Norma Rae

Hannah Crouser 

Work is something that everyone needs in order to survive and thrive in this world. Through the movie Norma Rae, we see how important and powerful the individual's labor is. Karl Marx would call this labor-power. When individuals give up their labor-power and give control to their bosses they become alienated. This was demonstrated when Norma Rae was given a promotion and no one in the factory talked to her. Even though she was slightly alienated before, she became even more alienated once she gave up more of her labor. In order to eliminate some of that alienation, and demand they be given a fair wage and rights, the workers formed a union. The workers in the film were fighting not only for better wages but for livable work conditions. They were tired of being treated as only their labor, and not as people. Marx would argue that in a capitalist society, it is best to create a large amount of unemployed workers so that the cost of labor can be lower. With COVID, we are seeing that large amount of unemployment. Instead of people accepting the lower wages, we are seeing people fighting for their rights and forming unions. These people formed unions because their rights were not being taken into consideration, they realized that they were being taken advantage of by the companies they worked for, and fought to be seen by the government. It is important that people realize the weight of their labor-power and fight to get a reasonable trade-off for giving it to someone else.








Comments

  1. David BernellFebruary 22, 2023 at 7:54 PM

    The use of Marx to analyze the topic is well written, and it provides a thoughtful analysis. It's also a post that probably would have looked very different a generation ago, when there was the presence of the Soviet Union and communist governments that publicly grounded and justified themselves in the writings of Marx, and that also brutalized and imprisoned so many of their own citizens.

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