In “Art vs. Trade” by James Weldon Johnson, two entities in a society are examined. These two characters have a challenging relationship with each other due to their respective roles within society. However, they share similar behaviors and patterns. To understand what causes the interactions between these two entities and how each are affected by it, this poem must be analyzed with the Marxist Theory.
The second stanza of “Art vs. Trade” introduces the powerful people in the society of the text. In Marxist Theory, the powerful people, also known as the bourgeoisie, are the people who “own property [and] control the means of production” or base (Dobie 89). In “Art vs. Trade,” Trade is the powerful person or entity. Trade is described as living
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Trade” are not depicted in equal ways. In this piece, Trade is seen as a monstrous entity. Johnson first describes Trade as an Octopus that has “contaminated” the workers and prevents truthfulness (Lines 16-17). In the final stanza of the poem, Trade “stalks like a giant through the land” and upholds the wealthy while crushing those who are poor (Johnson Lines 29-32). In this poem, the bourgeoisie are not to be admired, but feared. They are depicted as being violent and deadly towards the members of the proletariat, while uplifting the wealthy class. On the other hand, the proletariat is the ones meant to have sympathy in this poem. Art has no source of protection form Trade, and is left dying in his grasp (Johnson Line 19). Art’s horrid treatment is meant to invoke sympathy for the proletariats and how they are treated in a capitalist …show more content…
In “Art vs. Trade” the bourgeoisie is consciously exploiting the working class. As mentioned earlier the entity of Trade believes that the world was created in order to fulfill his needs (Johnson Line 7). As a result he knowingly abuses Art and other people of the working class to get what he desires by overworking them. However, other members of the proletariat do not address their lack of power. The Marxist theory recognizes that due to the bourgeoisie’s hold over the superstructure, it has the ability to “entrap the proletariat into holding the sense of identity and worth” that the powerful class wants them to have (Dobie 93). In the poem the person responsible for addressing the maltreatment of the working class is the narrator. In the third stanza it is the narrator who ask, "is there no power to rescue her rescue her, protect, defend her" when Trade is strangling Art. Moreover it is the narrator who causes the audience to feel sympathy for the working class people by describing the abuse that they face. The narrator realizes the lack of power that the working class has and is the only one within the text to ask for a change to be
Vermeer’s Hat offers a unique look at the rise of global trade through Brook’s eyes. Brook uses each of the paintings to describe to the audience a different picture of how the world began progressing. Most think of Vermeer as an isolated artist, with no real connection to the world outside of the walls of his mother-in-law’s house. However, as Brook shows us throughout the story, this could not be further from the truth. Brook relies on the paintings to interpret the rise of global trade to show the audience how architecture has contributed to the rise of global trade, how specific objects in the paintings related to trade, and how geography influenced trade.
Life is not always easy, at some point, people struggle in their life. People who are in the lower class have to struggle for a job every day and people who are in upper class also have their own problems to deal with. These ideas are very clear in Mary Oliver’s “Singapore”, Philip Schultz’s “Greed” and Philip Levine “What Work Is”. In "Singapore" a woman is likely lower class because she works at the airport and her job is to clean the bathroom. In both “Greed” and “What Work Is”, the speakers make the same conclusion about the struggle in the lower class. “Greed” furthermore discusses how Hispanics get a job first before whites and blacks because they take lower wages. All three poems deal with class in term of the society. The shared idea
...es Art an inner power struggle. Subsequently, Art becomes resentful. Art’s resentment towards Vladek does not allow him to emotionally mature. Yet through writing Art forgives his father and becomes a man.
Marx states that the bourgeoisie not only took advantage of the proletariat through a horrible ratio of wages to labor, but also through other atrocities; he claims that it was common pract...
While this is a dramatized statement regarding the plight of the worker under the new machine driven industrial system, rhetoric such as this did represent the fears of the working class. Over time, as industrialization appeared more common, there emerged more heated debates between the working class and business owners. The struggle between the two opposing classes of labor was the embodiment of the argument for national identity, according to Trachtenberg. His attention to detail of the divide between the lower class workers and the rich upper crust industrialists, serves to illustrate the varying changes which occurred across the country.
Fredrick Engels takes an historical materialist approach regarding the capitalist mode of production in a passage entitled Theoretical. Engels discusses the drastic separation between the bourgeoisie and proletarians as the feudal system shatters, allowing the notorious bourgeoisie to rein freely (Engels 292). This essay will begin by examining what historical materialism means and its connection to production and exchange, outlining the basic contradiction in capitalism according to Engels, as well as, analyzing the two contradictions that arise from the fundamental contradiction. Finally, the paper will conclude by demonstrating what Engels conceptualizes as the outcome of the historical development of capitalism, emphasizing how society can achieve this and what consequences will emerge if
Throughout history, social and economic affairs have separated people into the rich and poor, with those in authoritative roles struggling to defend their position. Those in power have often taken advantage of those under them. In Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, severe droughts led to massive agricultural collapse in Oklahoma. The Joads were forced to leave their home in search of employment opportunities in California. Migrants often faced prejudice and aggression from the Californians. Landowners, taking advantage of the migrants desperate need for work, often treated them poorly, paying them wages too low to live on and containing them within dirty camps. Workers suffering was not only evoked the failing land, but by human heartlessness towards one another. Large banks and businesses ignored the fact that “… a majority of the people are hungry and cold…” (Steinbeck 238) Large corporations were only concerned with their own financial prospects and not the well being of the people. In Miller’s Deat...
