruling class. Cahan's story describes a setting wh...