Bourgeoisie: Page 10; Marx’s term for capitalist, those who own the means of production.
The food production companies have accentually bought the government. If they come up with a plan to produce more food, no matter how harmful it may be to the consumer, the government will not step in to protect the citizen of Americans. As the bourgeoisie owns the industry, this fact has been proven within the video of Food Inc. What is astonishing is that a company was actually able to get a patent on life. How can a company be allowed to monopolize an entire industry? That is depriving people of their basic human right of life, to eat healthy food, food that has not been modified by harmful hormones or genetics. Several of the food production companies give jobs to illegal immigrants and once their services are no longer needed, then the heads of these companies call immigration to have them arrested and deported back to their home country. This in turn saves the company money because they do not have to pay out anything for unemployment wages for laying the employees off for a period of time. The food industry has really become the bourgeoisie of this century.
Proletariat: Page 10: Marx’s term for the exploited class, the mass of workers who do not have the means of production.
In this case, this class of workers is the farmers and the people who work in the food production plant. The farmers are forced to purchase seed from a company, which sells nothing expect GMO seed.
Marx famously anticipated that the climax of the Class War would result in an economic crisis that would force the proletariat into action and seize the means of production; effectively ending the bourgeoisie. According to Marx, the Proletarian Revolution would be the culminating point of a long term class war, a response to unfavorable socio-economic conditions that would resolve the bourgeoisie state by seizing the means of production and reforming society from the capitalist order. This Proletarian Revolution, for Marx, is inevitable due to the fact labor was commodified and thus laborers hold great power over the bourgeoisie, who rely upon them as means of production. Marx’s analysis is greatly biased to the proletarians, as he sees them as representing the national struggle and bringing to the forefront issues that are above national divisions.
Karl Marx believed that the bourgeoisie exploited the proletariats in this new-found industrial age. The proletariat masses lived in poverty, while the bourgeoisie lived lavishly, feeding off the labour-intensive work and money made by their workers.
The proletariat are the commodity of bourgeois enterprise, "a class of laborers who live only so long as they can find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital". As with any other commodity, businesses want to minimize their cost of production; in this case, the wage that must be paid in order to make use of the worker 's labor power.
The industrial food system began with the McDonald brothers and fast food. The food Inc. video talks about the issues with food in supermarkets, and the main one is how it factory modified. The video also talks about how many big businesses there really are in our country that produce food, and how the small amount is it problem. The video states that the average supermarket has 47,000 food products in it. Another thing the video talks about is the condition of the animals that are being slaughtered and made into store product foods and the condition of the workplace in the factories. Most importantly the video talks about how farms are enslaved to these major industries, and have no choice but to stay and work for them because of various reasons.
The film Food Inc., like many other films of its category is not so much of an informative documentary, rather more of a slanderous exposé which blows the lid off of the food industry and its operations. To say that the film is neutral and tends towards more of an educative approach would be a misinterpretation to say the least. Throughout the entire movie it is always evident that the movie aims not solely to educate its audience about the truth of their food, but to convert the misinformed and inspire a rebellion against food industry practices. The movie does this through a tactful approach of bombarding its audience with gruesome clips, facts and testimonial story lines. The film asserts it claim through a thrilling critique of the horrific meat production process which is most prevalent in the U.S food industry and its impact on humans and the environment, while extoling alternative practices which seem to be more sustainable and humane, yet are underutilized. The film goes on to highlight the different players in the food politics arena, emphasizing the role that government agencies play. Also the film divulges the reality that is the monopolization of the food industry by big multinational corporations such as Monsanto Company, Tyson Food, Perdue Farms, Smithfield Foods, etc.
To think that Monsanto practically owns the soy bean industry is crazy. Farmers who have no other choice than to use Monsanto’s seeds have almost no say when it comes to the process of growing crops. Towards the end of this documentary one of the farms refused to use Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds. He then found himself in a long legal battle that could result in him paying a fine or shutting down him farm all together.
Today’s food companies are so large that they control every aspect of the food industry. Company’s control what grows in crops, what certain crops to grow, how the crops are utilized. The documentary “Food Inc.” produced by Robert Kennar and Eric Schlosser, takes a look at America’s food industry and how our food is produced. Most consumers are not going to investigate what actually goes into the products. The documentary “Food Inc.” explains to the viewers why the companies’ way of farming is wrong. The film is biased against industrial farming. Big question everyone asks, “Where does our food we consume everyday come from?”
