In Foundations of Sociological Theory we were assigned The Communist Manifesto. Since I was a week ahead in my reading—the professor stretched one class lecture out to two classes after I’d already done the reading—I was able to thoroughly reread the portion we’ll be discussing in class tomorrow afternoon. A second reading strengthened my suspicion that Marx’s privilege was showing.
Marx romanticized life before the industrial revolution, i.e. feudal society. I agree with him that with industrialization came the exploitation of workers from the owners of the factories, something that still is going on today almost every time we are working for someone other than ourselves. But I have a difficult time believing the backbreaking, constant labor serfs had to do just to survive was all that much better than working in factories as part of assembly lines. It may not have been a dehumanizing, as dangerous hell, but it would have been hell in its own way.
With all of this in mind I am fascinated by the current push for people to not support fast fashion and to DIY or support local farms/businesses. It is in some ways a cry to return to that supposed idyllic, more human/humane existence back when everyone had to grow their own food and make their own clothes/furniture/houses because there was no mass production of anything. I’m all for sustainability, but if I had to grow all of my own food, make all of my own clothes, and build all of my own housing, (in addition to cooking and cleaning) I wouldn’t have time for things like higher education, travel, writing to friends, learning musical instruments, or just relaxing. The child of a wealthy business owner, Marx had time (and money) for those things as a kid, because his family would have had servants doing all of that stuff or could afford to pay master craftsmen to do it. I think a lot of his romanticization of the feudal system came from never having LIVED it as a serf.
In that sense, Marx reminds me of the people who wrote the plot of “Jupiter Ascending” with Jupiter choosing a life as a maid over life as a wealthy, intergalactic royal. My skeptic flag is flying.