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Worker in factory industrial revolution
Introduction the Understanding diversity within society
Introduction the Understanding diversity within society
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Currently, we live in a diverse and complex society with many components all working together like a machine. Our society is composed of dominant individuals who control the means of production and make profit off of the labor from subsidiary or working class individuals. Participation in this economic structure is not voluntary and our society is set up so that everyone works or they are looked down on as being a deadbeat and often criminalized. Every task in our society has a group of individuals who are influenced to do that job in return for a wage. Without individuals who are willing to do “dirty” jobs, our society would quickly fall apart. Tensions between these two social classes have been prevalent for the majority of human history …show more content…
and have been dependent on the division of labor. According to Karl Marx, the industrial revolution changed the mode of production from local handmade goods and learning a craft to unskilled repetitive types of labor, which caused the deindividuation of the worker (Marx, et al., 1848, p.16).
This is the underlying premise behind Marx’s theory of historical materialism, where he claims the material conditions in a society influence the modes of production, which determines its organization and development. According to this theory, the industrial revolution changed the division of labor, which was an economic catalyst that influenced social change and class conflicts through various forms of alienation and commodification of the worker and their labor (Marx, et al., 1848, p.20). Even though industrial occupations are on the decline in our society, this same theory can be applied to the unskilled, repetitive labor that is prevalent within today’s retail …show more content…
industry. In Marx’s theory of historical materialism, he claims that as the material conditions in the society change, so will the values, politics and overall social structure of the society (Marx, et al., 1848, p.23). Marx witnessed this through his experience of the implications from the industrial revolution. He divided the structure of human society into two sections; the base consists of social institutions like the division of labor and commerce and the super structure consists of the overall values and norms of the society (Marx, et al., 1848, p.23). Marx explained that when the base shifts from a change in the division of labor, the super structure changes to reflect that shift in the base causing social change (Marx, et al., 1848, p.26). For example, capitalism only works if individuals agree to labor for a business owner and make their products in exchange for a wage. Common motivational sayings such as, “idle hands are the devils workshop,” illustrate the point Marx is making about the division of labor influencing the values and norms of a society. These values of having a strong work ethic must be present in the super structure or the base will not be able to sustain itself. Besides influencing the values and norms of the society, this economic structure has a devastating impact on the worker and their sense of self. Fundamentally, Marx explains that the division of labor is an influential component for social change.
The division of labor consists of the means of production and the relations of production (Marx, 1932. P. 87). Marx states that individuals are defined by their labor in their sense of self and their place in society. He described means of production, such as working on an assembly line, as being unskilled and repetitive (Marx, 1932. P. 87). During Marx’s time, he claimed the rise of machinery caused workers to become mere extensions of the machines and this type of labor created a sense of alienation from the individual and their position in society. Importance in the production of goods switched from the laborer to the machine, because the machine became the main creators of products instead of the individual. At this point, the person became irrelevant and disposable in the production of goods(Marx, 1932. P. 92). This change in the means production altered the division of labor creating social change in every aspect of the super structure. According to Marx, capitalism is set up so that the fewer amount of benefits given to an employee results in the business owner increasing their surplus value (Marx, 1932. P. 88). This results in poor working conditions for the working class and the exploitation of the workers’ rights (Marx, 1932. P. 86). This commodification of labor becomes problematic to the working class who end up becoming dehumanized and their well-being is
