My Volunteering Experience And Majority Of Positions Held By The Working Class

This can leave workers feeling alienated from the workplace and from other employees. With employees being treated like they can be bought and sold, like a commodity, they are left feeling alienated from other coworkers (Peck, 1996, 25). To make the cost of production very low, employers look for workers that are ready to follow orders rather than those who have the most skill to complete a job (Peck, 1996, 33). In fear for one’s own job and fellow coworker’s workers have attempted soldiering to try to save themselves from the employer laying people off to maximize surplus. Soldiering, meaning workers purposely slow down at completing their task to avoid fellow workers getting fired (Taylor, 1911, 6). This creates a problem for employers as production costs rise and they have less control over the labour process and their workers (Taylor, 1911, 6). In a capitalist workplace, workers become alienated to the point where they are forced to soldier to try to save their jobs and fellow workers jobs as

Volunteerism positively reflects an individual's character, showing others of their benevolence and compassion. Organizations such as Family Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) as a whole is very community based, meaning we partake in and organize activities that positively affect the school, its students, and the rest of the community. As President of FCCLA, I participate in numerous community service and community awareness activities. FCCLA has done numerous community projects, such as food drives, coat drives, and toiletry drives, and eventually all of these items were given to the homeless whom we have also volunteered to feed. Moreover, the numerous volunteer opportunities that I have grasped have helped me to establish what career path I want to take in the future, nursing. Doing community service helped me realize that I want to spend my life helping others, doing things that could make a sick person’s day better and help them to stay positive as they heal.

In the second theory of alienation, the worker is alienated from their labour, they work because they need to survive, their hard work was not paid off and they did not enjoy working overall; the false ideology connected with this is best described when the capitalist mode of production takes over a worker’s freedom by giving the worker long hours. The third alienation, is alienation from the workers’ self, the worker has been devalued and even seen as cheaper than the commodity they

They are many readings that have discussed different themes throughout the semester. Two themes that have been brought up throughout the course are, alienation and capitalism. These two themes play a significant role in how society functions within its diversity. Alienation and capitalism contribute to a better understanding in how society is expected to function based on the social construction of ideas and believes. Alienation is known as losing your persona and becoming immune to a particular activity. For instance one can become alienated in their work environment, since it is a constant and daily routine, that you loose connection of the real world. In the other hand capitalism is described as a way in which money controls society. Therefore capitalism leads to the conclusion that such aspects in an individual’s life as lives and work in their societies are monitored. This paper will address how alienation and capitalism are two important themes, in which help better understand the society we live in today.

“Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore, not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary master plan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people's own failure as individuals” (Havel 31). Although there have been many improvements to the quality of the workforce, alienation is still quite present in many contemporary societies. This feeling of dehumanization is current even when overlooking labor estrangement. Unfortunately, society has not matured enough to realize how living for capital should not be the compelling requirement in order to live a good life. Modern-day society’s exigency for success and acceptance corrupts one’s morals and meaning of life.

Factory production transformed the traditional rhythm of the labor force, which came from agricultural/craft backgrounds. Thus two interlinked aspects of work experience transformed were the notion of time and the idea of work discipline. E.P. Thompson explains this was because changes in manufacture now demanded greater synchronization of labor and greater exactitude in time routines, simply because time was money in the new wage economy. The last important change that came from the Industrial revolution can be seen in work specialization. More and more workers performed more minuet and tedious tasks that consequently led to better efficiency for the factory. Unfortunately though the specialization that led to greater efficiency only allowed for an inadequate sense of accomplishment for the workers. This was because the worker would repeat a task day after day, week after week therefore they felt as if they were inconsequential to the greater picture at hand. Specialization of work, the new discipline, rigorous time schedules and low wages all contributed to a feeling of alienation for the worker, from his work and employer.4

Marx argues that alienation in capitalist societies is due to the fact that in work, we each contribute to the common wealth, but can only express this fundamentally social aspect of ourselves through a production system that is not social but privately owned, for which we function as instruments, not as social beings.

The concept of alienation by Karl Marx continues to be relevant in today’s capitalistic society. Alienation is ingrained in capitalism. Alienation can cause one to feel unworthy, meaningless, powerless, and inhuman in the work that they do daily. Craftsmen were once able to create a product from beginning to end and sell it at the price they desired. They had their own schedule and could create things at their own pace. It was a way for people to be creative and express themselves. This is sometimes not the case in today’s society. Workers today are removed from the creativity and have zero control on the production process, how it is produce and sold. They also have no control over work hours. They are told when to show up and how long and if not, they are easily replaced by someone else. In the following, I will be reacting to the article, “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an Ipad” by Charles Duhigg and David Barboza and how it relates to Karl Marx’s concept on alienation.

