Karl Marx

1
Karl Marx

• The Man
• Dialectical Materialism
• Alienation
• Surplus Value
• The Contradictions of Capitalism

2
Marx- The Man

• Born 1818- Middle Class German Jew (family
  converted to avoid persecution)
• Attended the University of Bonn and Received his
  Doctor of Philosophy in 1841
• Young Hegelians
• 1843 Marries Childhood Sweetheart-Jenny
• 1848- The Communist Manifesto
• 1852- The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
• 1852- Begins work on Das Kapital
• 1863- Founding of the first International (fails
  in 1876)
• 1867- First part of Das Kapital published.
• 1881- His wife and daughter die
• 1883 Dies in his armchair. Only a few note his
  passing.

3
Marxs Materialism

• Materialism- social change and social relations
  are the result primarily of changes in material
  conditions. Ideas change because material
  conditions change.
• Marxs version- changes in the forces of
  production (means of production, relations
  between those involved in production processes)
  form the basis for social change.

4
Understanding Change from Marxs Perspective

• Economic classes form the basic anatomy of
  society, ideas, ideologies, values, political
  structures and so forth).
• Changes in the forces of production
  (technologies) erode the basis of the old system
  of economic relationship and classes and open new
  possibilities.
• Example- Feudalism to Capitalism

5
Understanding Modes of Production

• Mode of Production- Two elements
• 1) Forces of production- physical arrangement of
  economic activity
• 2)Social relations of production- indispensable
  human attachments that people must form to carry
  out this economic activity.
• Mode of production is the superstructure on which
  legal and political life and forms of
  consciousness rest.
• Changes in the mode of production produce changes
  in the relations of production.

6
Dialectical Materialism

• Dialectics is the method of reasoning which aims
  to understand things concretely in all their
  movement, change and interconnection, with their
  opposite and contradictory sides in unity.
• Social influences never simply flow in one
  direction. One factor may have an effect on
  another, but it is just as likely that the latter
  will have a simultaneous effect on the former.
• Assumes that social life has inherent stresses or
  contradictions that develop because every social
  development carries with it the seeds of its own
  destruction. Ie. Greatest asset is also greatest
  weakness.
• Dialectical models contain elements of both
  linear and cyclical theories.
• The dialectic is a process, but not a cyclical
  one. Small changes pile up as the system adapts.
  

7
Dialectics Continued

• Components of the social world blend into one
  another- there isnt a clear demarcation between
  phenomena in the world.
• Dialectical thinkers take a relational view of
  the social world. They focus on the relations
  within and among various aspects of the social
  world.

8
Marxs Development of Dialectical Materialism

• Adopted the dialectical model from Hegel-
  attempted to capture the reality of dynamic
  change in the world by urging that we examine
  things as they are and as they have the potential
  to become in the future.
• Individuals and societies have the potential to
  develop and realize themselves under appropriate
  conditions.
• Marx took the dialectic out of philosophy and
  brought it into the material world. Through
  recounting the conditions of human development
  under capitalism, he felt he could logically
  project the dynamic changes that would ensue,
  bringing people to a fuller realization of their
  free and creative potentialities.
• Dialecticians are future oriented and inherently
  political.

9
Dialectical Materialism and the Development of
Conflict Theory

• Conflict between two or more opposing economic
  interests characterizes social life. This leads
  to social and political conflicts.
• Conflict is a normal condition of social life and
  should be analyzed and studied.
• change and conflict are inseparable.
• social institutions are all dependent on the mode
  of economic production . Variations in economic
  production will alter other institutions.
• Marxs Example of Change over Time- Five Stages
  1) Tribal ownership, primitive communism 2)
  ancient communal and state ownership accompanied
  by slavery 3) feudalism 4) capitalism 5)
  communism

10
Dialectical Materialism and Political Sociology

• In Marxs Dialectical Materialism- social values
  are not separable from social facts.
• For dialectical thinkers values cannot be kept
  out of studies of the social world. It is
  undesirable to produce a dispassionate, inhuman
  sociology that has little to offer to people in
  search of answers to the problems they confront.
• In Das Kapital, Marx refers to capitalists as
  werewolves and vampires who suck the blood out of
  the worker.

11
Dialectics and Historical Circumstances

• Dialecticians are interested not only in the
  relationships of social phenomena in the
  contemporary world, but also in the relationship
  of those contemporary realities to both past and
  future social phenomena.
• Men make their own history, but they do not make
  it just as they please they do not make it under
  circumstances chosen by themselves, but under
  circumstances directly encountered from the past.
  The tradition of all the dead generations weighs
  like a nightmare on the brain of the living.
  Marx 1852

12
Dialectical Materialism- Capitalism and Change

• The contradictions of capitalism- Marx argued
  that change would occur because of the
  dislocations or contradictions between productive
  forces and the social relations of production.
• In a capitalist society, people will move from
  intermediate groups to either join the
  proletariat, the working class or the bourgeoisie
  (owners of the means of production).
• A series of events leads to the ultimate
  proletariat revolution 1) need for production
  2) the expansion of the division of labor 3) the
  development of private property 4) increasing
  social inequality 5) class struggle 6) creation
  of political structures to represent each classs
  interests 7) revolution.

