In Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx addresses how, upon the “realization of their objectification,” workers in a capitalist society present feel alienated from their work and feel a loss of self. After performing the same mundane routine every day, workers begin to feel as if they are nothing more than cheap commodities whose entire lives revolve around their work and the pursuit of making a living. According to Marx, “the alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power of its own confronting him”. I think workers on an assembly line, for example, may have no knowledge of the thing they are working on (electronics or some other type of gadgets) and would confront it “as something alien” but the thing will soon take control of their lives as they are pressured to and ordered to manufacture and sell the thing to the demanding public with little to no breaks. They become exhausted and miserable. This makes the workers feel that their roles are being reduced to that of a cog in a machine and that they are not part of a community contributing something meaningful to society— they are just disposable and replaceable.

I can relate to what Marx is saying. One of my first jobs, like a lot of other people, was at a fast food restaurant. I did not last more than six months there because I felt horrible and didn’t care about the job. I hated the job, I hated my boss and I hated the customers because they all treated me and my coworkers like trash while expecting us to provide the absolute best customer service and produce their overpriced lattes and cappuccinos in record time. Fast food chain workers almost always end up feeling estranged from their environment. They feel estranged from customers, their boss, and maybe even their social life and family life because they are treated as “numbers” who aren’t actually appreciated for their work and who eventually just accept that they are selling their souls every day to work for pennies and not to contribute something meaningful to society or be creative or expressive in any way.

Once the exhausting labor and the mundane process of this labor has turned into “an alien object exercising power over the workers”, Marx believes that there are two more aspects that will make them feel completely alienated and separated from their line of work. Workers start to feel isolated towards each other. Maybe coworkers who were once good friends may start to look upon one another as rivals to see who can get their line of work done more quickly and efficiently. Maybe even enemies. The final aspect that Marx talks about is that workers will feel completely isolated towards other people in “the estrangement of man from man,” which is “an immediate consequence of the fact that they are estranged from the product of their labor, their life-activity, and their species being”— this is exactly why I will never work in fast food again.

In From Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 by Karl Marx, he talks about how workers becomes object of values to monopolies. As Karl Marx wrote, “…we have shown that the worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities.”(651). The more a worker produces, the cheaper the objects they produce will be, but it will come at a price. The value of the worker will become less and it dehumanizes them. As they work more, the “activity of alienation”(654). also comes into play. The workers will feel estrangement and will feel like being exploited. He/she will produce more objects that provides benefits to the world, but the worker’s perspective will be opposite. What the workers produce that is seen beautiful by the world will be seen as ugly by the worker.(653).

Workers are related to the product they produce. As the workers keep producing products that are more powerful, he/she will become more alienated.(652) The product he/she produce will change how the world works. The product that are powerful will work against the workers as production of commodity will become simpler and cheaper. The “worker will become poorer”(652) as more powerful products will simplify the working world. Karl Marx compares this to religion by stating, “The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself.”(652). As the workers continue to produce more powerful and better products, it will at one point replace them. At one point the object will confront the producers as “something hostile and alien.”(652). We will become dependent on these product that the workers’ themselves created. What was a worker’s life will become the object’s life.(652).

As workers keep working, they become more like machines. Go to work, then go home and repeat. It is a cycle or a routine and he/she only follow his/her “animal instinct”.(654). It becomes more of a mean to survive as they only work only for “eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc.”(654). The worker no longer “feels himself to be anything but an animal”(654) and is forced to work. In the end, the powerful will stay powerful while the weak will stay powerless. As Karl Marx wrote,” On the basis of of political economy itself … the whole of society must fall apart into two classes – the property-owners and the propertyless workers.”(651). The workers will be exploited by the property-owners as workers become property to these owners.

In The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 Karl Marx talks about the effects of having a job in a capitalist political economy. He poses the argument that because the worker puts himself as a whole into his product, he loses himself to that product. According to Marx, “Whatever the product of his labour is, he is not. Therefore the greater this product, the less is he himself” (653).  The product itself becomes independent from the worker but somehow it is more valuable.  Not only does the worker become a slave of his object; he becomes imprisoned to his work in general.  Marx concludes his argument by saying, “and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal” (655).  We have allowed ourselves to become enslaved by our work.  We are giving our products the power to consume us leaving us with nothing for ourselves but a title.  This main title of existence being that of a worker.

