Module 1 Engage

Engage: Reflecting on the Marxian conception of Work

Note: Watch the short video clip, “Karl Marx on Alienation”

- Reflecting on Marx’s concept of work, he thought of work as the purpose of life itself. However,
the time he was in had massive impact to the concept of work as he will have come to think of
the workplace as a place filled with strangers, aliens to be specific. Despite this fact, it remains
to be seen for the strangers are all identical in the sense that they are working under the same
roof which is a capitalist society. The conditions of working in a capitalist society are indeed the
reality that workers are forced by the necessity of subsistence and lack of control over the
means of production to sell their man-power as a commodity to someone else, who are the
capitalists, and the alienation emerges from the very reality that the workers are living in.
Reflecting on this makes me realize that the realization of this establishment as it is can cause
the workers to go on strike as Marx coins it. “a time in the future of people will arrive when the
working class or the proletariats will have all the power in their hands”, which means that the
workers will also be in control of the resources that they are given to create. This realization
gave Marx the idea of a revolution of the workers from the chains of capitalism and alienation.
The two sides of the coin as I see is: to either take the blue pill and work as another cog in the
machine, or; to take the red pill and invoke revolution among your fellow workers and go on
strike against the machine. The choice is indeed ours as marx saw it.

Module 1 Evaluate

Discuss the purpose why we have laws prohibiting discrimination and harassment in employment.

- Firstly, one of the reasons why is to prevent the workers’ complaints arising to bite the
establishment later on in the business. Karl Marx saw the workplace to have unfairness naturally
engrained into the establishment for the fact that it is a part of capitalism and that the workers
might make the establishment fall from the frustration and it all starts with treating unfairness
in the workplace. And so there has been laws prohibiting discrimination and harassment in
employment between the employees and the employers. Secondly, a more neoliberal reason, is
that these laws can disseminate gender equality in the workplace. In the workplace, especially in
the Philippines, there is an embedded culture where men are seen to be the overlords over the
business that leaves the major populace of women to be disadvantageous and frustrated. The
existence of such culture is a debate that is to be concluded in the future but the point stands
that the women are frustrated with the workplace and, in lieu with the last reason, these
specific frustrations will have to be snuffed for the establishment to continue. Thirdly, it is to
turn the workplace to a place of civilized and calm nature where the equality in opportunity is
preserved and promoted. Following one of the world’s human rights, everyone should be given
the opportunity and the chance to work in the workplace and the laws prohibiting
discrimination in employment are pursuant to protecting that right.
Module 1 Elaborate

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