13
Is this Theory Deterministic?

• NO- There are many potential outcomes.
• People play a crucial role as active agents in
  the realization of a potential.
• Marx did not see revolution as in inevitable
  outcome, but rather a desirable potential that
  would require agency to be realized.
• Circumstances make men just as much as men make
  circumstance Marx and Engels, 1845

14
Marx on Human Potential

• All that is solid melts into air, all that is
  holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to
  face with sober senses, his real conditions of
  life and his relations with his kind. Marx 1848
• Through change the realization of human potential
  may be realized.
• Species beings- human potential as a group,
  less than an individual phenomenon.
• Role of Capitalism- both positive and negative
  consequences

15
The World About Which Marx Is Writing

• Early Industrialization 1820

16
Industrialization and Urbanization

• Begins in the U.S. around 1820.
• U.S. fully industrializes in the Post-Civil War
  Era.
• Industrialization and urbanization are
  complementary phenomenon.

17
Industrialization and Rapid Population Growth

• In 1695, the population of Britain was estimated
  to be 5.5 million. By 1801, the year of the first
  census, it was 9.3 million and by 1841, 15.9
  million. This represents a 60 growth rate in
  just 40 years

18
Understanding the Shift- Trade and the Growing
Middle Class

• Between 1600 and 1800 expanding world trade in
  wood and textiles was undermining Feudal
  sharecropping systems.
• New opportunities for wealth for small
  businesspeople expanded the middle class and
  shifted political relations of power.

19
The Peasants/Serfs

• Rural peasants witnessed the erosion of land
  grant rights as their labor in textile production
  became more valuable than their labor in
  agricultural production. As peasants were
  evicted from rural areas, they migrated to urban
  centers offering work in textile production.

20
New Social Relations are Created

• A growing middle class, industrialists and
  workers are new social roles. Aristocratic
  systems based on paternal responsibility in
  exchange for loyalty are becoming obsolete.
• Individual rights and social mobility are
  emerging in ideologies.

21
Life Prior to the Industrial Revolution

• Before factories as we would identify them, all
  manufacture of products like textiles was done at
  home and on a small scale. Work was confined to a
  cottage with everybody doing their bit. Work done
  at home - hence the "domestic" in the title - was
  slow and laborious. Daniel Defoe, of "Robinson
  Crusoe" fame -wrote about his journey through
  Yorkshire in about 1720 and described how he saw
  small cottages, small scale production and each
  family working for itself. However, not
  everything was done under one roof. Defoe noted
  that in Norfolk those employed in spinning worked
  elsewhere to those employed in weaving.

22
Making Clothes

• The process in the making of wool for clothes was
  as follows
• cleaning of the wool after it had been sheared
  from the sheep.
• carding of the wool - this was brushing it to
  separate the fibers. If a comb was used, this
  would be to get the fibers parallel.
• The cleaned and carded wool would then be spun by
  spinsters. This was frequently done by young
  girls. If these girls had not got married at a
  young age, it was believed that they would remain
  unmarried all their life - hence the term
  spinster today. The finished product of the
  spinsters was called yarn.
• the yarn would then be woven by a skilled weaver
  using a handloom.
• The finished product would then be sold to a
  clothier.

23

• The picture shows a typical domestic system home.
  The single room is dominated by a spinning wheel
  which is being worked by a young lady - the
  spinster. Food is being cooked in the same room.
  A ladder on the left of the picture will take the
  workers to their bedrooms once work for the day
  is finished and a window allows for light and
  ventilation. The amount of yarn produced in such
  a situation is clearly minimal

24
Textile Production and Industrialization

• The new urban labor force went to work in textile
  production. Over time other industries began to
  industrialize and expand.

25
Advances in Industry

• The textile industry is one of the first to
  industrialize with a series of inventions.
• Flying shuttle (John Kay, 1733)
• Water frame (Richard Arkwright, 1769)
• Spinning Jenny (Richard Hargreaves, 1770)
• Spinning Mule (Samuel Crompton, 1779)
• Cotton Gin (Eli Whitney, 1793)

26
Textile- Cotton Production 1890-1900
27
Life in the Industrial City

• The majority lived in cheap, crowded housing.
  Many lacked the facilities to wash or bathe
  regularly.
• Waste of all sorts from the homes was thrown into
  the courtyard and so-called night-men would
  collect this at night and dispose of it.
  Sanitation and hygiene barely existed and
  throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth
  centuries the great fear was a cholera, typhus or
  typhoid epidemic.

28

• 2) Alexis de Tocqueville was a French aristocrat
  who visited Manchester in 1835.A sort of black
  smoke covers the city. Under this half-daylight
  300,000 human beings are ceaselessly at work. The
  homes of the poor are scattered haphazard around
  the factories. From this filthy sewer pure gold
  flows. In Manchester civilised man is turned back
  almost into a savage.