This essay will compare Marx’s understanding of the relationship between laborers and capitalists and Wollstonecraft’s understanding of the relationship between women and men. Both Marx and Wollstonecraft’s conception of these groups of people show a large gap between their treatment and status in society. Marx argues that capitalism is not created by nature and the unequal relationship between laborers and capitalists is not humane. In other words, it is actually the cause of social and economic problems during that time period. On a similar note, Wollstonecraft believes that the oppressive relationship between men and women is also unnatural. The standards for men and women are placed by society, not by biological facts. Society and how people
The novel focuses on the negative aspects of capitalism and sheds a positive light on communism. Steinbeck proves that there are many problems in capitalism with the way the migrants suffered during the era of the Great Depression. The economic slump, which many people assume affected the urban populations, was even harsher on the migrants. Steinbeck, throughout his novel, reveals the plight of the migrant workers during the Depression and how capitalism has crushed them. He reaches out to his readers and plants the idea that the glorified capitalism in America is not what it seems, and that any path, even communism, is preferable.
With this in mind, some perspective on the society of that time is vital. During this time the industrial revolution is taking place, a massive movement away from small farms, businesses operated out of homes, small shops on the corner, and so on. Instead, machines are mass-producing products in giant factories, with underpaid workers. No longer do people need to have individual skills. Now, it is only necessary that they can keep the machines going, and do small, repetitive work. The lower working class can no longer live a normal life following their own pursuits, but are lowered to working inhumane hours in these factories. This widens the gap between the upper and lower class-called bourgeois and proletariat-until they are essentially two different worlds. The bourgeois, a tiny portion of the population, has the majority of the wealth while the proletariat, t...
Commodity fetishism has blinded people into believing that value is a relationship between objects, when in reality, it is a relationship between people. This in turn, prevents people from thinking about the social labor condition workers have to endure; they only care and value about how much objects costs. They think that the source of the value comes from the cost, but it truly comes from labor (FC). Through this objectification stems alienation and estrangement. Marx starts with the assumption that humans have an intrinsic quality. As human beings, individuals like to be create and manipulate his or her environment. Creating is a part of people; therefore, people their being into their creations. However, Marx postulates that capitalism and specialized division of labor separates that working class from their creations in four ways- through alienation from the product, the labor process, one’s species-being, and humanity itself. The working class suffers through this hostility to make create more wealth for owners of factories. They get trapped in a cycle to make products for profit, but as automation advances, machines begins to take over people’s jobs; therefore, there less employment opportunities available, which in turn allows factory owners to decrease wages and exploit and devalue the working class (EL). In the The Poverty
The upper class men had all the wealth in the world at the tips of their fingers while the lower classes didn’t have two pennies to rub together. “… The rich should share with the poor, especially those rich persons who had acquired their property from trade or had otherwise won it from the poor.” (#8) The favoritism is eye-catching, it says that the nobles had won the land from the peasants but stereotypically upper classes have had the land in their family for generations. The trade among the people was unfair to the farmhands. The farmhands fashioned the land and “they were supposed to be brothers with one another” (#8) they should have the right to property and not have to just work it for the lords. On the contrary the upper class “purchased this right for a considerable sum of money… [if the peasants want to be released from their duties to us, nobles, then] the peasants shall pay us a reasonable amount of money.” (#4) Until the sharecroppers started attacking the nobles they “looked on, unaware that misfortune was creeping up on [the peasants]” (#11) Instead of the peasants adopting and modifying their way of life they challenged the nobles to a war and lost. A total amount of the souls that were consumed by the sinful acts of the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants was 100,000.
In the process of production, human beings work not only upon nature, but also upon one another. They produce only by working together in a specified manner and reciprocally exchanging their activities. In order to produce, they enter into definite connections and relations to one another, and only within these social connections and relations does their influence upon nature operate (Marx).
“But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wie...
In T.S Eliot's poem, Portrait of a Lady, he gives a glimpse into the upper class of post war society- something rather dispirited and forlorn. It is filled with people from the higher social standings and they are as soulless and empty as the lady in the poem. The upper class was also represented by the main character himself, who is truly unable to connect as a whole to his surroundings. He initially describes the world in the poem as dark, covered in smoke and haze – the scene that is in and of itself a mere half life, the individuality of the characters already swallowed by the abyss of ritual that has devoid of meaning. The truly shocking part that links this poem to the author’s previous poems is the underlying brokenness and the soullessness that the characters seem to inhabit. The main character of t...