å September 2016

Capitalism as we all know is about, private ownership, competition, profit and rapid growth. In the article, “What are Wages”, Karl Marx says that capitalism is presented as a “natural system” and it forces beyond human control. I completely agree with this statement because we labor to pursue our own needs. We have to do it because society has in-bedded in our brains and in the system that we “cant do anything on our own. It is “supply and demand, they demand and we supply, and this to me is unstoppable because its “considered” and “good thing” because it generates wealth. It increases the market, the profit and it changes the society. When I think of capitalism, I think about Starbucks. What does Starbucks have? I believe  when Starbucks started it was about coffee and for coffee drinkers. Starbucks is capitalism, it grows; it started off small, it started with 1 vision and now it is everywhere. According to Karl Marx, In capitalism it means “money” and that is the highest stage of human development, “Money means power. We, the people, advance is the participation and it goes to the division of labor and it becomes oppressive. The working class is always exploited and we will only survive as long as we let it. This is what Karl Marx is explaining that the cost of production is the labour that we have to keep investing in the things we already have. For example the machine that cost 1,000 shillings, you have to keep adding on to it, in order to be able to replace it when its worn out.

The article by Rank, Hirshil and Roster “From High Hopes to Low Wages”, Its like a combination of everything like welfare, and inflation. He explains how people are willing to take a job that pays them less than what it should be getting paid, then the employer will find more people that are willing to take that low paying job. The employer is okay with paying you less more because it becomes convenient for them. The more we get paid the higher the living goes. I really like this quote that Karl Marx says, “What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.” Its the truth, we are our own destruction.

Marielis Rosado
September 21, 2016
SOC 32014
Prof. Elizabeth Bullock
What are wages?
In the reading, “What are wages? How are they determined?” by Karl Marx he talks about what he considers wages to be. He mentioned that wages are an exchange of labor power for a set amount of money that will then bring those worker commodities. As he continued in the reading he said, that money is able to be exchange to provide commodity, which means that it has a price or a cost. This could be taken as that wages equals price of labor. Karl Marx then touched based on a weaver that works for the capitalist and is given the yarn and the loom to produce the cloth. Marx says that the weaver only gets paid for the labor power, that whether the cloth sells at a higher or lower price than the weaver wage it is not the weaver’s problem. That even if the cloth does not get sold at all it is not the weaver’s problem once more, because the weaver was paid for producing that cloth only. He then compared the weaver to the loom, as he mentioned that the worker was just a tool part of that production but not the final result which is the cloth. So no matter what happens to that cloth, the weaver will still get paid for the amount of money he agreed to produce the product. Since the weaver works for the capitalist, the owner or I should say the capitalist provides the weaver with the required products to produce which in this case are the yarn and the loom, so the weaver does not have to spend their money on those products since they come with the job. If the weaver would have to buy these products, the yarn and the loom, to be able to make the cloth then he would not have the same amount of wage he gets from the capitalist as being a worker. Because the weaver would have to buy these products to produce plus also counting his labor power to make the cloth, that takes away from his wage and time which provides him with commodity. Workers sell their labor power to the capitalist to be able to live, which is their commodity. Workers will produce a product, but in reality Karl explained that what they are really producing is their wages and commodity, this is also the case for the weaver worker.

Marielis Rosado
September 18, 2016
SOC 32014
Productive & Unproductive Labor
In “The Making of the Working class”, by Harry Braveman, he talks about unproductive and productive labor. As it was hard to understand what the difference is between both, he goes in details about it. Productive and unproductive labor is not based on the business, career, or performance but it is based on the labor that it produces and when their productivity of labor remains stable or unstable throughout the process. Those traits define productive and unproductive labor. Productive labor is very much needed for any society, as it is the type of labor that will bring more opportunities and positive outcomes to any society.
As mentioned in the passage, productive labor could be those jobs that most people do not consider productive due to their performance. Jobs like clerical work and transportation are part of productive labor. Part of productive labor is useful objects, useful values and useful services. These are important for the production or that type of labor to remain being needed. Productive labor is considered productive because the business only continues to rise very much. Due to it continuous rising in labor these business are able to offer more job opportunities.
I was surprised to see what some of the unproductive labor are. One of the unproductive labors is construction. After reading the passage I was able to understand why construction would be part of unproductive labor. Construction jobs is not always steady, today you might have a lot of work but then in a week there might not be any projects to need workers to finish the job. Unproductive labors are labors that keep rising and declining. Unproductive labor is unsteady jobs due to the rising and declining of the labor, due to this it causes a lot of workers to get terminated. Many workers end up unemployed due to these unproductive labors; the unemployed rates keep rising and declining.
The differences between both productive and unproductive labor is big, as productive labor is the type of job you can count on for producing and improving for both the individual and the business itself. Productive labor has more opportunities and as mentioned above it has nothing to do with the career. It was surprising to see that there are unproductive labors in every neighborhood which many of us do not consider unproductive. As we all would just like productive labor in our neighborhood I believe both, productive and unproductive labor, go hand in hand.