29

• James Kay-Shuttleworth, wrote an account of
  Manchester in 1832.Frequently, the inspectors
  found two or more families crowded into one small
  house and often one family lived in a damp cellar
  where twelve or sixteen persons were crowded.
  Children are ill-fed, dirty, ill-clothed, exposed
  to cold and neglect and in consequence, more
  than one-half of the off-spring die before they
  have completed their fifth year.

30
Sanitation Problems

• Toilets would have been nothing more than
  cesspits. When these were filled they had to be
  emptied and what was collected was loaded onto a
  cart before being dumped in a local river. This
  work was also done by the night-men. Local laws
  stated that their work had to be done at night as
  the stench created by emptying the cesspits was
  too great to be tolerated during the day.
• A block of 40 houses would have possibly 6
  toilets for all persons. It is estimated that on
  average 9 people lived in one house, which would
  mean that 6 toilets served 360 people! Another
  problem was that it was the responsibility of the
  landlord of the house to pay to have cesspits
  emptied and they were never too enthusiastic to
  do this. One cesspit cost 1 to empty. As the
  average rent was 2 shillings a week, this equaled
  5 weeks rent. No-one in local authority enforced
  the law and as a result, courtyards could
  literally flood with sewage.

31

• Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton A Tale of
  Manchester Life (1848) Berry Street was
  unpaved and down the middle a gutter forced its
  way, every now and then forming pools in the
  holes with which the street abounded. Never was
  the old Edinburgh cry of "Gardez l'eau!' more
  necessary than in the street. As they passed,
  women from their doors tossed household slops of
  every description into the gutter they ran into
  the next pool, which over-flowed and stagnated.
  You went down one step from this foul area into
  the cellar in which a family of human beings
  lived. It was very dark inside. The window-panes
  many of them were broken and stuffed with rags,
  which was reason enough for the dusky light that
  pervaded the place at mid-day. After the account
  I have given of the state of the street, no one
  can be surprised that on going into the cellar
  inhabited by Davenport, the smell was so foetid
  as almost to knock the two men down. Quickly
  recovering themselves, as those inured to such
  things do, they began to penetrate the thick
  darkness of the place, and to see three or four
  little children rolling on the damp, nay wet
  brick floor, through which the stagnant, filthy
  moisture of the street oozed up the fireplace
  was empty and black the wife sat on the
  husband's lair, and cried in the dark loneliness.

32
Lack of Fresh Water

• The streets where the poor lived were poorly
  kept. A doctor in Manchester wrote about the
  city
• "Whole streets, unpaved and without drains or
  main sewers, are worn into deep ruts and holes in
  which water constantly stagnates, and are so
  covered with refuse and excrement as to be
  impassable from depth of mud and intolerable
  stench."
• Fresh water supplies were also very difficult to
  get in the poor areas. With no running water
  supplies, the best people could hope for was to
  leave a bucket out and collect rainwater. Some
  areas were lucky enough to have access to a well
  with a pump but there was always the chance that
  the well water could have been contaminated with
  sewage from a leaking cesspit.
• Those who lived near a river could use river
  water. However, this is where night-men emptied
  their carts full of sewage and where general
  rubbish was dumped. Any water collected would
  have been diluted sewage.

33
Infectious Disease

• In 1665 when the plague hit London as many as
  3,000 people per day were killed.
• Cholera- struck worlds cities in four
  devastating pandemics between 1830 and 1896.
  Spread through contaminated water. In St. Louis
  in 1849, 10 of the population perished. In Meca
  in 1847, 15,000 died, another 30,000 died in
  1865. In London in 1847, 53,000 died.

34
Sanitation and Disease

• Cholera is the result of sewage was being allowed
  to come into contact with drinking water and
  contaminating it.
• The greatest killer in the cities was
  tuberculosis (TB).
• TB affected those who had been poorly fed and
  were under nourished. It also affected those who
  lived in dirty and damp homes. TB can be spread
  by a person breathing in the exhaled sputum of
  someone who already has the disease. Working
  conditions meant the disease spread liberally.
• Though accurate records are difficult to acquire,
  it is believed that TB killed one-third of all
  those who died in Britain between 1800 and 1850.

35
Living Conditions

• Angus Reach, The Morning Chronicle (1849)The
  lowest, most filthy, most unhealthy, and most
  wicked locality in Manchester is called Angel
  Meadow. It lies off the Oldham Road, is full of
  cellars and is inhabited by prostitutes, their
  bullies, thieves, cadgers, vagrants, tramps, and,
  in the very worst sites of filth, and darkness.
  My guide was sub-inspector of police - an
  excellent conductor in one respect, but
  disadvantageous in another, seeing that his
  presence spread panic wherever he went. Many of
  the people that night visited had, doubtless,
  ample cause to be nervous touching the presence
  of one of the guardians of the law.

