18 Replies to “Class and Work – leave reply by 9pm on Monday, March 30”

  1. Strannged Labour By KArl Marx (1844)
    “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increasess in power and range. The worker pur his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object” Back in 2088-2011 when our economy collapsed, we saw how many corporates opt it for asking their fuul times employees that were earning a percentage of commision that if they want to keep their full time jobs they were going to lower their salary and alsothe comision was taken away plus they have to produce even more than before because their goals was higher per month. If we go back in history we have that on March 25th 1911 we had the :”Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, where 146 mostly young women lost their life due a intentional fire in the building where they were working 11 to 12 hours per day and get paid a misery, they lived in a real labor exploitation and were cresting a Union because the abuse on the amount of hours to work pluse the misery of salary they were receiving was inhuman. By coincidence, 2o minutes before theur shifts was over and on the day they were supposed to get pay is when the fire took place and killed them, they were producing by sawing quatities of blouses for working women and in compensation they were long hours on their feet 6 days a week and many times their money was stolen and they were beat up to the point thatone of them got 6 broken ribs.

  2. Stranged Labour By KArl Marx (1844)
    “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increasess in power and range. The worker pur his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object” Back in 2088-2011 when our economy collapsed, we saw how many corporates opt it for asking their full time employees that were earning a percentage on commision that if they want to keep their full time jobs they were going to lower their salary & also the comision was going to be taken away plus they have to produce even more than before because their goals wasgoing to be higher now per month. If we go back in history we have that on March 25th 1911 we had the :”Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, where 146 mostly young women (Jews & Italian immigrants the youngest 14 yrs old) lost their life due an intentional fire in the building where they were working 11 to 12 hours per day and get paid a misery, they lived in a real labor exploitation and they were creating a Union because of the abuse on the amount of hours of work + the misery of salary they were receiving was inhuman. By coincidence, 20 minutes before their shifts was almost over and on the day they were supposed to get pay is when the fire took place and killed them, they were producing by sawing quatities of blouses for working women and in compensation they were long hours on their feet 6 days a week and many times their money was stolen and they were beat up the Strike leader Clara Lemlick ; and broke 6 of her ribs.They used to be harrased & assault by gangster & prostitutes on thepicket line . The year before they had staged a major strike, seeking shorter hours, better pay, & the ability to form unions. The building only had one exit and no sprinkler system was at the building to had prevented the fire, this is exactly what a worker means many times to his or her employee.

  3. “…that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind.” In the capitalist society that we live in, people go to work in which they do monotonous laborious tasks for hours at a time, in essence leaving behind who they really are and becoming something outside of themselves. The tasks that are given do nothing for self expression and free thought and instead make the worker feel like they can only be themselves when they are home or outside of work. A worker spends half of the day, half of their lives even, being someone outside of themselves in order to make a living and sustain themselves. This makes a worker feel like the only thing that truly belongs solely to them are mediocre tasks like eating, drinking, or getting dressed up, leaving them as nothing but a shell/persona created by labor. Most people who work 9-5 jobs cannot separate themselves from their work attributes that have inevitably become part of their personality, because most of their lives are consumed by laborious tasks that puts them outside of themselves. They are not allowed to be themselves in their labor, which forever gives them a “manager personality”, or a “customer service personality”, or a “teacher personality”, etc. It essentially becomes a part of their being.

  4. ” The only wheels which political economy sets in motion are avarice and the war amongst the avaricious-competition” What Marx means is that political economy in its entirety only works for and the competition between the rich in the race for power and money. While for the workers it only leaves in the position as a commodity to fuel the rich wealth.

  5. “thus in this double respect, 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 substances, therefore enables him to exist.”
    I think that this quote connects to a cycle that worker are. in which they feel like they are free by making money producing for others not realizing that there are just been a toll being used

  6. “We also understand, therefore, that wages and private property are identical. Indeed, where the product, as the object of labor, pays for labor itself, there the wage is but a necessary consequence of labor’s estrangement”. Society divides itself into four different alienations under the economic system of private ownership. The first alienation is where the workers are alienated from the products of their labor. The second is where workers are alienated from the labor process. The third is where workers are alienated from their bodies and human potential and the last one is where workers are alienated from other workers. They all work in labor and result products belonging to the capitalist.