Value is sucked out of the workers body and into their product but also, more importantly, into the person they are working for. The worker is allowing his labour and production to take over his life for the sole fact that he needs it to survive.  It is very ironic that the one thing that is slowly killing him is the same thing that is helping him sustain – in short term.  “His labour is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labour” (655).  The worker is allowing this to happen because it is a matter of life or death in a sense.  In my opinion, he is putting everything about him into his work, leaving him with nothing but existence in the most literal sense, so he is already dying.  Because he is working and creating products for another person, he is simply losing himself; everything that once belonged to him is now a part of someone and something else, powerfully independent (653).

In my work experience I can argue that it is the job with the most value that gives you your sense of self. For example, I work at a camp for children with special needs.  This job does not only benefit the children and parents I work for; it benefits me greatly.  On the other hand, I also work at a supermarket during the year.  This is the type of job (among others) that Marx says is alienating.  I go there simply to make money, losing a bit of myself while I’m there.  Everything I put into that job is reflected on my manager, not myself.  Therefore, the argument I am trying to make is there are some self-fulfilling jobs out there but more often than not the jobs we have are simply benefitting everyone but us.

In Barbara Johnson’s reading of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd she frames the tale in the context not only of linguistic theory but also of relations between literature and law (2257). Johnson finds within the text literary theory questions the text itself tries to address, however, Johnson goes further than answering the obvious questions. She does begin by addressing some of the other readings that have been done of Melville’s story, pointing out how a lot of them speak of the ambiguity in the story, which is important to her discussion as well. In one of the many points she makes she uses Saussure’s idea of the signified and signifer to describe Billy and Claggart. She goes on to say, “this story takes place between the postulate of continuity between the signifier and signified and the postulate of their discontinuity” (2263). She also mentions the opposition between the performative and the constative functions of language. By doing so, she shows how Billy and Claggart were both built up to be complex characters, forced to act out of character by exterior events. They were meant to puzzle the readers. Though, I must say their complexity makes them even more human, for complexity is the strongest human trait.
However, what I found most interesting is her analysis of the judgement done by Captain Vere and the readers. When the story’s focus changes to Vere acting as a judge, it forces the readers to become judges as well. Johnson clearly points out that this story is much more than a study of good and evil, it is a dramatization of the twisted relations between knowing and doing, speaking and killing, reading and judging, which make political understanding and action so problematic (2276). Captain Veer is the reader as the judge, we judge Veer as he’s judging, the text is then judging how judging works. Veer even attempts to use Biblical words (as in language) to help him make a decision, but by making the decision to convict Billy at the end, it makes the whole ordeal even more controversial because Veer acted differently from the way he was feeling (he felt that Billy was not an intentional killer). By doing so neither Veer, nor us, as the readers, are saved from the complexity of the issue. This ultimately shows us there is no straight forward answer, this is meant to be complex, it’s not meant to be an easy judgement. I think this  statement found in the reading expresses this perfectly as well: Language is not simply about problems, it participates in them (2276).

In “Ideology” by Raymond Williams he starts his argument with the three meanings ideology has had in Marxist theory. The three meanings are:

(i) a system of beliefs characteristic of a particular class or group;

(ii) a system of illusory beliefs – false ideas or false consciousness – which can be contrasted with true or scientific knowledge;

(iii) the general process of the production of meanings and ideas.

Meanings (i) and (ii) are in one category and (iii) is in another by itself. In some cases (i) and (ii) have been combined. Williams looks at ideology as a complicated notion that needs extensive revision. Ideology created the opposition between class-based knowledge that is illusory and knowledge of human activity and practice that is objective and true.  Williams thinks that the opposition existed since the time of Marx and Engels. That is when “‘Ideology’ became a polemical nickname for kinds of thinking which neglected or ignored the material social process of which ‘consciousness’ was always a part (58).”

Ideology becomes the new substitute for non-Marxist thinking, from the ideas humans have had of their identity since early times to bourgeois political economy. Williams considers this to be reactionary thinking rather than analysis. It belongs to the naive dualism of ‘mechanical materialism’, in which the idealist separation of ‘ideas’ and ‘material reality’ had been repeated, but with its priorities reversed. The emphasis on consciousness as inseparable from conscious existence, and then on conscious existence as inseparable from material social processes, is in effect lost in the use of this deliberately degrading vocabulary (59).”

In Marxist theory, ideology has been adopted as a reductive dualism between consciousness, the domain of ideas, and the material world, and the domain of products. Marxist theory also ignores the permanent social nature of consciousness that Marx and Engels were trying so hard describe. Williams believes that ideology allows understanding of signification as a social process.

