21 Replies to “Week 3 – Class and Work”

  1. In the reading called “Estranged Labour” by Karl Marx, he describes the corrupt process of how workers are turned into slaves. On page 33 he wrote,”The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates.” I believe this quote is talking about how big corporation business hire immigrants or poor people in general and make them work for low wages for endless hours. The worker turns into a slave as long as he is producing endless amount of product for the company, and currently we have this issue going around in the world. As our world is growing and progressing ahead the things, materialism is rising for certain individuals who value those materialistic things such as clothes, bags, shoes and etc. Therefore we need more cheap workers to produce those things that are not worth the price they are sold for.
    (Maxr 33)

  2. From the “ Estranged Labor” by Karl Marx, the quote that I’ve chosen is “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an even cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates”(Marx 33). This demonstrates the idea that the hard work and the infinite items produced doesn’t belong to the worker itself instead to someone else as the company owners or someone in upper class etc. So the more work the workers do , the less credit they get. And they earn less than the amount of hard work they put in everyday into the companies or any other place. Moreover, the more wealth that the worker earns for the owners, the greater the disparity in wealth between the owners and workers. There is lacking a middle class but only the poor and rich exist. Workers can earn money which may seem to be “alot” but that amount only allows them to survive and pay their monthly bills. They survive from paycheck to paycheck while the owners keep increasing their capital value. Also,the commodity that the workers produce, they lose control of it so that the owners have the control and they fully earn the credit. Workers are working for long hours with low wages and still they don’t fully get the credit or dont have the value that they deserve.This shows how the workers and the owners are divided. As workers work rapidly under someone else, which makes a huge difference. It shows how labor doesn’t have its end and how it’s taking over the world.

  3. In “Estranged Labour” A quote that I found interesting says “political economy conceals the estrangement in the nature of labour by not considering the direct relationship between the worker(labour) and production..” I choose this quote because it makes wealthy people have easier job but it’s worst for workers. they give support on capitalism and not workers. Before people used machines to work it was the worst thing because they just stand in a machine work and not even have communication. now people work together. The money he is getting by himself, Many workers needs to work daily and all day to get at least half. as we can see many people are suffering to get money maybe to pay rent and eat as wealthy people have millions on a bank and don’t even need it. people are very greedy for money and the ones that really need it can’t have it. At least if they work hard and it’s not even that much that workers are getting as wages. As the wages increases the materials too.

  4. “It is true that labour produces for the rich wonderful things, but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces, but for the worker, hovels”

    I picked this quote because it best describes the main subject. The harder the labor, the least the reward. The rich get richer and the poorer get poorer. Their hard work and effort is not for their own benefit, it belongs to another and is produced for another. It is an unjust way of life.

  5. From the “ Estranged Labor” by Karl Marx, the quote that I’ve chosen is “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an even cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates”(Marx 33). This demonstrates the idea that the hard work and the infinite items produced doesn’t belong to the worker itself instead to someone else as the company owners or someone in upper class and even more examples to begin with. The more work the workers do , the less credit they get for there hard work every day. They also earn less than the amount of hard work they put in everyday into the companies or any other place. Moreover, the more wealth that the worker earns for the owners, the greater the disparity in wealth between the owners and workers. There is a lacking in the middle class but only the poor and rich exist and the poor middle class work there hardest to get money that will get them little bit of money for all that hard work.

  6. In the reading “Estranged Labour” by Karl Marx, I found an interesting quote on page 33 The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an even cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates”. I chose this quote because it explain how much the workers work but don’t get enough credit, so they turn into slaves. The amount of hours that they do does not compare to their payment. It’s not fair that they work so many hours to get a minimum wage. This article shows that labor is still going on nowadays.

  7. In “ Estranged Labor” by Karl Marx, he really emphasizes the way workers are essentially slaves. The workers have been tirelessly working themselves to death and earning no credibility or even a raise in the work they do. A quote that I chose that supports this is “ the worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range (Marx 33)”. What this is essentially saying is that the goods that the workers are producing goods that are well over the majority’s income are treated with care unlike the workers that make them. It’s defective in the sense that the workers are treated like this, and the wealthy continue to make production and receive goods from these hard workers.

  8. “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an even cheaper commodity the more commodity he creates.” (Marx 33) I chose this quote because it shows that hardwork doesn’t always pay off. It demonstrated the twisted ideals of society.

  9. “Estranged Labour” by Karl Marx on page 38.
    “ The relationship of the worker to labour engenders the relation to it of the capitalist, or whatever one chooses to call the master labour.” The kind of work, workers do are really belong to the people who owns the ownership.
    Workers work hard, produce but still nothing belong to them. They don’t really get appreciation and money which they deserve.
    I chose this quote because in this modern world
    same things happening just like past.

  10. In the excerpt “Estranged Labour” by Karl Max he states “..therefore, we have to grasp the essential connection between private property, avarice(greed for wealth) and the separation of labour, capital and landed property ; between exchange and competition, value and the devaluation of men, monopoly and competition..” Marx is trying to explain how all the labor work is being divided up into these incredible things but none of it is benefiting the worker meanwhile its giving others more then they need.The worker just keeps working harder and seeming to end up more poor then before while the things the worker is making ends up in riches.The worker ends up loosing themselves due to the fact that they are being “alienated” while the owner is winning alot. They are also loosing touch with reality and just depend on working which becomes a big part of their daily life since their coerced into thinking that.

