Estranged Labor looked at the struggle between property owners and the property-less workers. The worker puts his life into projects but does not wonhis own skill which leads him to a life of hostility. Four kinds of alientation were mentioned 1. Of the worker from his product of work 2. of the worker from the activity of production (they only perform this activity of production as a means of survival) 3. from species being (work is supposed to amount to a putpose in life for human beings but not when they don't own their own skills) and 4. of man to man (the worker is hostile towards the ones that own their work). In Classes, Marx talks about how the capitalist mode of production creates 3 main classes of modern society. These are created by "revenues and their sources of revenues." The Secret of Primitive Accumulation, the process of changing money into capital, which turns into surplus value, which turns back into capital turns into a repeating cycle. The only way out of the cycle is with a primitive accumulation, or creating a separation between the “producer and the means of production." And in The Division of Labor and Manufacture; the amount of workers under 1 capitalist must increase in order to have success. Workers are changed by these manufacturing alterations and must lose some of their identity to fit their job. Capitalism makes the worker like a machine and creates surplus at the expense of the workers.
In class we talked about Marx thinking the economy was the most important factor in a society. This has become very relevant in just the few readings of his we have done. Again in Estranged Labor, he talks about a struggle between two classes (the property owners and the property-less workers) that keeps society moving. Generally people like to look at things from the upper hand perspective, and even in the Communist Manifesto I felt a lot of its focus was on the bourgeoisie. But in Estranged Labor, Marx looks at things from the “property-less workers” view point and the struggles they encounter. This put a new spin on things for me when thinking economically and how our society is run.
The Secret of Primitive Accumulation says that this is the only way out of the cycle of money, capital, and surplus value. I’m not so sure I completely understand how the division of the laborers from the means of actual production solves this problem. Then I started trying to think about this in terms of our society; is this division clear in our working culture?
I'd say the division is still quite clear, but maybe less so in this country than in others. There's a documentary I've seen clips of that captures the perspectives of Mardi Gras party goers as well as female workers in a Chinese factory on the beads passed out during the festivities. The Chinese workers slave over these beads, and before the documentary had no idea why they were being produced. The knowledge that they were being paid little to nothing to produce beads that are on the whole meaningless to most of the people who receive them further alienated from their work. No doubt they don't see their labor in that factory as their purpose in life, but they seemed more intelligent than one of Marx's typical factory workers. Maybe this is indicative of our increasingly globalized society, or maybe Marx sells workers short?
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a very interesting documentary. I also found it difficult to apply Marx's ideas to our society in the US because labor laws protect workers. However, I believe his ideas can definitely be applied on a global scale. Due to globalization, thousands of factory workers are exploited and greatly alienated the products they create.
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