36

• There were no Irish in the houses we visited.
  They live in more wretched places still - the
  cellars. We descended to one. The place was dark,
  except for the glare of the small fire. You could
  not stand without stooping in the room, which
  might be about twelve feet by eight. There were
  at least a dozen men, women, and children, on
  stools or squatted on the stone floor round the
  fire, and the heat and smells were oppressive.
  This not being a lodging cellar, the police had
  no control over the number of its inmates, who
  slept huddled on the stones, or on masses of
  rags, shavings and straw, which were littered
  about. Half the people who lived in the den,
  had not yet returned, being still out hawking
  lucifers, matches and besoms. They were all Irish
  from Westport, in the county of Mayo. After
  leaving, a woman followed me into the street to
  know if I had come from Westport and was greatly
  disappointed at being answered in the negative.

37
Improvements

• Edwin Chadwick, The Sanitary Conditions of the
  Labouring Population (1842)It is an appalling
  fact that, of all who are born of the labouring
  classes in Manchester, more than 57 die before
  they attain five years of age that is, before
  they can be engaged in factory labour, or in any
  other labour whatsoever.

38
Disease and Social Status

• The Poor and Marginalized are Blamed for Disease
  and carry the stigma of contagion.
• Diseases like Cholera were linked to immorality
• Jews have lower rates of the plague and are often
  blamed for outbreaks.

39
Social Power Among Workers

• Class, Race and Gender divide workers and shape
  their experiences.
• The Plight of Women Miners provides an example.
• The Plight of Child Labor provides an example.

40
The Plight of Women
41
Mining

• Women and children at first worked alongside men
  in the coal mines, although there were
  differences in jobs they did. Before 1842, there
  were no protection laws, nor limits for the age
  of child labor.

42
Miner- late 1800s.
43
Mining-

• Teams of women were employed to use a windlass to
  lift coal and workers. Men refused to do such
  work.

44

• Hauling a tub of coal by means of a rope and
  chain. The chain usually passed underneath the
  body between the legs.

45
Testimonies from South Wales Mines

• Six year old girl"I have been down six weeks
  and make 10 to 14 rakes a day I carry a full 56
  lbs. of coal in a wooden bucket. I work with
  sister Jesse and mother. It is dark the time we
  go."
• Jane Peacock Watson."I have wrought in the
  bowels of the earth 33 years. I have been married
  23 years and had nine children, six are alive and
  three died of typhus a few years since. Have had
  two dead born. Horse-work ruins the women it
  crushes their haunches, bends their ankles and
  makes them old women at 40. "
• Maria Gooder"I hurry for a man with my sister
  Anne who is going 18. He is good to us. I don't
  like being in the pit. I am tired and afraid. I
  go at 430 after having porridge for breakfast. I
  start hurrying at 5. We have dinner at noon. We
  have dry bread and nothing else. There is water
  in the pit but we don't sup it. "

46

• Mary and Rachell Enock, ages 11 and 12 years."We
  are door-keepers in the four foot level. We leave
  the house before six each morning and are in the
  level until seven o'clock and sometimes later. We
  get 2p a day and our light costs us 2 1/2 p. a
  week. Rachel was in a day school and she can read
  a little. She was run over by a tram a while ago
  and was home ill a long time, but she has got
  over it."
• Isabel Wilson, 38 years old."I have been married
  19 years and have had 10 bairns children...My
  last child was born on Saturday morning, and I
  was at work on the Friday night... None of the
  children read, as the work is so regular..When I
  go below my lassie 10 years of age keeps
  house..."

47
Child Labor

• The youngest children in the textile factories
  were usually employed as scavengers and piecers.
  Scavengers had to pick up the loose cotton from
  under the machinery. This was extremely dangerous
  as the children were expected to carry out the
  task while the machine was still working.

48
The 12 Hour Work Day

• 12 Hour Work days were not uncommon. A bill to
  restrict the work day to 10 hours a day for those
  under the age of 18 was proposed in 1832. It
  failed.
• Children who were late for work were severely
  punished. If children arrived late for work they
  would also have money deducted from their wages.
  Time-keeping was a problem for those families who
  could not afford to buy a clock. In some
  factories workers were not allowed to carry a
  watch. The children suspected that this rule was
  an attempt to trick them out of some of their
  wages.

49
Late for Work

• Excerpt from the Life of William Hutton (1812)-In
  the Christmas holidays of 1731 snow was followed
  by a sharp frost. A thaw came on in the afternoon
  of the 27th, but in the night the ground was
  again caught by a frost, which glazed the
  streets. I did not awake, the next morning, till
  daylight seemed to appear. I rose in tears, for
  fear of punishment, and went to my father's
  bedside, to ask the time. He believed six I
  darted out in agonies, and from the bottom of
  Full Street, to the top of Silk mill Lane, not
  200 yards, I fell nine times! Observing no lights
  in the mill, I knew it was an early hour, and the
  reflection of the snow had deceived me.
  Returning, the town clock struck two.