Due Sunday, September 25th, by midnight. Word count: 400 words. Please note that you will not receive full credit if your assignment includes quotes. Make sure everything is in your own words. If you paraphrase (which I encourage you to do) make sure to include the proper citation.

In his writing on wage-labor, Marx argues that wages “are not a share of the worker in the commodities produced by himself.” From the text, use the example of the weaver that Marx points to in order to explain how he is characterizing the relationship of labor activity to the commodity that is produced.

Braverman walks through a thorough history of the sociology of capital. Understanding the pre-industrial (before 1920) economic transition from craftsmen and farmers who cultivated their skills for at least five years. This yielded to the basis of  small proprietorship and entrepreneurship faded when imperial capitalism became the United States dominate economic system. During the industrial era, capitalism transformed into production dominance. This genre of capitalism was enforced by ex-slaves and farmers because the agricultural business was in the making of becoming an mass agricultural enterprise. No longer did we have the opportunity to invest years in learning a trade but were given on the job training in industries, such as coal mining, manufacturing and construction. These jobs Braverman describes as production labor. Production labor can be define by the goods/ commodities which are made in a certain measurement of time.  The feminist movement changed the job market by empowering women to take their domestic skills into employment opportunities. Capitalism has taken advantage of the migration of Europeans and South-Americans who fled their countries for freedom and and an increase in prosperity. With such an increase of people wanting to work it was easy to keep wages low, production high and profit higher. As new industries began to grow, for example, techonology, unemployment rates started to rise because technology was now aiding a faster production turnout (meaning less human labor and higher capital gains). Braverman considers finance, real estate, insurance, retail and wholesale unproductive work (even though during this time this text was written these industries were paid lower). Braverman’s point was that the production of these industries did not result in commodities  that were bought and sold in the economic market turning a constant profit. Productive work is broken down into managed labor and hired labor. Hired labor, the employee is the cog in the wheel that churns out capital for the one percent. The difference between these economic systems pre and post- Industrial era is that the laborer no longer has an investment in the company, they have no understanding how they influence the corporation as a whole, only how their protocol adhere’s to themselves. Braverman’s analysis of the working class is still true to this day. Not necessarily production and non-production work but how the laborer is exploited by capitalism and then dis-guarded without much retirement to be replaced by someone who’s younger and willing to work for measly benefits.

Harry Braverman speaks about, how the capitalist true purpose is to boost the productivity and lower the cost of the labor force. This is achieved by breaking down each job to its simplest form to be able to maximize its profit. As the capitalist system needs to create division of labor, it does so by detailing the workmanship to the simplest form possible, as it aims to destroy craftsmanship.

In “ The Making of the working Class” The distinction that Harry Braverman is making between productive and unproductive work is that the capitalist system has used science and technology to make it possible to increase productivity and profit. This in turn created a shift that lessened the need for skilled workers. Due to this shift, in return created the need for robotic unskilled workers. As in the sample of the textile mills, with the industrialization of it’s manufacturing it lost their skilled workers. The machines were able to mass produce and increase its outputs. Its skilled workers were no longer needed and are then forced to go into unproductive work fields. This was usually in the accounting, banking or marketing firms that were considered to be very controlled industries, the workers there were considered cheap labor and very easily replaceable by other workers.

During our conversations in class, we had a discussion that related to this weeks’ reading. One of the comments made during that conversation was in relation to creating a workforce of “doers” and “thinkers”. “Doers” representing the workers who provide manual labor and/or create thing with their hands. “Thinkers” being represented by the workers who use more of the intangible elements of labor that do not require maximum physical effort. In Braverman’s “The Making of the U.S. Working Class” we tend to dive a bit deeper into this discussion and analyze the development of the workforce in the U.S. and the authors’ perspective on how it works.

It was interesting but not surprising to understand how the workforce is technically divided into categories and then sub categories.  The understanding being that while the working class is broken down into categories of sex, region and race, the underlying goal is to separate them into one of 2 categories. the “employers” and the “employees”. In order for this to work within our society, the workforce has to be created in the fashion that the employers provide the materials and goods, while the employees provide the manual labor that produce the product. He also mentions how not introducing education to the masses of laborers solidifies the separation of these classes and keeps the rich richer, and the work to the side of the laborers.

According to Baverman, the idea of capitalism is the reasoning why these two categories exist. He argues that the goal of producing labor and creating the workforce is to gain capital. The creation of a labor workforce is to maintain employer’s production of capital. As I read into the article, I argue that employees do not reap the benefits of capital but are conditioned to understand that labor is the basis of their work ethic and survival. He uses our history here in the U.S. and slavery to help us understand this ideal as slaves were used as free labor and the land owners benefited through their production.

It just seems interesting to me how the idea of capitalism and the creation of working classes seems to always end in how society benefits from the struggles of others. We tend to see in this article that the privileged, who have access to resources, property and capital still grow off the sweat and tears of the individuals who breaks their backs to survive. Leaves me to wonder if there will ever be a shift in the construction of the working class in the near future.