Reminders

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Reminders

• Course Website
• http//www.arts.yorku.ca/sosc/rkrist/
• --will post lecture PowerPoints and other
  materials

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Reminders

• -- you must go to tutorial you are registered in,
  unless permission given

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Reminders

• Important Dates
• -- book review form due 7 October
• -- book review due 21 October
• -- online tutorials due 21 October
• -- late penalty ZERO

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Last Week

• --Why study work?
• --Work as a social problem
• --The meaning of work and the values we attach
  to work
• -- Why do people work?
• --Instrumental attitudes extrinsic/ intrinsic

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Todays Lecture

• Karl Marx on Work

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Karl Marx on Work

• Introduction

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Karl Marx on Work -- Introduction

• RinehartWhat has happened to make an important,
  necessary, and potentially pleasurable social
  activity which is capable of satisfying both
  material and psychological human needs into a
  source of strife, resentment, and boredom?

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Karl Marx on Work
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Karl Marx on Work

• Karl Marx (1818-1883)
• Communist Manifesto (1848) with F. Engels
• Capital (4 vols 1867-1910)

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Karl Marx on Work

• What makes us distinctively human is our capacity
  for intelligent and creative work ingenuity
• Marx labour, is the workers own
  life- activity, the manifestation of his own life

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Karl Marx on Work

• Work should use our creative powers and develop
  all sides of our potential.
• Each one of us has the potential to develop a
  wide variety of skills and capacities.
• We are most human
• -- when we work because we want to, and because
  we like our work
• -- when work is self-rewarding -- our life finds
  meaning in our work

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Karl Marx and Capitalism

• ? A relatively small elite owns and controls
  societys means of production
• ? Most people sell their ability to work to these
  owners of societys resources
• in return, they receive a wage
• ? Under competitive market pressure to reduce
  costs, owners take control of the process of work
  and transform it

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Marx, Capitalism and Alienation

• Alienate estrange, transfer ownership of,
  turn away, divert, etc

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Marx, Capitalism and Alienation

• Marx Wrote the alienation of the worker is
  expressed thus the more he produces, the less he
  can consume the more value he creates, the less
  value he has Labour produces fabulous things for
  the rich, but misery for the poor. Machines
  replace labour, and jobs diminish, while other
  workers turn into machines

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Marx, Capitalism and Alienation

• To survive, workers must sell the one thing that
  makes them distinctively human the capacity for
  inventive and creative work
• Workers as a social class therefore become
  alienated from their human nature, what makes
  them essentially human
• ? Workers become alienated from their fellow
  human beings

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The Psychological Effects of Alienation?

• http//vatsaas.org/rtv/redir.aspx?Url/rtv/cinema/
  whenworkersgetbored.mpg