weighed in relation to profit margin. These examples of alienation can still be observed in the division of labor in modernity, despite the disappearance of factory jobs. Even though people are not working on an assembly line, the means of production are set up under the same division of labor. Instead of being an extension of a machine, we have become extensions of the actual companies. In the retail industry, workers are forced to sell the company’s products and provide the customer with a pleasant experience. There are no industrial machines, but the work is still just as unskilled and repetitive as working on an assembly line. A Wal-Mart cashier will spend an entire shift behind the register performing the same task of scanning items and charging customers for their purchases in the same repitative manner as an assembly line worker; enduring the same types of alienation and exploitation. These new retail jobs require a lower amount of skills than a factory job and allow for more exploitation from the ruling class. These retail jobs are among the lowest paid occupations and have fewer benefits than factory jobs. In relation to Karl Marx’s theory, Max Weber thought that class differentiation was caused by status rather than economic factors. He believed that economic factors were important, but status and values are more influential (Weber , 1934. P.230). He stated that the protestant ethic is closely correlated with capitalism and its development. According to Weber, the protestant ethic states we see working as a means to increasing our capital, which is our God given duty (Weber , 1934. P.). Employers are seen as allowing people to participate in this duty rather than being exploited by the employer. Consequently, individuals within capitalism see their time as potential opportunities to increase their capital and remaining stagnant is not only maladaptive, but unfavorable in the eyes of God (Weber , 1934. P. 237.). Excluding oneself from the labor force is seen as the wasting potential that God has given the individual. Marx and Weber disagreed with how social class differentiation is formed, they both would agree on the protestant ethic being an influential component of a capitalistic society. Marx would argue these ethics and values are not created by non-economic factors, such as religion and status, but they are created by the division of labor and modes of production in society which change the norms and values that are present in the super structure. Basically, these ideas of labor being seen as duty to please God are prevalent in the society, because capitalism functions off of the proletariat’s labor and this labor is essential to the economic structure. This division of labor has led to the commodification of the laborer, which has created values such as hard work, punctuality, dependability and reliability in the worker. Marx would argue that these values are created by the base to influence the super structure in order to maintain the current division of labor and domination of the proletariat. Karl Marx stated that interactions between individuals of different social class are influenced by the current economic structure of the society. Important components of this economic structure include the mode of production and relations of production. These various components have major implications for the individuals within the society. Marx argued that the modes of production within capitalism cause alinetation for labors though turning the work into a commodity and making them sell their time in return for a wage (Marx, 1932. P. 89). Even though assembly jobs are becoming rarer, this alienation can still be observed in the laborers of today’s retail occupations. Marx’s theory still can be applied to today’s society, because the overall division of labor is still the same, despite the change in modes of production from assembly line to cashier.
Before the industrialization movement began, there was more of a blend between the classes, and now there is a distinct separation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Because of the industrialization of the countries, the replacement of manual labor with the use of machinery and the division of labor, the work of the proletarian has become homogeneous. It does not contain the individuality or charm of the laborer as handmade goods do. The worker instead becomes part of the machine and is reduced to performing menial, repetitive tasks. Thus, the workman's pay rate reflects his work, and is reduced to minimum amount needed to barely sustain them. Therefore, as the skill needed to perform the job reduced, so does the amount of the wages. Also, as industrialization increases, so does drudge and toil. The worker become, in the eyes of the bourgeois in control, a part of the machine and as expendable and as easily replaced as any part of the machine. This is in the forms of prolonged work hours, amount of work done in a certain time, or by the increase of the speed of the machinery, which wears down and drains the workers.
In Marx’s opinion, the cause of poverty has always been due to the struggle between social classes, with one class keeping its power by suppressing the other classes. He claims the opposing forces of the Industrial Age are the bourgeois and the proletarians. Marx describes the bourgeois as a middle class drunk on power. The bourgeois are the controllers of industrialization, the owners of the factories that abuse their workers and strip all human dignity away from them for pennies. Industry, Marx says, has made the proletariat working class only a tool for increasing the wealth of the bourgeoisie. Because the aim of the bourgeoisie is to increase their trade and wealth, it is necessary to exploit the worker to maximize profit. This, according to Marx, is why the labor of the proletariat continued to steadily increase while the wages of the proletariat continued to steadily decrease.
