Among the main topics discussed for this week’s session on Marx is about his principle of alienation through labor. Though the activity of labor itself, man has eventually become alienated through acting instead of a human into a mere robot at work. How come? In the capitalist society, everything is governed by these pieces of paper and metal objects called money. Through this, the relationship of the slave and master, basing it from the Hegelian philosophy, eventually becomes a relation between the slave, who is the worker, and the master, who is the capitalist, wherein money is the one that bridges between the two in a Marxian context.
Among the key points with regards to the Marxian philosophy is that 1) Alienation is the result of the labor of activity itself, and not the product of labor, 2) That in order to stop alienation we should do it through production and not consumption, and 3) The solution to the full freedom or emancipation of man is to abolish private property.
In the first two key points, the main reason why we should be targeting the production instead of the consumption is that alienation itself affects the worker more than the buyer or the consumer. Why?
Let’s analyze the work in a capitalist state; in a capitalist state, a worker is given a minimum wage for his daily labor of work by his boss, the capitalist itself. For this, I will use a hypothetical principle of manufacturing tables as an example. Provided that a worker works for a fixed rate of 50 pesos per hour, and works for 10 hours, he is able to make 5 tables in that span of that time period. So this should mean then that the worker can make a table in a span of two hours, and theoretically speaking, the table’s manufacturing cost is at 100 pesos. Given that he is able to make five tables, and works for ten hours, he then earns 1000 pesos on a daily basis. Now what does the capitalist do? In order to gain income, he sells the tables at double the price at 200 pesos per table, and while the capitalist can sell the 5 tables the worker has made during the day at a total of 2000 pesos, the capitalist ends up paying the worker only the minimum wage, which is 1000 pesos, for that particular labor. Where did the other 1000 pesos go? It went eventually to the pockets of the capitalist, and the other 1000 pesos that the capitalist kept is his profit from selling the tables, hence creating a surplus value with the tables the worker has made.
What makes this unfair then? It is the mere fact that the capitalist makes use of the worker as a commodity to his expanding business, such that by thinking of money, profit, and income, he dehumanizes the laborer by making him into a mere robot that does an automated task of manufacturing tables for the benefit of the capitalist and for the use of the consumers. Marx makes sense when he says that it is the laborer who gets alienated rather than the consumer. Although in one way or another the consumer becomes alienated since he is dictated by the capitalist to buy his products for various reasons (take in the marketing strategy of Apple’s iPods for example), it is still the laborer at the end who is deeply alienated at this modern, capitalist society since he becomes dependent with the work and the (unfair) pay he gets from his master the capitalist. Having said that, this causes the worker in the end to be powerless against the capitalist, his master, as he becomes a dependent entity of the master.
And we all know that in the capitalist society, capitalist always desire for a higher profit while at the same time, investing less. So how does the capitalist compensate for this given that he has given the maximum number of hours to work for the laborer and thew maximum number of laborers he can have in his company? The answer to that is the use of machinery to do the work. Since theoretically speaking the machine can do much more work than the laboring human in a fraction of a time, this then will give the most profit to the capitalist, of which he deeply desires.
In both cases, whether the laboring man is replaced by the machine or the laboring man is abused by the capitalist, you cannot remove the sense of exploitation in the capitalist society. If you use machines, you don’t address the means and needs for survival of the laboring human by not having him work. On the other hand, abusing the laboring man instead of being replaced by machines would jeopardize his health and condition, no matter how much benefits or insurance can the capitalist give to his workers.
And at the same time, machines are like humans; they sure may be much more efficient than humans but we should know that they have to be constantly maintained; wear and tear with its use overtime can make it inefficient, reaching to the point that the capitalist would merit a negative profit because of neglect and abuse to the machine, just like what the capitalist does to the human laboring worker.
And given these problems with Capitalism, and given the Marxian principles of alienation, what should be done to resolve the conflict? Simple. Kill Capitalism, the capitalists and the bourgeoisie class..
Showing posts with label Hegel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hegel. Show all posts
Thursday, January 22, 2009
I’d rather be the slave than the master
From the lecture and discussions about Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit that has been discussed for this week, what interest me the most is the discussion of the slave and the master and the need for a fight as a means of determining who is going to survive or who will not throughout the course of history.
The interesting part on this is the fact that it can be perfectly applied in our modern context here in the Philippines. But before going to the application, let’s review the differences between the slave and the master.
The master is the more powerful of the two, who in most cases fights and most of the time wins the fight, and seeks recognition only to a person of equal stature to him. The master also is greater than the slave, and he is the one who gets all of the recognition in the significant events throughout history.
The slave, on the other hand, is the person who works and bows down to his master, who recognizes the master for everything, and seeks recognition elsewhere. Also the slave is never recognized by the master and is not given due credit throughout the significant events in history.
History, as Hegel explained, is of pure energy, which is always in a n perpetual motion, and most of the time, is rough. Because of the nature of history in Hegelian thought, man goes through three premises: the first is through speech and desire, where he attempts to speak his desires as a means of his satisfaction and survival. Then he goes through the process of negating his actions, wherein his moment of thinking and acting are performed at the same time, resulting to the alienation of his being, thus negating his actions and therefore concentrating on what he thinks instead of concentrating of his actions. Combining the two will then eventually make the human lead into fighting against one another, wherein the fight is no ordinary fight, but is a fight to the death.
But why fight to the death anyway? Why not just a competition of who is the better of the two?
