Marx Is Not Crazy
October 22, 2009
This goes a long way towards framing Marx as reasonable rather than beyond the pale:
First, read aloud to your class selections from the chapter on working conditions—i.e., about 7 year old kids working 18 hour days.
Then politely say something like the following: “I may be going out on a limb here, but it seems to me that the wrong thing to do when faced with these working conditions would be to give them a thumbs-up, which is what Marx’s opponents were doing.”
Last, ask your students which group they would side with.
As a manufacturing-plant safety engineer that photo makes me shudder — finger and toe amputations waiting to happen there, especially with that unguarded belts being used for power transmission to the machinery. This isn’t “just” seven-year-olds working eighteen-hour days; these seven-year-olds are considered disposable. If you break one, just replace him with another.
Exactly!
Not to mention the deformities produced from years in the same awkward positions. EP Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class is a fantastic addition to Marx’s assessments.
…just out of curiosity, has there ever been a country which successfully industrialised without horrible excesses?
Sophia, to me that’s an irrelevant question. A better question would be was it necessary for them to do so, or, is it necessary to continue the inherited practices?