Alienation of the White Middle Class: Fight Club & Karl Marx

Karl Marx speaks to the cost of capitalism, the alienation apparent in both capitalist and worker. However, he hits on the drastic divide of why the worker’s alienation will be worse: “In general we should observe that in those cases where worker and capitalist equally suffer, the worker suffers in his very existence, the capitalist in the profit on his dead mammon (4).” He goes on to describe how the worker not only suffers because of his work, but because of the possibility of labor—whether he is unemployed and in need of labor, or he is enslaved to his labor in order to avoid the loss of it, thereby losing the chance to be a consumer fueling the fire. This alienation is driven to the extreme in Fight Club, where the protagonist is (plot twist) alienated from himself due to the worthlessness of his labor. 

Tyler Durden is the most extreme case however, as he would have no followers and therefore no power were it not for this divide between labor and laborer that provides him with the manpower to do something about it. The literal fire that begins this makes a point of burning all the consumer goods that he has been taught to want to buy so that he may work more to want more, etc. The symbolic chaos that then follows is apparent in every second of film, from the speech where “No Great Depression…Our great depression is our lives,” speaking to the numbness that the worker feels, to even his relationship with Marla being one of a war within himself as he is never lover nor friend, unable to emotionally connect to her as she is unable to with him, suppressing emotions so thoroughly they need the dying to cry with them. 

All of this supposedly caused by the suppression of humanity, the worthless disparity between capitalist and laborer. All is extreme, yet aspects ring true for the time period of the movie. Even today, as the divide in wealth becomes ever increasing, it becomes a twisted pride that someone overworks themselves by having three jobs in order to afford survival. Today, as much as it is about material goods translating to happiness, it is also far more about survival. Today, it is strikingly apparent Fight Club is about the white middle class because it takes for granted so much that a minority in poverty could not afford to do or risk jail ie simply living in a rundown house, the police called the moment anything is out of line for a person of color in poverty whereas Tyler is allowed to be bloodied every week without question, even at the office he is allowed far more patience. Though the alienation is almost universal, the problem is the dismissal of how desperate for survival those below the poverty line, especially minorities. There is no larger consideration for this, assumed that this particular alienation of labor is the universal kind rather than alienation due to desperation for mere existence as Karl Marx says above.  

  

Would it be possible, however, to make a Fight Club that addressed these issues and more today? What are some immediate tweaks to be made?  

Wall Street and Marx

After watching The Big Short, I decided that it would be worthy to focus our attention to the people on Wall Street. Regardless of how you see them, no one can deny the absolutely ridiculous amount of money they leave with a day. I mean, Forbes magazine reported that just a Wall Street intern can make $71,300. For those wanting perspective, a semester at CBU costs $15,500, not including other fees. Basically, these summer interns could buy two years of our tuition. If we went to a public college, like Memphis (average semester can be up to 5,000), they could pay off our entire four years there. Honestly, I could keep going on with this comparison. My point is, these are people making a gross amount of money.

Can we say that they are just like us in a sense, though? Most of these people are merely pawns in a game. They still have CEOs to answer to at the end of the day. They are still struggling, just like us, to make a living, even if their wage is extremely higher than ours. In Marx's writings, Alienated Labor, he mentions specifically, "the more powerful the work, the more powerless the worker." To me, this is the ultimate quote that can be used to connect Wall Street wolves to us. They work hard to produce things they do not necessarily own themselves. They are alienated from their work. They become a pawn to someone else. The power in their work, literally holding the economy together, makes them powerless. In a sense, they are still answering someone else, and they do not have the power they necessarily thought they were. So, in the case of the summer intern, sure they are making enough to pay off two years of my college, but their work is too powerful. They cannot maintain the balance between the two, they have to keep working and pumping out more money for their investors or whatever they do. They become powerless in their own field.

 For me, this was pointed out in The Big Short when the Wall Street workers realized the loophole in the housing market. Essentially, though each man profited from it in some way, they were powerless to stop this. They knew the consequences it spelled out for everyone else, but they literally could not stop it. They had to keep up their same pace and no one would believe them. They became powerless to stop their own world from collapsing, so they decided to make a profit from it instead. Still a weird way, but I think this really showed how powerless they truly were.

 Another argument Marx points at is the "alienation of man-to-man." When workers get invested in their product, they put their whole life into it, and lose a sense of being human. This is the easiest thing to see in Wall Street workers, I think. They become so detached to others that they do not see the harm in what they are doing. Many people claim that Wall Street rips them off, makes them go broke. The workers pay no mind to that. To them, they must keep going, and keep producing the money that they aim to seek for their employers or for personal greed. They no longer see themselves or the way they are treating other people. I think this could potentially be why they are so ruthless in their ways.

For The Big Short, this came to me in the way Jamie and Charlie cheer when they realize how much money they had just gotten from their deal. All they see are promotions and fame, but then Rickert reminds them of the grim situation – that people will suffer from their gain. Their lack of humanism is astounding, but it points to what Marx is talking about.

 All-in-all, as much as I want to criticize Wall Street workers, I think they might fall underneath the same harsh system that we do. We all want to see the bad side of them, but they are also a worker, used by the few rich people in the world for products. They have the same struggles as we do, just on a way more privileged level. They're bad guys, but they're bad because the system helped develop their habits. After watching The Big Short and reading Marx, I am a tad more sympathetic to them.... now if only they'd be sympathetic to me and pay off some of my student loans.

M for Marxism

          The idea of classism and class warfare has been in human society since the beginning of civilization. There has always been a sense of the powerful (the rich and influential), and the powerless (the poor in this case). It has almost always been the fact that the rich control how the world works and what goes on, and the consequences of these decisions in turn affect the poor in one way or another. The idea that someone is superior to another human being due to their accumulation of material goods has also been prevalent from society to society throughout time. One might think it is human nature due to the fact of how long class warfare has occurred and the fact that appears in almost every society regardless of who it is.
          This idea of classism is discussed by Karl Marx in his writings "Alienated Labor," with the focus on past few centuries during the age of capitalism. In his writings he states that there are essentially two classes, the owners and the workers. The workers are poorer and do not have the resources that the owners have, and in a sense are losing their identity. He writes that the workers are alienated from the products they produce, the work they do, the reason they are doing the work, as well as an alienation from their fellow man. He also talks about how human beings like to find meaning in the work they do, and what an individual's work means to him. He uses this as a way to prove that there is alienation because people now work to survive in today's world as opposed to working to find meaning in something.
          One perfect example of Marx's fourth point, the alienation from the fellow man, is the movie V for Vendetta. This movie portrays a man struggling to bring down the rule of the few who have taken control of society and has limited the freedoms of the citizens, because they have wronged him and others for their personal gain. V is not only fighting to save his soul, but also to free society from the rule of the few. It is evident in this movie how the "workers" in this movie live with fear and there is tension pent up inside them with no way to get it out. All of this tension and anger towards the "owners" is just a result of their alienation from their labor.
          The idea of superiority due to possessions in my opinion feeds to our basic instincts, and does not use much of our evolved human reason. The identity that humans have does not come from what we have but instead of how we live. Everyone for the most part all start out on the same level of cognition, but the only thing that differentiates individuals at first is their access to resources. Just because somebody is born into ore money than someone else, in no way constitutes them being above them.

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.