The American Dream and the Mode of Production in “Bordertown”.

I even had to do a quick search on the Internet to see what NAFTA stood for. After reading the article, what stood out the most to be was the amount of indigenous people who have migrated to the United States. I did not imagine the amount of indigenous Mexicans living in the United States to be so high. These people should not be leaving their own country just to search for jobs to be able to survive. They should be able to grow crops and be able to sell them for a reasonable price, not have the price of crops so low to the point that they have to go hungry and believe their own solution is to become farmworkers in a new country. While NAFTA has created jobs, they have caused the loss of way too many jobs and the displacement of more people that I would have

Broken Promises? Imagine being crammed in a un-air conditioned room with hundreds of workers in the Mexico heat. Imagine sewing all day and developing sore wrists which can lead to tendonitis. Imagine after nine grueling hours of work not getting paid enough to purchase food and other necessities for your

Designed over two hundred years ago, Karl Marx’s philosophy defines specific characteristics known today as the Marxist approach. In this critical approach, whomever holds the power and controls the factories or means of production, consequently controls the whole society. Marx’s opinion states that the laborers running the factories and thus holding the means of production should be the ones holding the power. However, this idea rarely holds true in practical society. Frequently, Marx notes, powerful people hire others to carry out the labor. This division of power reflects current culture. Two main classes or categories of people exist, the bourgeoisie and proletariat. The bourgeoisie is the powerful, or those who are in charge of

A maquiladora is a manufacturing plant based in Mexico where foreign companies import materials and equipment, on a duty free and tariff free basis, for the purposes of processing, manufacturing, or assembling goods which are then exported to other countries. The idea behind these maquiladoras promises a prosperous Mexican society. On paper, it really does seem like NAFTA is living up to expectations; creation of more jobs and a much less unemployment rate. On the surface, there seems to be nothing wrong with what’s going on in Mexico in terms of employment. Everyone has jobs and everyone is getting paid for these jobs, so what’s the issue? Despite all of this, the degrading and terrible working conditions imposed upon the maquiladora workers

Division of labour is also credited with the rise of trade between different areas, the rise of capitalism, and increasingly complex manufacturing and industrialization. For Karl Marx, the production portion of Capitalism signalled great trouble. He believed production in Capitalist society worked in a way that the rich factory owner benefited and the poor factory workers lost. In his manner of reasoning, the Capitalist system was inherently meant to benefit the rich and exploit the poor: “All the bourgeois economists are aware of is that production can be carried on better under the modern police than on the principle of might makes right. They forget only that this principle is also a legal relation, and that the right of the stronger prevails in their ‘constitutional republics’ as well, only in another form.”[ii] Marx’s view of society and the world lead him to believe that humans create change in their lives and in their environment through practical activity in the practical world.

This means that people that were not able to afford the products can now buy them causing an increase of sales in The United States, Mexico and Canada. No tariffs allowed businesses to compete in the world marketplace to expand and deliver customer goods. Big manufacturing companies saw that the cheap labor was available in Mexico and moved their manufacturing companies. Many of these companies had unions and the unions were negotiating for higher wages. This could have caused a company to go bankrupt or invest in machines (robots) to replace people. This in turn led to manufacturing companies moving to Mexico in order to make profit and continue lower prices. As a business owner I would agree that just keeping a company afloat is not good business. Profits need to be met or company can go bankrupt and jobs will be lost. Many people lost their jobs due manufacturing companies moving to Mexico for profit. About 700,000 jobs were lost in the United States with 55,000 being in Texas. Pg 18. Texas Public Policy released a study that “El Paso is reported to be "hit" the hardest by NAFTA. About 10,000 workers have been effected by the loss of jobs, yet the El Paso region has an increase of exports creating 38,000 jobs since NAFTA”. Economic growth is seen in El Paso. El Paso is growing and seems to be under construction for the last 5 years. The transportation industry is booming as evident by new businesses being built such as motels and convenient stores near the main highways. Construction to accommodate the transportation industry creates new jobs which leads to economic growth. In the last five years of traveling to El Paso and back to Corpus Christi, no matter the time of day, the highways are busy with big truck/18 wheelers. Texas has

Karl Marx’s critique of political economy provides a scientific understanding of the history of capitalism. Through Marx’s critique, the history of society is revealed. Capitalism is not just an economic system in Marx’s analysis. It’s a “specific social form of labor” that is strongly related to society. Marx’s critique of capitalism provides us a deep