  11. ”The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates.” (Marx 33)

    I choose this quote simply because it supports the common quote that “the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer”. The harder the worker works , the more the rich benefits.. however the the poor stays poor or even become poorer. It’s sad but this is how it is today.

  12. The quote “The worker becomes a slave of his object, first, in that he receives an object of labor, i.e:, in that he receives work; and secondly, in that he receives means of subsistence. Therefore, it enables him to exist, first, as a worker; and, second, as a physical subject. The extremity of this bondage is that it is only as a worker that he continues to maintain himself as a physical subject, and that it is only as a physical subject that he is a worker” (Marx, 34), derived from Karl Marx’s piece, “Estranged Labor” exemplifies the large portion of the workforce that Marx classifies as the “property-less workers”. To the owners of corporations, the workers are seen merely for the benefits they provide to the company. Workers are discarded or fired when they no longer provide assets to a company. This is shown in today’s fast-paced environment with corporations like Amazon. Employees with the responsibility of working tasks similar to an assembly-line are timed for restroom visits, task completion times, and more. This all comes with the pressure and comparison to compete with amazon’s Robo-workers. Once they do not serve the purpose of the corporations’ high standards, they are discarded.

  13. “The object which labour produce- labour’s product- Confronts it as something alien< as power independent of the producer…"

    The product that is made from the worker, is just a product of what someone has created. The longer this individual stays at that positions they remain the same. Regardless if the product gains more and more revenue, that itself will remain independent from the laborer.

  14. From the reading “Estranged Labour” I picked this quote because it stood out to me from the entire reading. “so much does Labour’s realizations appear as a loss of reality that the worker loses reality to the point of starving to death”. Back in the day I know that your wage was barely anything. So to me this quote is basically saying that the worker loses themselves because they put so much effort or at least have to put so much effort, that they forget to have a meal, a sip of water, that they do not realize how long they’ve been working.

  15. In the reading “ Estranged Labor “ by Karl Marx showed a variety of issues those who would be classified as lower/middle class go through in terms of labor or what they receive from working under whoever or whatever company. The quote I chose was, “ The worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object. Hence, the greater this activity, the greater is the workers lack of objects. Whatever the product of his labor is, he is not. Therefore, the greater this product the less is he himself.” ( Marx 33 ). I chose this quote because it shows how someone can be turned into a materialistic object, basically turning a human into a work machine just made out of flesh and bones. They are alienated from who they truly are deep inside because their whole life is put into whatever product they’re producing for whatever big company or boss they are under. It’s a way of life where you’re technically caged in a world where you’re surrounded by nothing but big businesses, top tier companies using the backs of others to make profit instead of doing the dirty work themselves. The main issue is that these people range from middle to lower class, struggling in these industries producing materials yet receiving almost nothing in return for their hard work. Where’s their rights? It’s as if they can’t breathe or have a life of their own when working under such companies or people. Everything revolves around $$$$$ for the majority of these companies, they don’t care who does the work nor if they get taken care of, as long as they’re making money off of these workers, they could give a less care in the world what these labor workers go through. These workers are stuck in an enslaved mindset and its unfair. Those that work under such restrictions/beliefs lose themselves day by day because their all, goes into whatever product they have to construct, even if it means they only gain a few bucks from it in order to get by in life.

  16. In “ Estranged Labor” by Karl Marx, the quote that I felt best reflected the reading was “ The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an even cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates.” (Marx, 33). The reading/quote can be translated as the more the worker works (who is considered as a commodity) the less belongs to him. The harder the worker works the more will belong to the higher-ups, the company itself. They work and live from check to check while doing all the hard labor while the wealthier don’t have to do much in order to gain what the workers have worked for.

  17. In “ Estranged Labor” by Karl Marx, the quote that I felt most relevant to this timed take of modern society at the time would be “Social Structure and the State are continually evolving out the life process of definite individuals”.

    I feel that this perfectly reflects Karl Marx’s take on such a pre technologically united society, and how eventually society outgrew his perspective on it to only vaguely fit his descriptions. I still highly respect his awareness of the system and his tellings about it because without it we would have never had the topic to discuss or build off of, especially to relate it to our current society which built off of this industrial society.

  18. In The Reading “Estranged Labor” a quote that I feel that resonated the reading was “Man is a Species being not only because in practice and in theory he adopts the species as his object”.
    This shows that Mankind as a species will always treat themselves as beings usually think of being free and having a nature that is so. Showing a sort of twisted idea o certain groups of people.

  19. In “estranged labor” by Karel max that quote that talks about more about this passage is,”with the increasing of the value of the world
    Of things proceed in direct proportion the devolution of the world of men”. This quote shows how the world is getting more expense and the labor of the workers is getting harder and harder and it not easy.

  20. I feel like Karl Marx in this particular reading is talking about from the product of labor refers to how immigrants are the ones that work the hardest in these labor jobs from coming from different countries that have little money and they were and still are put through so much and don’t get paid enough for it like taking care of their families.

  21. In Marx”s “ Estranged Labor” he sheds light on the ongoing turmoil that lower income factory workers have gone through in their work place and how their actually labor has made them a product themselves. Marx claims “In both respects, therefore, the worker becomes a servant of his object, first, in that he receives an object of labor, i.e., in that he receives work, and, secondly, in that he receives means of subsistence. This enables him to exist, first as a worker; and second, as a physical subject. The height of this servitude is that it is only as a worker that he can maintain himself as a physical subject and that it is only as a physical subject that he is a worker.” (Marx 34). This problem will evolve and still apply today for most people in the U.S.

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