Why was the capitalist worker relation called exploitative in Marxist analysis?

Correct answer: Because capitalists received profit from workers' labour

In Marxist analysis, the capitalist system separates the people who own factories, machines, and money from the people who work in them. Workers sell their ability to work because they do not own the means of production. They receive wages, but the value created by their labour can be greater than the wages paid to them. The owner keeps the remaining value as profit. Marx regarded this unequal arrangement as exploitation and connected it with conflict between the capitalist and working classes.

Therefore, option A is correct because it states that capitalists received profit from workers’ labour. Option B reverses the relationship: workers generally receive wages rather than pay them to capitalists. Options C and D are incorrect because equal income and cooperative ownership do not describe the capitalist relation discussed by Marx. The important idea is that ownership allowed capitalists to benefit from labour while workers had limited control over production and its returns.