50

• Elizabeth Bentley (1832) -I worked from five in
  the morning till nine at night. I lived two miles
  from the mill. We had no clock. If I had been too
  late at the mill, I would have been quartered. I
  mean that if I had been a quarter of an hour too
  late, a half an hour would have been taken off. I
  only got a penny an hour, and they would have
  taken a halfpenny.

51

• Frank Forrest (1850)- In reality there were no
  regular hours, masters and managers did with us
  as they liked. The clocks in the factories were
  often put forward in the morning and back at
  night. Though this was known amongst the hands,
  we were afraid to speak, and a workman then was
  afraid to carry a watch.

52

• worked at Mr. Braid's Mill at Duntruin. We worked
  as long as we could see. I could not say at what
  hour we stopped. There was no clock in the mill.
  There was nobody but the master and the master's
  son had a watch and so we did not know the time.
  The operatives were not permitted to have a
  watch. There was one man who had a watch but it
  was taken from him because he told the men the
  time.

53
Labor Unions- The Eight Hour Work Day

• 1840s Union movements to a 10 hour day begin.
• 1889- Trade Unionists demand Eight hours for
  work, eight hours for rest, Eight hours for what
  we will.
• In 1872, a hundred thousand workers in New York
  City struck and won the eight-hour day, mostly
  for building trades workers. It was in this
  rising ferment for the eight-hour day that May
  Day was born.
• May 1, 1884 at the convention of the
  three-year-old Federation of Organized Trades and
  Labor Unions of the United States and Canada_the
  forerunner of the American Federation of Labor
  George Edmonston, founder of the Brotherhood of
  Carpenters and Joiners, introduced a resolution
  designed to crystallize labor's support for the
  eight-hour day
• "Resolved ... that eight hours shall constitute a
  legal day's labor from and after May 1, 1886, and
  that we recommend to labor organizations
  throughout this district that they so direct
  their laws so as to conform to this resolution by
  the time named."

54
Children for Sale- Workhouse Children

• Account of Workhouse Children
• Many parents were unwilling to allow their
  children to work in these new textile factories.
  To overcome this labour shortage factory owners
  had to find other ways of obtaining workers. One
  solution to the problem was to buy children from
  orphanages and workhouses. The children became
  known as pauper apprentices. This involved the
  children signing contracts that virtually made
  them the property of the factory owner.

55

• Pauper apprentices were cheaper to house than
  adult workers. It cost Samuel Greg who owned the
  large Quarry Bank Mill at Styal, a 100 to build
  a cottage for a family, whereas his apprentice
  house, that cost 300, provided living
  accommodation for over 90 children. The same
  approach was taken by the owners of silk mills.
  George Courtauld who owned a silk mill in
  Braintree, Essex, took children from workhouses
  in London. Although offered children of all ages
  he usually took them from "within the age of 10
  and 13". Courtauld insisted that each child
  arrived "with a complete change of common
  clothing". A contract was signed with the
  workhouse that stated that Courtauld would be
  paid 5 for each child taken. Another 5 was paid
  after the child's first year.

56

• The children also signed a contract with
  Courtauld that bound them to the mill until the
  age of 21. This helped to reduce Courtauld's
  labour costs. Whereas adult males at Courtauld's
  mills earned 7s. 2d., children under 11 received
  only 1s. 5d. a week. Owners of large textile
  mills purchased large numbers of children from
  workhouses in all the large towns and cities. By
  the late 1790s about a third of the workers in
  the cotton industry were pauper apprentices.
  Child workers were especially predominant in
  large factories in rural areas. For example, in
  1797, of the 310 wortkers employed by Birch
  Robinson Co in the village of Backbarrow, 210
  were parish apprentices. However, in the major
  textile towns, such as Manchester and Oldham,
  parish apprenticeships was fairly uncommon.

57
Drawing of Workhouse Children
58
Commentary on the Workhouse

• In 1805 when Samuel Davy was seven years of age
  he was sent from the workhouse in Southwark in
  London to Mr. Watson's Mill at Penny Dam near
  Preston. Later his brother was also sent to work
  in a mill. The parents did not know where Samuel
  and his brother were. The loss of her children,
  so preyed on the mind of Samuel's mother that it
  brought on insanity, and she died in a state of
  madness. (Letter, 1828)