Division of labor created alienation for the proletarians, this is why Marx suggest abolishing the private property. The lower class stop living for themselves and live to make their owners rich. This is a problem because everyone that does not belong to the upper class suffer economically and mentally. If this pattern does not change then it will continue to be passed generation after generation. “... by the overthrow of the existing state of society by the communist revolution and the abolition of private property which is identical with it, this power, which so baffles the German theoreticians, will be accomplished in the measure in which history becomes transformed into world history” (p.163). Abolishing private property will set the lower class free and bring desire to live once again and thrive. To break this barrier economic power needs to be removed from the hands of privileged
According to Marx, capitalist system has another damage rather than class differentiation and low source of income. This damage is basically alienation of labor. Labors are being fundamentally alienated from production, production process, man’s species being and also from other men. Those are the alienation steps of workers in capitalist world. According to communist theory Marx believes that in such system society divides into two different classes; on one hand there are property owners so called bourgeoisie and on the other hand property less workers so called proletariats. For Marx the class stratification that driven from private ownership causes to alienate workers from the existence world. It begins that property less workers become alienated from the product that they produce. Worker relates to...
In the essay “Work in an Industrial Society” by Erich Fromm, the author explains how work used to carry a profound satisfaction, however today workers only care about their payment for their labor. Fromm opens up with how craftsmanship was developed in the thirteenth and fourteenth century. It was not until the Middle ages, Renaissance and the eighteenth century, when craftsmanship was at its peak. According to C.W. Mills, workers were free to control his or her own working actions, learn from their work and develop their skills and capacities. Despite what Mills says, people today spend their best energy for seven to eight hours a day to produce “something”. Majority of the time, we do not see the final
Under the oppression of the bourgeoisie, the proletariats, who composed the mass majority, only owned one resource—their labor. However, the bourgeoisie could not continue to exist without the instruments of production. Since the common worker lived only so long as they could find work, and could only work so long as their labor increases capital, they continued to be oppressed by the bourgeoisie, who controlled the capitalist society by exploiting the labor provided by the proletariats. People sell their laboring-power to a buyer, not to satisfy the per...
Karl Marx on Estranged Labor. In Karl Marx's early writing on "estranged labour" there is a clear and prevailing focus on the "necessary" of the plight of the labourer. Marx's writing on estranged labour is an attempt to draw a. stark distinction between property owners and workers. In the writing Marx argues that The worker becomes estranged from his labour because he is not the recipient of the product he creates for us.
Karl Marx’s article titled Estranged Labor as found in his 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts pays significant attention to the political economic system, which is commonly referred to capitalism. He further delves into nature of the political economy with a keen focus on how it has negatively impacted the worker or laborer. Therefore, the laborer forms the subject of his critical and detailed analysis as tries demonstrates the ill nature of the political economy. To start with Karl Marx portrays how the political economy as presented by its proponents has led to emergence of two distinct classes in society; the class of property owners and on the other hand, the class of property less workers. According to Karl Marx (2004), proponents of the political economy have introduced concepts such as private property and competition indicating without providing any form of analytical explanation but rather just expecting the society to embrace and apply such concepts. In particular, political economists have failed to provide a comprehensive explanation for division that has been established between capital and labor. Estranged Labor clearly depicts Marx’s dissatisfaction as well as disapproval towards the political economy indicating that proponents of such a system want the masses to blindly follow it without any form of intellectual or practical explanation. One area that Karl Marx demonstrates his distaste and disappointment in the article is worker or the laborer and how the worker sinks to not just a commodity but rather a wretched commodity (Marx, 2004). This is critical analysis of Karl Marx concept or phenomenon on the alienation of the worker as predicted in Estranged Labor in several aspects and how these concepts are ...
Marx’s estrangement of worker and Durkheim’s anomic division of labor refer to somewhat similar ideas. In a society where capitalism dominates the way it functions, where private ownership of modes of production determines the profit one can earn, and accumulation of wealth in a few hands leads to separation of worker from his work. It can be categorized as the estrangement of worker from the product, his work, his identity as a human being and estrangement from the bourgeois (other members of the society). Worker finds product of his own work as an alien and hostile object, most of the time the price of the product is so high that he cannot even buy it for his own use. His work only means a means of survival for him that means less creativity and personal involvement in the work. Worker finds other members of the society who own means of the production as alien and hostile. He sees them enjoying the ...