I think the Hegelian way of thinking can be related to Charles Darwin’s theory of Natural selection, wherein beings have to evolve in order to survive. In this case, the slave and the master have to live up to their desires in order to determine who would win in the fight. But sad to say, the competition between the slave and the master is an unfair means of competition, analogous to the outcome of the third Punic war, where the Romans annihilated the powerless Carthaginians, killing even the women and children, and burning the whole Carthage down into ashes.
The battle between the slave and the master is unfair for two important reasons. First, although the slave is responsible for the creation of the world, and hence the creation of history, it always ends up to the master claiming such historical feat. A perfect example of this principle is the creation of the numerous pyramids in Egypt during the ancient Egyptian era. Although Egyptian slaves are fully responsible for the creation of these breath-taking structures of the ancient era, it always end up in history that the pharaohs, Djoser and Khufu to name a few, are the one responsible for the creation of these structures instead of the hundred million Egyptian slaves who worked with blood, sweat, and tears, and some of them dying of fatigue, hunger, and unexpected circumstances just to create such a historical feat. These slaves never got the opportunity to be honored of this endeavor. The second reason for the unfair fight is the extremely uneven powers of the slave and the master. Comparatively speaking, the master is ultimately powerful, evident to his commanding, managing, and strategizing abilities, while the slave has no such power expect the power to conform to the desires of the master. Because of this, the phenomenon of the slave and the master ends up with the slave creating his work, being satisfied with his creation, then the master partakes and consume of the slave’s work, the master desiring more than what the slave has created, then the cycle goes on.
In the debate on whether it is better to be the slave or the master, I would answer that I would prefer to be the slave than the master. This may be an unexpected answer from a human being perspective, given that being the master has more benefits than being the slave, since I believe that being a slave, you know deep in your mind and soul that you work hard for your creation, that you have poured down your efforts just to make that feat, unlike the master, who doesn’t really work as hard as the slave. Also, the advantage of being the slave rather than the master is the fact that the slave can get satisfied with his work, unlike the master who has the tendency to desire for more, despite of the desire reaching to a status wherein it is very impossible to accomplish. Overall, I believe that the slave should be the one who would win the fight against the master. The problem is that the slave is too scared to fight against the master. Just like Philippine politics, in the competition between the masa and the government.
The interesting part on this is the fact that it can be perfectly applied in our modern context here in the Philippines. But before going to the application, let’s review the differences between the slave and the master.
The master is the more powerful of the two, who in most cases fights and most of the time wins the fight, and seeks recognition only to a person of equal stature to him. The master also is greater than the slave, and he is the one who gets all of the recognition in the significant events throughout history.
The slave, on the other hand, is the person who works and bows down to his master, who recognizes the master for everything, and seeks recognition elsewhere. Also the slave is never recognized by the master and is not given due credit throughout the significant events in history.
History, as Hegel explained, is of pure energy, which is always in a n perpetual motion, and most of the time, is rough. Because of the nature of history in Hegelian thought, man goes through three premises: the first is through speech and desire, where he attempts to speak his desires as a means of his satisfaction and survival. Then he goes through the process of negating his actions, wherein his moment of thinking and acting are performed at the same time, resulting to the alienation of his being, thus negating his actions and therefore concentrating on what he thinks instead of concentrating of his actions. Combining the two will then eventually make the human lead into fighting against one another, wherein the fight is no ordinary fight, but is a fight to the death.
But why fight to the death anyway? Why not just a competition of who is the better of the two?
I think the Hegelian way of thinking can be related to Charles Darwin’s theory of Natural selection, wherein beings have to evolve in order to survive. In this case, the slave and the master have to live up to their desires in order to determine who would win in the fight. But sad to say, the competition between the slave and the master is an unfair means of competition, analogous to the outcome of the third Punic war, where the Romans annihilated the powerless Carthaginians, killing even the women and children, and burning the whole Carthage down into ashes.
The battle between the slave and the master is unfair for two important reasons. First, although the slave is responsible for the creation of the world, and hence the creation of history, it always ends up to the master claiming such historical feat. A perfect example of this principle is the creation of the numerous pyramids in Egypt during the ancient Egyptian era. Although Egyptian slaves are fully responsible for the creation of these breath-taking structures of the ancient era, it always end up in history that the pharaohs, Djoser and Khufu to name a few, are the one responsible for the creation of these structures instead of the hundred million Egyptian slaves who worked with blood, sweat, and tears, and some of them dying of fatigue, hunger, and unexpected circumstances just to create such a historical feat. These slaves never got the opportunity to be honored of this endeavor. The second reason for the unfair fight is the extremely uneven powers of the slave and the master. Comparatively speaking, the master is ultimately powerful, evident to his commanding, managing, and strategizing abilities, while the slave has no such power expect the power to conform to the desires of the master. Because of this, the phenomenon of the slave and the master ends up with the slave creating his work, being satisfied with his creation, then the master partakes and consume of the slave’s work, the master desiring more than what the slave has created, then the cycle goes on.
In the debate on whether it is better to be the slave or the master, I would answer that I would prefer to be the slave than the master. This may be an unexpected answer from a human being perspective, given that being the master has more benefits than being the slave, since I believe that being a slave, you know deep in your mind and soul that you work hard for your creation, that you have poured down your efforts just to make that feat, unlike the master, who doesn’t really work as hard as the slave. Also, the advantage of being the slave rather than the master is the fact that the slave can get satisfied with his work, unlike the master who has the tendency to desire for more, despite of the desire reaching to a status wherein it is very impossible to accomplish. Overall, I believe that the slave should be the one who would win the fight against the master. The problem is that the slave is too scared to fight against the master. Just like Philippine politics, in the competition between the masa and the government.
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