59
Workhouse Reminiscence 1849

• My father was a glass blower. When I was eight
  years old my father died and our family had to go
  to the Bristol Workhouse. My brother was sent
  from Bristol workhouse in the same way as many
  other children were - cart-loads at a time. My
  mother did not know where he was for two years.
  He was taken off in the dead of night without her
  knowledge, and the parish officers would never
  tell her where he was. It was the mother of
  Joseph Russell who first found out where the
  children were, and told my mother. We set off
  together, my mother and I, we walked the whole
  way from Bristol to Cressbrook Mill in
  Derbyshire. We were many days on the road. Mrs.
  Newton fondled over my mother when we arrived. My
  mother had brought her a present of little glass
  ornaments. She got these ornaments from some of
  the workmen, thinking they would be a very nice
  present to carry to the mistress at Cressbrook,
  for her kindness to my brother. My brother told
  me that Mrs. Newton's fondling was all a blind
  but I was so young and foolish, and so glad to
  see him again that I did not heed what he said,
  and could not be persuaded to leave him. They
  would not let me stay unless I would take the
  shilling binding money. I took the shilling and I
  was very proud of it. They took me into the
  counting house and showed me a piece of paper
  with a red sealed horse on which they told me to
  touch, and then to make a cross, which I did.
  This meant I had to stay at Cressbrook Mill till
  I was twenty one.

60
Reminiscence -1828

• In the summer of 1799 a rumour circulated that
  there was going to be an agreement between the
  church wardens and the overseers of St. Pancras
  Workhouse and the owner of a great cotton mill,
  near Nottingham. The children were told that when
  they arrived at the cotton mill, they would be
  transformed into ladies and gentlemen that they
  would be fed on roast beef and plum pudding, be
  allowed to ride their masters' horses, and have
  silver watches, and plenty of cash in their
  pockets. In August 1799, eighty boys and girls,
  who were seven years old, or were considered to
  be that age, became parish apprentices till they
  had acquired the age of twenty-one.

61
1849

• Our regular time was from five in the morning
  till nine or ten at night and on Saturday, till
  eleven, and often twelve o'clock at night, and
  then we were sent to clean the machinery on the
  Sunday. No time was allowed for breakfast and no
  sitting for dinner and no time for tea. We went
  to the mill at five o'clock and worked till about
  eight or nine when they brought us our breakfast,
  which consisted of water-porridge, with oatcake
  in it and onions to flavour it. Dinner consisted
  of Derbyshire oatcakes cut into four pieces, and
  ranged into two stacks. One was buttered and the
  other treacled. By the side of the oatcake were
  cans of milk. We drank the milk and with the
  oatcake in our hand, we went back to work without
  sitting down.

62
Workhouse Reminiscence

• I began work at Cook's of Dewsbury when I was
  eight years old. We had to eat our food in the
  mill. It was frequently covered by flues from the
  wool and in that case they had to be blown off
  with the mouth, and picked off with the fingers,
  before it could be eaten. 1832
• Our common food was oatcake. It was thick and
  coarse. This oatcake was put into cans. Boiled
  milk and water was poured into it. This was our
  breakfast and supper. Our dinner was potato pie
  with boiled bacon it, a bit here and a bit there,
  so thick with fat we could scarce eat it, though
  we were hungry enough to eat anything. Tea we
  never saw, nor butter. We had cheese and brown
  bread once a year. We were only allowed three
  meals a day though we got up at five in the
  morning and worked till nine at night. 1849

63
Workhouse Reminiscence

• The young strangers were conducted into a
  spacious room with long, narrow tables, and
  wooden benches. They were ordered to sit down at
  these tables - the boys and girls apart. The
  supper set before them consisted of
  milk-porridge, of a very blue complexion! The
  bread was partly made of rye, very black, and so
  soft, they could scarcely swallow it, as it stuck
  to their teeth. Where is our roast beef and
  plum-pudding, he said to himself. The
  apprentices from the mill arrived. The boys had
  nothing on but a shirt and trousers. Their coarse
  shirts were entirely open at the neck, and their
  hair looked as if a comb had seldom, if ever,
  been applied! The girls, like the boys, destitute
  of shoes and stockings. On their first entrance,
  some of the old apprentices took a view of the
  strangers but the great bulk first looked for
  their supper, which consisted of new potatoes,
  distributed at a hatch door, that opened into the
  common room from the kitchen.

64

• There was no cloth laid on the tables, to which
  the newcomers had been accustomed in the
  workhouse - no plates, nor knives, nor forks. At
  a signal given, the apprentices rushed to this
  door, and each, as he made way, received his
  portion, and withdrew to his place at the table.
  Blincoe was startled, seeing the boys pull out
  the fore-part of their shirts, and holding it up
  with both hands, received the hot boiled potatoes
  allotted for their supper. The girls, less
  indecently, held up their dirty, greasy aprons,
  that were saturated with grease and dirt, and
  having received their allowance, scampered off as
  hard as they could, to their respective places,
  where, with a keen appetite, each apprentice
  devoured her allowance, and seemed anxiously to
  look about for more. Next, the hungry crew ran to
  the tables of the newcomers, and voraciously
  devoured every crust of bread and every drop of
  porridge they had left.

65
Workhouse Boys
66
Scavengers
67
Institutional Support for Abuse

• Children who worked long hours in the textile
  mills became very tired and found it difficult to
  maintain the speed required by the overlookers.
  Children were usually hit with a strap to make
  them work faster. In some factories children were
  dipped head first into the water cistern if they
  became drowsy. Children were also punished for
  arriving late for work and for talking to the
  other children. Parish apprentices who ran away
  from the factory was in danger of being sent to
  prison. Children who were considered potential
  runaways were placed in irons.

