bring one's own hide to market

Probably from a German proverb, notably adapted by Karl Marx to describe the exploited worker who must sell himself (his own hide) in the labor market; the denotative metaphoric analogy is to bringing animal hides to market, but simultaneously also the self-evident connotative overtones are of chattel slavery and prostitution, in which human corporeality is exploited and personhood is devalued; in the quote below, the word hiding lends both its literal and figurative senses to the parsing: both literal skinning (of an animal) and also flogging and fleecing (of a person, that is, beating and robbing): : 1867, Karl Marx, trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, Capital, vol. 1 ch. 6: :: [T]he possessor of labour-power follows […] , timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but — a hiding.