According to Karl Marx “proletariat” is used to name the social class that does not have ownership of the means of production and whose only means of subsistence is to utilize their labour power for a wage or salary. Proletarians are also referred as salariat (those who receive salaries). Antonio Ricci was a proletariat.
Marx depicts two camps at war, but shortly thereafter at a multifaceted association between them. They are not two sides of a civil war, but rather more intimately linked. The Bourgeoisie are described as leaders of an Industrial army (of Proletariat), indicating in some sense, the two being parts of a singular mechanism, one driving toward progress. The Proletariat “masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself.” 479 There is definitely exploitation and oppression of the Proletariat by the Bourgeoisie, but they are both part of a working system, that of Capitalism. By definition the one class depends on the other for its very existence. One cannot define a group as the owners of the means of production, without having a separate group that therefor is not; there can be no class distinguished
Those few companies employ practices of increasing more and more product for the less cost. The practices of factory farming lead to the ease of contamination of food products. And when it comes time to deal with an outbreak, it becomes filled with bureaucracy to delay and relay the blame of the event. The companies can hire illegal immigrants to save on costs. They can get away with lying to the consumer and being a repeat offender because they have such influence in lawmakers. There are even states that have Veggie-Liable laws that don’t allow talk about opinions against food production practices. This level of control is quite scary for the actual consumer. They can get away with practices that are undoubtedly harmful towards the consumer. I think this kind of business practice in the food production industry is quite catastrophic behavior. We can’t have self-policing regulations because the major players aren’t going to want to do what’s best for the consumer. But it is difficult battle for the consumer to face. The only thing they can personally do is try to purchase the kind of products they want. But it becomes a losing battle for them when the diversity of products is an illusion and they come in losing from the
Here Marx describes the proletariat in whole. He calls them the slaves of the bourgeois class and also of the machines, overseers, and the manufacturers because they are working them constantly. He then describes the type of people who lie in the proletariat class “The lower strata of the middle class- the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants- all these sink gradually into the proletariat” (Marx, 264). He also states that people who lie inside the proletariat class are recruited from all of the classes in the population. Another description of the proletariat that he gives is when he says “The unceasing improvement of machinery makes their livelihood more and more precarious” (Marx, 264). This is very unfortunate for the proletariat people because advancements in technology would keep coming and their jobs and pay would be unstable and vulnerable. Workers would also form trade unions to go against the bourgeois and sometimes it would escalate into riots. He says that “Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time” (Marx,
a. Proletariat/ pg. 10: Marx's term for the exploited class, the mass of worker who do not own the means of production.
The need for a second, less class of citizenry to work is essential and they are referred to by Marx as the labour, Proletariats, or the working class. The working class exists to run the means of production, and they must sell their labour-power to the owning class in order to sustain themselves. Their skills are their only true ‘value’ in the alienated minds of the capitalists. The worker is limited with what they have to offer the capitalist and that is themselves and their individual skills as a commodity.
Based on their relationship to factories and machines (the means of production), Marx grouped human beings into classes. Capitalists were one class, because they owned the means of production. Workers were a separate class, the proletariat, because they did not own any of the means of production and their income came only from their own hands. Because these two classes had differing relationships to the means of production, they had antagonistic interests and were destined to engage in class struggle, according to Marx. Unlike his contemporaries, who lamented the increasing hostility between workers
The food industry does not want you to know anything more than what you think about what goes on within our farms, because if you knew, you wouldn’t want anything to do with it and they would lose millions of dollars. The reality of it is, these are not farms we are getting our food from, it is a factory. Your image of the cows, pigs, and chickens running around freely is not what “farms” are like today at all. Our meat is being produced by huge corporations that have all the power in the food industry to do whatever they please to. The fruits and vegetables are being picked while still green all over the world wherever the food is in season after being sprayed with harmful chemicals so it stays fresh till it hits our kitchen tables. Our food is coming from factories, mass farming, and assembly lines, where the food has become a danger to us and the people producing it. This issue has a personal meaning for me because, I