Ideology should be a phrase that refers in some way to the social process by which meanings are produced. The deductiveness of the term ideology that has taken place over the years makes Williams suspect that it is an “open question whether ‘ideology’ and ‘ideological’, with their senses of ‘abstraction’ and ‘illusion’, or their senses of ‘ideas’ and ‘theories’, or even their senses of a ‘system’ of beliefs or of meanings and values, are sufficiently precise and practicable terms for so far-reaching and radical a redefinition (71). ”

In Raymond Williams’ “Ideology”  He states ideology as  forms of expressions or changes in  economic conditions. But they are  looked at  forms in which men become conscious  of the problems that comes  from conditions and changes of in the economic production. I really found this to be very hard to decipher with the idea of ideology as an illusion. The idea  of ideology as the set of ideas which come from a given set of material interests or more from a closely class or group,  that has been strongly used as the sense of ideology as illusion. If we think about it each  idea has been used, at times that be confusing in the Marxist tradition. There really is no sense of illusion or false consciousness in the text like the  Lenin: Socialism, as it is the ideology of struggle of the  class, that undergoes the general conditions of birth, development and consolidation of an ideology.  It is founded on all the material of  the knowledge of humans. It is also a high level of science that demands scientific work, In the class struggle  which develops fast, as an powerful force, on the ground of capitalism, and socialism One example of ideology can be looked at as correct and strong as against another ideology.  Williams goes on to day that “It is of course possible to add that the other ideology, representing the class enemy, is, while a true expression of their interests, false to any general human interest, and something of the earlier sense of illusion or false consciousness can then be loosely associated with what is primarily a description of the class character of certain ideas”. In my opinion this is a neutral idea of ideology that really  needs to be shown by something describing the class or  group that represents or  works, has in fact become common in many kinds of argument. At the same time, within Marxism but also elsewhere, there has been a standard distinction between ideology and in order to retain the sense of illusory or merely abstract thought. This develops the distinction suggested by Engels, in which ideology would end when men realized their real life-conditions and therefore their real motives, after which their consciousness would become genuinely scientific because they would then be in contact with reality. If we really think about it, ideology is really just used in the idea given by Napoleon himself.

Marx’s Capital lays bare the peculiar nature of commodity fetishism and the social constructions that go into ascribing inherent value to objects; simultaneously erasing the rich social relations that unconsciously accompany any product of labor. Like a first sip of coffee, it took some time before the impact of Marx’s words had fully made their way into my brain. Not to accuse a long dead philosopher of being willfully dense, but the man squeezes all the terms that he can get out of concepts about labor. Despite the short waiting period for comprehending the text , Marx does make an interesting point about how the constructions of bourgeois society have extended so far as to make actual value-less phrases like “Venmo me $12 for the chicken pad thai” or “This matcha latte is $8” become imbued with value.

Commodities, that is to say products of human labor with use-value, are not simply commodities rooted in some objective inherent value that always resides within the object. Objects have to pass through many hands before they become commodities. They are made by workers with varying degrees of effort and with varying labor-times, they undergo a number of manufacturing processes, they are then exchanged between producers but “the specific social character of each producer’s labor does not show itself except in the act of exchange.”(665). From my understanding, the end product in which the object of the producer’s labor is deemed useful to others therefore it has value, is all we see on the surface, when there were a number of social and human relations underneath that that are obscured by the object’s newfound value which can be equated to other ‘valuable’ objects, despite the fact that this value is assigned. When this happens objects then “act and re-act upon each other as quantities of value”, and a pound of gold and a pound of iron, as Marx exemplifies, can have equivalent value despite the fact that the two objects are extremely different and have different chemical make-up, different qualities, etc. (666). Apples to oranges becomes reconfigured as apples to apples within this Fetishism. Value based on labor-time and the human effort placed into these newfound commodities are rendered irrelevant. We lose the rich social context of the valuable objects we hold so dear and instead

Marx also utilizes one of his most reliable analogies, religion. In religion, we create “independent beings endowed with, and entering into relation with one another and the human race” (665). Plainly, these gods and archangels that essentially came from our brain are now imagined and understood as fully formed things that exist outside of ourselves, interact with each other, are weighed against each other and rule us from the heavens. If my Marxist lens isn’t fogged up too badly, at its core capitalism, like religion, mediates objects and ascribes meaning to them to create the sense of a rational world around us and perpetuate a particular system. If we stripped away the top layers of constructed meaning, we would find a whole lot of complex and rich human occurrences underneath.

In Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, he sets out to explore a different way of considering labor and exchange. Marx first considers the dominant paradigm of thought in this arena, which he names “political economy.” By proceeding from the set of assumptions inherent in political economy, namely “private property, the separation of labour, capital and land, and of wages, profit of capitol and rent of land,” (651) this paradigm takes for true what it “is supposed to deduce” (652). In this way, Marx relates political economy to theology, which also “assumes as a fact . . . what has to be explained” (652). Among the various effects of political economy are that the worker becomes a commodity, wealth is hoarded by the few, and society divides between “the property-owners and the propertyless workers” (652)

In response to this mode of thought, Marx attempts to create an idea of economics that is more firmly rooted in reality. He begins with what he considers an “actual economic fact” (653): that the worker becomes a commodity by its labor, and that the more labor the worker produces, the cheaper a commodity it becomes. As labor is carried out, it solidifies in the form of an object, which is then outside and separate from the laborer. In this case, labor can be appropriated, and set against the worker. Again, Marx draws comparison to religion: “The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself” (653).

Next, Marx considers the relationship between labor and nature, or the “senuous external world” (653). The latter provides the “means of life” for the former. Without nature, labor would have no materials with which to create an object, and no sustenance with which to support the worker. By considering this relationship, we can see how the worker can become “a slave of his object” (654). When the worker creates an object of its labor, the labor then exists outside of the worker, and, in most cases, is owned by another. This other, through ownership of the object of labor, owns too the worker from whom this object came. We see, once more, how this can be related to religion, where “the spontaneous activity of the human imagination . . . operates independently of the individual—that is, operates on him as an alien, divine or diabolical activity” (655).

By observing both political economy and theology through this lens, we see how these types of ideologies can lead to an ignorant assumption of facts, an externalization of the self, and, ultimately, an appropriation and exploitation of the self by another. Marx suggests that ideology in necessarily grounded in the reality of “historical life-process[es]” (656). When an ideology assumes an independence from and priority above real human experience, that ideology has become misguided. For Marx “where speculation ends—in real life—there real, positive, science begins” (656).

It is with this spirit that Marx challenges that ideologies of political economy and theology, and it is with this spirit that we may bring Marx into the literary world. As a cultural object, literature is an essential factor in the formation and maintenance of ideologies. As those who endeavor to appraise such cultural objects, it is our role (if one agrees with Marx) to assess the relationship between a work of literature and the reality from which it erupts. We are to judge each work of literature by the extent to which it challenges ideologies that break this connection, or by how well it draws these lines of connection itself.

The story of Billy Budd is generally a very easy story to understand. As the story shows, Billy Budd kills Claggart by accident and Captain Vere must make a decision on whether or not to sentence Billy Budd to hanging. This decision that Captain Vere depends on whether he judges with his feelings or his rules upon the ship. Melville brings up this idea of “cruci-fiction” which is a cross shaped diagram that shows the difference between how a character is perceived versus what really happens. Melville illustrates this relationship by linking Billy Budd to guilty, and Claggart to innocent. This goes against the characterization of the two characters at the beginning of the story. Billy Budd was seen to be a light- spirited and very personable sailor on the ship. Claggart was seen to be a sailor who starts trouble and is not as easy to get along with as Billy.  The characterization of Captain Vere is the most important element of this story and deconstructing him is necessary to the full understanding of the text.

Ultimately, Vere decides to execute Billy Budd for killing Claggart. In this case, Vere put natural law over his personal feelings when deciding on a verdict. Vere was able to detach himself from his feelings in order to make a decision that he felt was the best for the ship and overall the British Navy. Having knowledge of the historical context of this story makes it easier to understand the motivation of Vere. Even though he feels sorry for Billy, he had to make his decision under the king’s law. He is seen as a authority figure that rules by the book. Captain Vere is seen as intelligent and fair leader but ultimately he ends up sentencing one of his own sailors to death because of an accident. The reader is meant to feel animosity towards Captain Vere because we feel compassion for Billy Budd because he was systematically symbolized as the “good” guy in the story for lack of better terms.

I think that power plays a significant role in the story of Billy Budd. While Captain Vere felt sympathetic towards Billy, he wanted to make sure that the hierarchy on the ship was clear. The captain is the boss because he runs everything, has his own quarter of the ship, and wears different clothes from the rest of the sailors. He needed to keep order upon the ship and keep the social hierarchy in check so no other sailor even thinks about trying to do what Billy did.

Lastly, language plays a big role in Billy’s downfall. Billy had an inability to speak and convey his thoughts which lead to his violent outburst against Claggart which killed him. Johnson states that “his literal mindness (Billy) is represented by his illiteracy because, in assuming that language can be taken at face value, he excludes the very functioning of difference that makes the act of reading both dispensable and undecidable. (2262).” Billy is put at an disadvantage because he could not properly convey his words to Captain Vere or Claggart which led to his downfall.