Acclaimed writer and professor of English literature, Azar Nafisi said “The negative side of the American Dream comes when people pursue success at any cost, which in turn destroys the vision and the dream”. The American Dream is the “ideology that states that if people work really hard and are determined to achieve their financial goals, they will attain financial success” (Tyson). The Marxist belief that the American Dream is a restrained belief system is widely evident in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The means by which some people pursue this dream ultimately results in the destruction of the dream itself. This is explored through the narcissist attitudes of the individuals who are living the American Dream, the alternatives the proletariat population uses to obtain the dream and the widespread evidence of the unachievability of the dream itself

Summary of the Annotated Bibliography: The theory of Marxism generates a method for the analysis of society, which focuses on class relations and conflict amongst humanity. Inspired by Karl Marx (a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian and journalist), the theory influences contemporary understanding of labour and its connection to capital. Marx’s most notable publications ‘The Communist Manifesto’ and ‘Das Kapital’ showcase his analytical work and well-know themes related to Marxism.

After a lengthy negotiation of over 3 years, Canada, the United States, and Mexico reached an agreement on trilateral trade ― the North American Free Trade Agreement. Commonly referred to as NAFTA, it came into effect on the first day of 1994. Covering 450 million of population and reaching $17 trillion in combined GDP, NAFTA proudly ranks the first among the world’s free trade agreements (USTR). It is usually seen as a remarkable success for the countless benefits it brings to its members. Some of NAFTA’s main advantages are promoting closer relationships, eliminating trade barriers, and increasing market opportunities. However, as the first proposer of NAFTA, the United States has indeed benefited the most from it in several different

Karl Marx was a communist researcher and coordinator, a key character in the historical locale of economic and hypothetical idea, and an awesome societal prophet. But it is as a sociological theorist that he commands our interest. Society, according to Marx, involved a moving equalization of contradictory powers that create

Since the North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) inception, an abundance of controversy and disagreements have surrounded it. For example, in the 2008 election, both Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton wanted to renegotiate or get out of NAFTA. Similarly, the 2016 election featured Donald Trump campaigning for the renegotiation of NAFTA. He even stated in a recent presidential debate, “…[NAFTA] was one of the worst things to ever happen to the manufacturing industry” (Bloomberg, 2016). Are these important political figures justified in their statements and campaign goals? This essay will explore the background of NAFTA as well as both its the positive and negative effects in order to determine whether NAFTA has had a net positive

One of the goals of NAFTA is to a bring stronger economic growth to Mexico and limit illegal migration. As for each country, NAFTA would enhance competition for their companies (Sergie, 2016). Some positive aspects of NAFTA are that it gets rid of tariffs among the three countries. It promotes economic growth, increased profits, and jobs for all countries. It also lowers prices on imported goods (Amadeo, 2016). Promoters of NAFTA believe that it will, in some cases, improve conditions in Mexico both environmentally and economically. These promoters consist of some of the world’s largest corporations (Citizen, 2016). However, not all the effects of NAFTA are positive; many of Mexico’s farmers are now out of business, and much of Mexico’s environment has been destroyed (Amadeo, 2016). Opponents of NAFTA believe that it has destroyed thousands of good-paying jobs in the U.S., and this threatens the health, environmental, and food safety standards. These people include labor, environmental, consumer and religious groups (Citizens, 2016). As a result, NAFTA has impacted all three countries economies, both positively and

The philosophy of Karl Marx begins with the belief that humans are inherently cooperative with common characteristics and shared ends. To human beings, life is considered an object and therefore, humans make their “life-activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness” (Tucker 76). In other words, humans are able to think, imagine, and “produce even when he is free from physical need and only truly produces in freedom therefrom” (p. 76). It exemplifies that idea that humans not only have the capability to create things for survival but express themselves in what they produce, within the standards of the human race or universally. When capitalist wage-labor enters the picture, it forces these shared ends and the freedom of expression in human production to cease, causing a rise of competitiveness among

What emerged from these back-room dealings was a monumentally flawed agreement. On the issue of job creation, the central focus of pro-NAFTA campaigning, it is fair to measure NAFTA's real-life results against its supporters' expansive promises of hundreds of thousands of new, high paying U.S. jobs. However, even measured against more lenient "do no harm" standard, NAFTA has been a failure. Consider this recent opinion poll of Americans on NAFTA's performance: