How can I relate Marxs concept of alienated labor to my life as a college student? HELP!?
The central problem with your approach is that, as a college student, you are actually an entrepreneur in an early stage of preparation for entry, not into “Labor,” but into the “Bourgoisie.” In other words, you’re the enemy of Labor and part of the ruling class of selfish exploitative owners of the means of production. Also, this is no longer the late Eighteenth or early Nineteenth Centuries, during which time “Capital” crushed “Labor” mercilessly with harsh work conditions, long hours, child labor, low pay, and other “de-humanizing” aspects of employment. (Read Zola’s “Germinal” for a graphic description of life in a French coal mine.) Marx’s analysis of “dehumanization” has been all but eradicated by the labor movement, unions, gov’t laws concerning workplace safety, mandatory retirement programs, free public education, unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation insurance, and a host of other benefits for workers. So it’s quite difficult, impossible really, to consider a union au
