However I choose to tackle the spiritual issue. For someone who has grown up in a primarily "Christian" home, I find Marx quite exhilarating. From this quote, "the more man attributes to God, the less he retains of himself" which is demonstrating how workers alienate themselves from their products is mind blowing and, to me, it makes sense. He goes on to say "In religion the spontaneity of human imagination...acts independently of the individual as an alien, divine or devilish."
For someone who might be searching for an answer to the soul-searching task of believing or not believing, Marx's philosophy might lead them to think that maybe not believing is the best option.
For someone who values autonomy and creating their own self-worth rather than deriving it from a divine being, this would be a very good reference guide. The goal of this paper, however, is not to answer our fears of death or create an internal war as what our decision should be. It is to show how much a worker can put himself into his occupation that he loses himself only to be seen as labor.
In economics, there is the law of supply and demand.
It is shown in the graph to the right:
A brief economic lesson according to Marx, the greater the quantity, shown here in the x axis, a worker produces, the less he gets from the additional products.
Now this graph is based on economic theory which might not prove itself to much use in the real world. Theoretically, if more of something is produced than what the consumer will pay for, the price will drop. Likewise, in competitive labor markets the wage of workers is drastically low. This is because of the great number of people vying for the same job that they are willing to accept low pay for the job.
Additionally, the wage of a worker should be based on the revenue they generate. Practically, this is not always the case, a minimum wage worker is going to get paid the same, no matter how superior/inferior they do the job.
In short, two main themes of this writing are economics and religious theory.
What are your thoughts?
Shall we believe in Marx or ought we not?
"...the wage of a worker should be based on the revenue they generate."
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you're still thinking of this in a capitalist framework. Under communism, the mode of production will be drastically different. Wage labour will probably no longer exist. Karl Marx never described EXACTLY how production would work under communism, because he wasn't a fortune teller. Marx only described the conditions present in capitalism, and how he believed capitalism could be destroyed.
Elizabeth,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your post because I also grew up in a Christian home and had the same exhilarating feeling that you do. I was intrigued more about the spiritual "rightness" or "wrongness" of Marx's theory. I do not study economics, so in class it was a little over my head, but your graph gave me a visual and I think you explained Marx's economic theory very well.
As we discussed Marx, it was interesting to hear about some of the ways working in a capitalist society alienates laborers from nature, themselves, others, and the species as a whole. The description of inhumanity that seems to stem from capitalism was something different to consider especially with the economic issues that are prevalent in our society. From a spiritual standpoint, it seemed to me that Marx believed religion was just another way for workers to blind themselves from the conditions they worked in. In the end, Marx says that, under a capitalist society, private property and profits is the highest goal in life, not religion.
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