The work force has always been a topic of discussion for centuries, in today's 21st century society: illustrations, cartoons, newspapers, and social media all paint a picture off the middle class society working mindlessly for corporations that get rich off their backs. In the excerpt, “Estranged Labour” Karl Marx paints his own picture trew the use of his words of the working man of his time period. He describes man as being a shell that only survives by working on creating objects for higher class men. Marx's also discusses the unfair breakage between the lower and high class. The man working on objects in a factory dedicates his life to a high class society because of the mere fact of trying to survive. In this short essay I will discuss

Karl Marx is primarily known as a major supporter and advocate of communism. In Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, we find his piece “Estranged Labor.” In this writing, Marx explains further why he believes that communism is superior, or more so, why capitalism is defective. He claims capitalism is flawed specifically in regards to the producer, or worker. He describes this by explaining that “the whole of society must fall apart into the two classes—property owners and propertyless workers” (Marx). In which the propertyless workers become alienated. He then goes on to describe the four different forms of estrangement, or alienation, of the worker. They are alienation of the worker from his product, alienation of the worker from the act of producing, alienation from, what Marx calls, the worker’s “species being”, and alienation of the worker from other workers. All of these theories can easily be applied to Mike Judge’s film, Office Space.

It has been argued that Karl Marx theory of alienation has lost relevance in contemporary society when understanding the relationship of the individual worker in a capitalist society. It is this statement being proposed by several sociologists who believe alienation being an empty statement in relation to contemporary society. However like many other sociological concepts this one is still contested which is why I will explore the theory of alienation and what effect it has on contemporary society, and argue that Marx’s theory of alienation still applies to the process of the owners of production exploiting the working classes. I will start by looking into the four different dimensions of alienation and how these relate to Marx’s critique of capitalist society, then relating this concept to modern society.

Karl Marx’s Theory of Alienation is the assertion that through Capitalist industrial practices, the worker will experience a series of feelings of disconnection from integral parts of the labour process and ultimately, from humanity itself. I will argue that this theory will be relevant as long as the reign of Capitalism dominates modern society. Marx advocates that the only way alienation can be alleviated is through the destruction of the current economic base which he predicts is an inevitable gravitation towards a classless, stateless society known as socialism.

Marx believed humans were incredible by their way of transforming the natural world through labour. Furthermore, Marx believed that since work allowed for; creativity, spontaneity, and co-operation, it is made us truly human (Reynolds, 2016, Instructor Notes on Marx). However, alienation (a consequence of capitalism) has resulted in the “dehumanization and distortion of human potential and our humanity” (Reynolds, 2016, Instructor Notes on Marx). In other words, we no longer see labour as an expression of our purpose or our freedom, nor does it transform us anymore, instead its purpose has been reduced to earning money (Ritzer & Stepnisky, 2014, pg. 54). For my case study I will analyze my sister’s part-time job at a local fast food restaurant where she was paid at minimum wage. Furthermore, the degree of alienation workers experienced at this particular was not as drastic as a sweatshop; however, the workers did experience a moderate amount of alienation at the job.

Topic: One of the essential elements to Marx’s alienation concept is that of people or workers being alienated from each other under capitalism, it is still relevant in explaining the problems of the modern world.

Before the industrial revolution, people were defined by their work. For example, a bread maker. They were in charge of the process of making bread, selling the bread and the profit. According to Marx, under capitalism the proletarian experienced “alienation.” This is where an individual is isolated from society, work and sense of self. Marx discussed four different types of alienation: alienation from product, process of labor, from species and of man from man (Murray, Lecture 3). The first being alienation from the product. In Marx’s time and today’s world, we engage in a lot of mass production in our capitalist system. People often are placed in positions where they are responsible for making a small part of the product or engage in a very specific task. Going back to the bread example, under capitalist system, a person may only be in charge of adding the flour to the machine and the rest of the work is done by the machine. The person is not involved in any other aspect of the work. Today many people work to make a produced that they do not own for other people to consume with the purpose of being to sell of that product and make the maximum amount of profit. But in today’s world, the profit is owned by the capitalist owner who is in charge of the production, and distribution of the product. The second type of alienation is the alienation from one’s own labor. Making products in the capitalist system puts people in a repetitive position. The laborers end up going through the motions they have one highly specialized job in production the whole product. The labor does not give input into the purpose design distribution or marketing of the product. Simply, the worker is a small piece of the puzzle. The third is the alienation from others. To Marx, this human essence was not separate from activity or work, but being separate from other human species. The fourth is alienation from man to man where the worker can’t connect to other worker. Workers compete with each other. A capitalist system sees the labor of the worker to a commercial commodity that can be traded in the competitive labor-market. It does not view labor as a constructive socioeconomic activity that is part of the collective common effort performed