68

• The master carder's name was Thomas Birks but he
  never went by any other name than Tom the Devil.
  He was a very bad man - he was encouraged by the
  master in ill-treating all the hands, but
  particularly the children. I have often seen him
  pull up the clothes of big girls, seventeen or
  eighteen years of age, and throw them across his
  knee, and then flog them with his hand in the
  sight of both men and boys. Everybody was
  frightened of him. He would not even let us
  speak. He once fell poorly, and very glad we
  were. We wished he might die. There was an
  overlooker called William Hughes, who was put in
  his place whilst he was ill. He came up to me and
  asked me what my drawing frame was stopped for. I
  said I did not know because it was not me who had
  stopped it. A little boy that was on the other
  side had stopped it, but he was too frightened to
  say it was him. Hughes starting beating me with a
  stick, and when he had done I told him I would
  let my mother know. He then went out and fetched
  the master in to me. The master started beating
  me with a stick over the head till it was full of
  lumps and bled. My head was so bad that I could
  not sleep for a long time, and I never been a
  sound sleeper since.

69

• There was a young woman, Sarah Goodling, who was
  poorly and so she stopped her machine. James
  Birch, the overlooker knocked her to the floor.
  She got up as well as she could. He knocked her
  down again. Then she was carried to the
  apprentice house. Her bed-fellow found her dead
  in bed. There was another called Mary. She
  knocked her food can down on the floor. The
  master, Mr. Newton, kicked her where he should
  not do, and it caused her to wear away till she
  died. There was another, Caroline Thompson. They
  beat her till she went out of her mind. We were
  always locked up out of mill hours, for fear any
  of us should run away. One day the door was left
  open. Charlotte Smith, said she would be
  ringleader, if the rest would follow. She went
  out but no one followed her. The master found out
  about this and sent for her. There was a carving
  knife which he took and grasping her hair he cut
  if off close to the head. They were in the habit
  of cutting off the hair of all who were caught
  speaking to any of the lads. This head shaving
  was a dreadful punishment. We were more afraid of
  it than of any other, for girls are proud of
  their hair.

70
The Costs of Child Labor

• Physical Deformity Seemed to result for child
  labor.
• QuestionWhat are the effects of this on the
  children.Dr. Samuel Smith Up to twelve or
  thirteen years of age, the bones are so soft that
  they will bend in any direction. The foot is
  formed of an arch of bones of a wedge-like shape.
  These arches have to sustain the whole weight of
  the body. I am now frequently in the habit of
  seeing cases in which this arch has given way.
  Long continued standing has also a very injurious
  effect upon the ankles. But the principle effects
  which I have seen produced in this way have been
  upon the knees. By long continued standing the
  knees become so weak that they turn inwards,
  producing that deformity which is called
  "knock-knees" and I have sometimes seen it so
  striking, that the individual has actually lost
  twelve inches of his height by it.

71

• In the spring of 1840, I began to feel some
  painful symptoms in my right wrist, arising from
  the general weakness of my joints, brought on in
  the factories. The swelling and pain increased.
  The wrist eventually measured twelve inches round
  and I was worn down to a mere skeleton. I entered
  St. Thomas's Hospital and on 18th July, I
  underwent the operation. The hand being taken off
  a little below the elbow. On dissection, the
  bones of the forearm presented a very curious
  appearance - something similar to an empty
  honeycombe, the marrow having totally
  disappeared.
•  

72
Social Critique
73
Alienation

• For Marx, the history of mankind had a double
  aspect It was a history of increasing control of
  man over nature at the same time as it was a
  history of the increasing alienation of man.
• Alienation may be described as a condition in
  which men are dominated by forces of their own
  creation, which confront them as alien powers.

74
Alienation and Capitalism

• To Marx, all major institutional spheres in
  capitalist society, such as religion, the state,
  and political economy, were marked by a condition
  of alienation.
• Moreover, these various aspects of alienation
  were interdependent.
• "Objectification is the practice of alienation.
  Just as man, so long as he is engrossed in
  religion, can only objectify his essence by an
  alien and fantastic being so under the sway of
  egoistic need, he can only affirm himself and
  produce objects in practice by subordinating his
  products and his own activity to the domination
  of an alien entity, and by attributing to them
  the significance of an alien entity, namely
  money."
• Money as a fetish. It is through the medium of
  money that alienation is transmitted.

75
The Four Aspects of Alienation

• The Object Produced
• The Process of Production
• Himself/Herself
• The Community of Fellows

76
The Object Produced

• 1) The Object produced- "The object produced by
  labor, its product, now stands opposed to it as
  an alien being, as a power independent of the
  producer. . . .The more the worker expends
  himself in work the more powerful becomes the
  world of objects which he creates in face of
  himself, the poorer he becomes in his inner life,
  and the less he belongs to himself.
• The object produced is used to satisfy basic
  needs, but the worker lacks detailed knowledge
  and control over the product.

