Estrangement Of The Thing + Estrangment Of Labour

[Entrails Konfetti]

As we all know back when Marx wrote Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 there was an abudance of factory production work; especially in the first world, for various reasons in 2006-- the jobs for the working-class have shifted toward service.

The estrangment of the thing occurs when the workers labour is objectified and is sent of to the sphere of commere-- the product must sell inorder for them get their daily subsistence. This means life or death. The worker is a slave to the commoditie.

The estrangment of labor occurs when, the worker is told how hard they must when, when and how by the owner of the private property.

Now, how would this apply at service jobs. The product of the workers labour is their service. Their service is dictated by the owner of private property. So the question is: For todays service worker are these two relationships one-in-the same?

[hoopla]

I think its a reasonabley intersting question, in that if it was answered thuroughly I think some people would learn sopmething. I suppose this has something toi do with as to whther we are alienated from our own products, or lots of people's. Guessing the situs might have something to say on that...

[rouchambeau]

I don't see any difference between working people of the service sector and the others. They all sell their labor which is infused in something. The thing which contains the labor can be tangible or intangible (the cleanness of a floor, for example).

[Entrails Konfetti]

Originally posted by [email protected] 23, 2007 04:09 am
I don't see any difference between working people of the service sector and the others. They all sell their labor which is infused in something. The thing which contains the labor can be tangible or intangible (the cleanness of a floor, for example).
I don't know if I'd consider a clean floor a result, or a product.
I think its a result, it's not really a commoditie.

[blake 3:17]

Jobs in the service sector are primarily about the distribution of commodities -- whether the commodity is an electronic appliance or a chicken thigh. Huge numbers of people are employed in the production and consumption of a commodity. With greater and greater divisons of labour alienation is compounded to the point where very few workers seem to actually produce anything -- people are reduced to being a cog in ever bigger machines. Adding a widget (why do we obsess over widegets?) or cleaning a bathroom are both necessary to the production of commodities.

And not to be a pedant but there is an important distinction between labour and labour-power to be made here. Service sector jobs are also largely part of the reproduction of labour-power not labour itself.

From Wikipedia:
In general, Marx argues that the value of labour power is equal to its normal or average reproduction cost, i.e. the established human needs which must be satisfied in order for the worker to turn up for work each day, fit to work. This involves goods and services representing a quantity of labour equal to necessary labour or the necessary product.

Included is both a physical component (the minimum physical requirements for a healthy worker) and a moral-historical component (the satisfaction of needs beyond the physical minimum which have become an established part of the lifestyle of the average worker). The value of labour power is thus an historical norm, which is the outcome of a combination of factors: productivity; the assertion of human needs; the costs of acquiring skills; state laws stipulating minimum or maximum wages, etc. Wikipedia on Labor Power. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_power)

Hope this makes sense. It took me years to get my head around it, but I think it's one of Marx's greatest theoretical contributions.

[chebol]

The fundamental issue is that under capitalism, the *labour* of a worker is itself commodified. The person, as worker, does not 'live to work', but 'works to live', selling their labour as a commodity by the hour in order to live. That is the prime commodity which is undergoing exchange. The clean floor certainly has (or is argued to have) a function in modern society, but is a secondary issue.

Essentially, the question is what is a person's relation to the means of production? Do they control such, or are they required to sell their labour in order to survive?

To reduce Marxism to classical industrial economies and the societies that arose from them is to buy into the "we are all bourgeois/ middle class/ post-class now" bullshit which is designed to maintain the tenuous grip that imperialist capital has over society - most particularly in the 'over-developed' 'West'.