To begin with, capitalism is a type economic system. Simply put, capitalism is the system where workers work for the capitalist and receive wages for their labor. In, Wage-Labour and Capital, Marx explains the exchange between the capitalist and their workers in regards to wages and labor. He wrote:
Karl Marx noted that society was highly stratified in that most of the individuals in society, those who worked the hardest, were also the ones who received the least from the benefits of their labor. In reaction to this observation, Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto where he described a new society, a more perfect society, a communist society. Marx envisioned a society, in which all property is held in common, that is a society in which one individual did not receive more than another, but in which all individuals shared in the benefits of collective labor (Marx #11, p. 262). In order to accomplish such a task Marx needed to find a relationship between the individual and society that accounted for social change. For Marx such relationship was from the historical mode of production, through the exploits of wage labor, and thus the individual’s relationship to the mode of production (Marx #11, p. 256).
Marx’s theory of alienation describes the separation of things that naturally belong together. For Marx, alienation is experienced in four forms. These include alienation from ones self, alienation from the work process, alienation from the product and alienation from other people. Workers are alienated from themselves because they are forced to sell their labor for a wage. Workers are alienated from the process because they don’t own the means of production. Workers are alienated from the product because the product of labor belongs to the capitalists. Workers do not own what they produce. Workers are alienated from other people because in a capitalist economy workers see each other as competition for jobs. Thus for Marx, labor is simply a means to an end.
One of the single most important features of industrial productivity and technical progress is the concept of division of labour. Division of labour is the breaking down of a work process into a number of tasks, with each task performed by a separate person or group of persons. It is most often applied to systems of mass production and is one of the basic organising principles of the assembly line. Breaking down work into simple, monotonous tasks removes any pointless motion and limits the handling of different tools and parts. The term `Labour` refers to any kind of physical or mental work which involves the provision of a product or service and does not just apply to paid work, it can also be in the home. This unpaid work is done by family members to maintain a household and unpaid domestic work has usually been done by women, e.g., wives and mothers. Their work may include cooking, cleaning, raising children, or managing household expenses. Social division of labour in a capitalistic society allocates certain sorts of tasks to certain sorts of people, in ways that are not equal, i.e. according to skills or labour power, i.e. who does the physical work versus factory owners, industrialists who own the product and make a profit. This refers to the separation of activities between individuals within society and is often linked to the existence of classes and gender. This continues to happen despite equality legislation; paid work has increased over time and is oft...
Karl Marx saw division of labor as opposing view that would lead to conflict between the two classes and estranged the individual. He felt that the two classes: the rich and the poor were in clash against each other. Power played important factor in these classes and that it creates inequality between the two. The rich had the ability to exploitative the poor. The poor would always be in false consciousness state because unaware of society or the mind set to reach the top. Marx felt that the struggle would destroy unity and lead to a divide between the classes. Marx showcases Division of Labor as isolating the individual. In the workplace, the individual would be disconnected from his task/role and would lead to repetitive task as well as competition to each other. Hegel is very important Enlightenment thinker to Marx because they formed hi...
In other words, the conception of the division of labor is a coin with two sides. According to the critique of Karl Marx on the division of labor, he states, that economics, like capitalism ‘ dehumanizes the worker by seeing him only as a working animal – a beast reduced the strictest bodily needs’. He links class and the division of labor in the language of political economy which are turning man into a mere machine by ‘mortifying’ his body and ‘ruining’ his mind. He also argues that worker is alienated to his own labor, because ‘of the fact that more and more products of his production are being taken’ and his ‘existence is ‘increasingly concentrated in the hands of the capitalist’. Marx is not denying that the division of labor is in favor of the capitalism, but interferes human beings. It is only a contribution of a few. In his book ‘Division of Labor in Society’, Emanuel Durkheim is pointing out that because of that division, difference among people is expanding. They are unable to share common values and opinions or to form ‘organic’ , ‘mechanical’