77
The Process of Production

• 2) The process of production- "However,
  alienation appears not merely in the result but
  also in the process of production, within
  productive activity itself. . . . If the product
  of labor is alienation, production itself must be
  active alienation. . . . The alienation of the
  object of labor merely summarizes the alienation
  in the work activity itself.
• Productive activity belongs to the capitalist,
  the process is no longer satisfying in and of
  itself. Instead it is tied into the generation
  of profit.

78
Himself/Herself- Species Being

• 3) Him/herself- Being alienated from the objects
  of his labor and from the process of production,
  man is also alienated from himself--he cannot
  fully develop the many sides of his personality.
  "Work is external to the worker. . . . It is not
  part of his nature consequently he does not
  fulfill himself in his work but denies himself. .
  . . The worker therefore feels himself at home
  only during his leisure time, whereas at work he
  feels homeless."31 "In work the worker does not
  belong to himself but to another person."32 "This
  is the relationship of the worker to his own
  activity as something alien, not belonging to him
  activity as suffering (passivity), strength as
  powerlessness, creation as emasculation, the
  personal physical and mental energy of the
  worker, his personal life. . . . as an activity
  which is directed against himself, independent of
  him and not belonging to him.
• One is alienated from his/her human potential.
  We become less human through our work and more
  like animals. (who only do things to satisfy
  basic needs).

79
Community of Fellows

• 4) Community of Fellows- "Man is alienated from
  other men. When man confronts himself he also
  confronts other men. What is true of man's
  relationship to his work, to the product of his
  work and to himself, is also true of his
  relationship to other men. . . . Each man is
  alienated from others . . . each of the others is
  likewise alienated from human life.
• Rather than working together, workers are pitted
  in competition against one another.

80
Emancipation- Praxis

• Human emancipation only occurs when individuals
  become species beings, or realize their
  potential.
• Praxis- concrete action informed by theory
• His ideal society does not rule over people and
  is nothing beyond the concrete relations between
  individuals.

81
The Structure of Capitalist Society

• How did Marx view social structure?
• He saw social structure as being composed of a
  large number of continuing social relationships.
• These structures are not static, but change.

82
Commodities

• Are products of labor intended for both use and
  exchange.
• People produce what they need to survive.
• Commodities are the reified result of labor.

83
The Fetishism of Commodities

• Labor gives commodities their value. The
  fetishism of commodities involves the process by
  which actors fail to recognize that it is their
  labor that gives commodities their value.
• A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing,
  simply because in it the social character of
  mens labor appears to them as an objective
  character stamped upon the product of that labor
  because the relations of the producers to the sum
  total of their own labor is presented to them as
  a social relation, existing not between
  themselves, but between the products of their
  labor. Marx, 1867

84
Value

• Use value- objects produced for use by oneself or
  others in the immediate environment. With use
  value, objects are the products of human labor
  and cannot achieve an independent existence
  because they are controlled by the actors.
• Exchange Value- the value of something in an
  exchange. The value something takes one when
  exchanged in an open market.
• Surplus Value- the difference between what the
  worker is paid and what the worker produces

85
The Demands of Capital

• Capital- the objectified embodiment of past labor
  (dead labor). Its value can only be brought to
  life when living labor is applied to it.
• Capital is dead labour which, vampire like,
  lives only by sucking living labour, and lives
  the more, the more labour it sucks (Capital, p.
  342)
• Capital requires ever increasing demands on the
  workers time (machines arent making money when
  they are down).
• Human needs and hardships are secondary to the
  demands of capital to expand.
• -shift to continuous production provides and
  example of this tendency.

86
The Fundamental Contradictions of Capitalism

• The relationship between the bourgeoisie and the
  proletariat is inherently divisive. Exploitation
  is balanced against a growing working class that
  will eventually become intolerant.
• Capitalism requires ever increasing profit
  margins, but the tendency is for the rate of
  profit to decline.
• The capitalists quest for ever-increasing rates
  of surplus value is the secret behind increasing
  demands on workers in the face of rising profits.
• Paradoxically, unemployment and unfilled jobs go
  hand in hand.
• The scale of production must constantly expand.
  (Searching for new sources of surplus), with the
  expansion of capital comes a ballooning of its
  demands.

87
Exercise

• Count off to 6.
• Each Group is assigned one term
• 1 Marxs Four types of Alienation
• 2 Dialectical Materialism
• 3 Fundamental Contradictions of Capitalism
• 4 The means of production
• 5 Use and Exchange Value
• 6 Surplus Value (using Kvisto)

88
Exercise Cont.

• Using text and lecture notes. Define your term.
  Think of how Marx exemplifies this idea.
• View Charlie Chaplins Modern Times
• Find examples of your term in this film
• Report your definition of the term and examples
  to the class