  7. Quote: on Marx’s Stranged Labour:
    “The more the worker produces the less he has to consume , the more values he creates the more valueless the more unworthy he becomes, the better formed his product, the more deformed becomes the worker”. I chose this quote because in the case of “retail” any employee can eventually become a Manager however the salary of a Manager and a regular full timer is not that much different. The only different will be that as a Manager he will be repsonsible of more duties including that if any employee called out sick and that is his/her day off you as a Manager must show to work to cover up for that other employee ( to cover up his or her shift) you are still geting the same amount of money even when you have to cancel appointments or cancel trips and plans with your kids and family. You have to deal with schedules for your personal (employees) and in most cases, even when a Manager is on his or her vacation time they are still working from wherever they are because the goals/numbers must be on the plus+ NOT on the negative- numbers. Many part time employees on the other hand, do Not have any benefits like, private insurance, 401K, commision etc, still they have a high goal and still they must meet all the rest of responsabilities like a full timer or even as a Manager. Now a Manager is” as good as his or her last sale”, he becomes a selling machine, a workaholic, a lifeless human being that even when his shift is over he still working from home, instead of taking care of his family, and if he still make his monthly goals, the next month/ season/ the company expect him to do twice that amount . They expect him to come with more events, ideas, more gain (profit) for those brands. Meanwhile he is lifeless, worry all the time, stress out thinking how he will beat his own numbers, what else to do to keep on making the sales happening.

  8. “Thus in this double respect the worker becomes the slave of his object, first, in that he receives an object of labour,” Karl Marx ( 1844) page 34. This comes to be true in the middle class or the lower class when trying to stay afloat. Statics have shown that many Americans live paycheck by paycheck. Defining that in order to keep the things we want or simply live to be more simple than that we intoxicate our selves with our jobs to make sure we keep up that stigma of the “American Dream”.

  9. “The worker can create nothing without nature, without the sensuous external world. It is the material on which labour is manifested, in which it is active, from which and by means of which it produces.” .. the more i read into the text after this quote, the better i understood the connection between labour, physical subsistence, life, and the worker him/herself. We put ourselves in an endless cycle of batting our desires of progression and subsistence within our work work/labour and with out very our subsistence. The more we pour into labour the less we pour into self.

  10. “As a result, therefore, man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions – eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc.; and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal.” The working class spend too much time working that their lives are revolved around their labor. They lose themselves because they are always focused on work. The only times they can be themselves is when they’re eating, drinking, etc. They belong to and depend on someone else.

  11. The person who works , the worker gets lost in his work. The rich grow richer of the backs of those who become a slave to their work. As those who have more only look to have more in contrast to those who are just trying to sustain themselves.

  12. “Thus in this double respect the worker becomes a slave of his object, first, in that he receives an object of labour… 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”. Individuals continue to work or become a slave to the job while the boss or company owners reap most of the benefits. They live most of their lives working instead of enjoying it while their bosses becomes rich and the workers gain just a small portion of what their work and time is actually worth.

  13. “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range.” This quote here is one that should open many eyes to the hard working people across the world. Far too many people around the globe work for very lucrative corporations and yet their labor is nowhere near compensated or even acknowledged as it should be. In this capitalist society, the executives, owners, and the directors are indulged by their wealth, while the worker probably hates his job yet continues to grind through just to get by life. The unfortunate reality is that the hard working person never gets to enjoy the actual fruit of their labor the way the owners do. I recently saw a meme on social media in which an employee tells his boss “that is a nice Lamborghini you have, sir.” The boss responded saying ” Thank you, kind gentleman. I guarantee that if you work extremely hard, remain dedicated, and pour your blood, sweat, and tears into working, by next year I will be able to purchase another one.” That meme was a visual representation of exactly what Marx is saying in this quote. The harder the worker works, the poorer he becomes while the honcho gets richer.

  14. “The more the worker produces the less he has to consume, the more values he creates the more valueless the more unworthy he becomes, the better formed his product, the more deformed becomes the worker”.(Karl Marx) This quote goes further depth into the meaning of workers, it emphasizes the perspective of a worker in where he or she loses more than gain. Workers produce more than what they receive to consume. The more the worker works the more valueless he becomes because of the physical work that a person goes through. Along with his body becoming deformed because of the hard labor.

  15. “Do not let us go back to a fictitious primordial condition as the political economist does, when he tries to explain. Such a primordial condition explains nothing. He merely pushes the question away into a grey nebulous distance.” It sounds like Marx is telling people to question until they receive an answer. There are some politicians who will beat around the bush until they can’t afford to any longer. Some wanting the people to remain ignorant and silent.

  16. According to it states, “Lastly, the external character of labour for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s that it does not belong to him that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another” to show that this worker is being treated unfairly that his doing the work but not owning it. This is significant because it’s the wealthiest that are the most to own companies without allowing the workers that do the work to have the same shares earnings.

  17. “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 think this quote is significant because it shows that the workers can produce more but still be poor.

  18. “Freeman and slave patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant apposition to one another,carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden,now open fight, a fight that each time ended , either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”

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