chapter 18

so i missed almost all this week of history class. monday we didnt have class at all and wednesday i had a softball game at stanislaus (wwe won both games woohoo!) but i feel like i have missed a lot, especially after talking to alexis and having her fill me in on some things. (thanks alexis :) so i figure the only thing i can do is talk some more about chapter 18. we have talked a lot about this in class already so let's see where my thoughts take me...
one thing we have talked about a lot in class and that everything seems to relate back to is marx's idea of utopia. i think that it is a good idea to hope that the workers will eventually work their way up to owning the company but it is a bit hard to actually accomplish. with just thinking of it, like marx probably only did it sounds great and definitely attainable, but when it actually gets played out it seems more and more impossible. first of all, marx says that the workers will eventually be the owners, but what happens to the original owners? do they just step down and say "okay your right, you've worked long and hard enough, you can have the company now"? i highly doubt that. this is the first thing that was wrong with his idea, the workers would have to do more than just keep working to own the company, you have to talk to the higher up people and eventually work out something with them, the ownership doesnt just fall into your hands.
the other problem i have with the marxism idea is that i dont think he put much thought into the circumstances that these people were in, that he was involved with as well. the way that these people lived was working all day, for long hours, under terrible situations and getting very little pay for it. these people are worried about getting through the day. of course they want to get to the top so they can be in charge and so they can get better pay and live "the good life" but half of these people had no way of knowing how to get there let alone knowing that they are even capable of such a thing.
i believe that marx's idea would be a bit more attainable in our lives today. there are some cases where a common worker ends up getting to the top of a company, but this also takes years of hard work and years of putting up with the common job. however, we also live with the knowledge of what people have done in the past which is working to the top on their own or becoming their own boss. being an entrepreneur. but this is also not very consistent with marx's idea because he said that the worker will just become the owner.
my favorite part about learning about the industrial revolution is that it is all evident in our lives today. we can see how agriculture was changed because nobody farms in separate plots, there are always fields of agriculture. the other aspects, like line of production and replacements of workers is also evident. it is also very cool to see how we have grown from those times. we now i have laws that only allow people to work for a certain amount of hours, protection, workers rights, and all that stuff. the industrial revolution has really shaped america into what it is today, a country full of hard working people who are all trying to get to the top