REMINDERS: First, don't forget that each family needs to submit 5 midterm exam questions and answers via email or hard copy to me by NOON FRIDAY, 19TH, THAT'S TOMORROW. I will post the questions I accept on this blog by next Monday at the latest. Also, please read over those handouts I gave you in class today. I should get to them in class next Tuesday. And read Chapter 6, although I am not sure at this point how far we may get in Chapter 6 next Tuesday. Finally, next Tuesday I will set aside some time for review for the midterm exam on Thursday, the 25th.
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Passage on "Alienation": the following passage is from Jonathan Safran-Foer's new book, "Eating Animals," (p. 256). I believe it provides a good contemporary illustration of the relevance of Marx's concept of alienation.
"Farmers have lost -- have had taken from them -- a direct, human relationship with their work. Increasingly, they don't own the animals, can't determine their methods, aren't allowed to apply their wisdom, and have no alternative to high-speed industrial slaughter. The factory model has estranged them not only from how they labor (hack, chop, saw, stick, lop, cut), but how the product is sold (anonymously and cheaply). Human beings cannot be human (much less humane) under the conditions of a factory farm or slaughterhouse. It's the most perfect workplace alienation in the world right now. Unless you consider what the animals experience."
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