All Work and Dangerous Games

In the reading, Alienated Labor, Karl Marx talks about some really hot topics centered around labor, slavery, and its impact on mankind. Marx states that Alienated Labor separates us in four ways; Nature from man, man from itself, man from his product, and the spiritual from the body. In the movie, Hunger Games, The people in the different districts were separated in more ways then one; man from itself and man from nature. Marx would call those people "physcial subjects" and not employees. When working in the labor force , you being given in return wages.

The thing that really puts this into play is the concept of capitalism and how it drives us to produce and create under certain circumstances that removes the "humane" part of working and labor and places it along the lines of slavery. I see this everyday going into the Distribution Industry, working at UPS. However I can say that I am happy that it is a unionized company. The union is what really helps stop the company from going overboard from becoming new age slave masters. Marx brings up the point that, "the terminus of this slavery is that he can only maintain him self as a physical subject so far as he is a worker, and only as a physical subject is he a worker.". Granted when you have a workforce that has to work to provide for a family of three to five, you will do what you have to do to make sure that your needs are taken care of for your family.

In the movie the Hunger Games, two people were chosen to compete and put their skills to the test to represent their districts and also stay alive. The games removed them from their usual environment and placed them in a controlled area where they must pick each other off in the name of your District. While in the games Marx would probably say that you aren't separated from nature but you are alienating the man from its product and itself(fellow mankind) in a drastic way. Expressed in the Hunger Games, after someone wins and arises to the top at the end of the Hunger Games, the survivors are "celebrated" but nothing can be really given in exchange for a person being alienated from themselves and as well as their skill to survive or battle their way to the winning seat.

The number of wages, parades, or merits can't come to the cost of giving up your humanity to become a unit of work. Marx brought up, "A direct consequence of man's alienation from the product of his work, from his life activity, and from his species-existence, is the alienation of man from man. When man confronts himself he confronts other men. What holds true of man'r relationship to his work, to his product of his work, and to himself, also holds true man's relationship to other men, to their labor, and the object of their labor". The Hunger Games really showed how playing (or fighting) to come out on top of the economic world, ahead of time, or in the Hunger Games we must keep in mind that we aren't separating basic need for the worker but to really empower the worker to bring fourth their talents and products to make us all better and not just a few to prosper forever.