The economic life from the perspective of a worker entails a lose lose situation. The workers offers a lose lose situation because the worker is basically selling his labor for close to nothing in return. Marx says that “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces the more his production increases in power and range” and follows the statement with explaining that the worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity then the commodities that he creates ( 657). With this in perspective the economic life from the perspective of the worker is bully a lose lose situation. The worker can’t afford to purchase the own things that they put their labor into basically showing that in the economy the laborer works for free and is worth nothing. The worker becomes the commodity they themselves cannot afford. However from the owner’s perspective , it is strictly business. The worker doesn’t are about how the workers are affected as long as they themselves get money and their business is increased. Marx uses this socially constructed perspective to reframe the values created by society to explain to people how the workers themselves are really being alienated from their own product that they are producing. Marx explains the perspective of the worker as well as the perspective of the owner to explain how one truly gains nothing from the trade off and how one gains everything or at least benefits a little from the trade off of labor. 

 When Marx uses the term “alienation” he means that the workers are isolated or separated from the product that they sold their life for. Marx asks the question of “How would the worker come to face the product of his activity as a stranger, were it not that in the very act of production he was estranging himself from himself?” (658) and this question ties into how the workers are alienated from the products but they produce. The workers became alienated from the products they produce because in the economic life of a worker they sell their labor or even their life for the commodities they produce to end up not being able to afford the very thing they produced thus resulting in the worker being isolated from the product. The worker becomes poorer the more they work which results in them not even being able to support themselves for the basic necessities that they need let alone the commodities that they produce

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, German  philosophers, talk about the effect that economic and social forces have on human consciousness. Marx explains how industrial capitalist economy “alienates” people from their own work, as they “unable to control their own labor, which they must “give”(sell) to another, they lack control and knowledge of themselves”(653). Marx believes that this capitalism dehumanizes people as it alienated workers of their own work, as mentioned above , as it exchanges their work for a wage. This is what Marx sees as employers making their employees as commodities , as they are the ones who are choosing what their employees and their work are worth. Workers depend on this money-system, as they are in need of this wage that is the way of how they can live in this society. This wage is the connector of employers using their empoyee’s labor to their own benefits. As they focus on this survival, the workers lose themselves, and throw themselves more into this dominion of his product, capital. Marx and Engels also mention how “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range”. As they produce more , their value doesn’t increase, instead only the work does. The worker deprives himself of his life, as the more his labor is useful to the outside world. They no longer become someone who had been part of the process of an object, instead they become a “slave” of his objects. Further in the essay, it mentions the idea that the worker exists firstly as a worker, but secondly as a physical subject. Someone that would only be known as the giver of the final product, replaceable and only a worker. When we think about an object that we want to buy , we only see the process of an exchange, an item for the value that it costs, the money that we pay. However what we don’t really see, hidden in the process of how the item comes into our hands, is the amount of work that goes into it. we don’t look into the work that is used to produce this labor, hence we feed into this idea of capitalism. Not appreciating the work, the people, hands and overall process of how this object was now in our hands, erases the “worker”. We only look at the exchange that we are seeing, the money system. 

Karl Marx, a political theorist and a critic of political economy wrote “from Economic and Philosophic Manuscript of 1844” to depict the malpractices and the abuse caused by the laws of political economy. 

Political economy is described as the interrelation of politics and economy to analyzing modern society. It does not explain the dispersion of labor, it only defines the relationship of wages to profit(656). Marx goes on to say society is derived from the laws of political economy. Our current society stands on private property, separation of labor, capital and land, and wages, profit of capital and rent of land (656) all of which promote individualism. On the other hand,  there is  another aspect of political economy that is not as appealing and profiting to an individual. He continues to list them as: division of labor, competition, the concept of exchange value etc…(656). He further expresses his distaste for labor and how common workers are taken advantage of and are used as commodities. Workers are amongst those who are at a disadvantage when viewing the laws of a political economic system. They are paid small wages for producing high quantities of commodities. Hence, why Marx refers to workers as the most wretched commodities(656). He continues to criticize that the only result of political economy is malice or avarice. This greed is the reason for the division of capital.

Marx uses certain facts to show the abuse in which the laws of the political economy flows upon workers. As briefly mentioned in the previous paragraph, labor is not the sole means of producing commodities. In this take, meaning, labor is what produces products, and those products are sold in exchange for monetary currency. The same applies for the workers as they are being paid for their services by an employer.

Political economy drains a worker to which they experience dissociation or as Marx defines it: alienation, which defines when the workers do not feel happy or content with their job/work. As Marx tries to vocalize the desolation of the working class. He states that a worker is at home when he is not working, and in his work feels outside of himself(659). This cultivates workers’ labor to be a dissociation from themselves.

Finally, Marx mentions that workers are slaves to their objects. Labor is a means of life. It is a dependency for the workers. They need those objects to live in society. By that, meaning, workers produce goods which are known as their object of labor. The term object bondage that Marx talks of, where workers not only rely on the external resources to create products, their labor, but to their life dependency/ a means to live. Their wages are what these workers use to go about in life. In result, this leads to the product being made considered to be an idol which holds power over them. This all ties in to workers being related to the product of their labor.

Within capitalist society, the commodity carries a twofold nature. It is a particular object with a definite use for society, a use-value; but it is also merely an individual manifestation of a quantity of general human labor just like every other commodity, an exchange-value–with whatever commodity deemed as money both acting as the universal equivalent that every commodity can be exchanged for, and as a metric for measuring and comparing the individual quantities of general labor within individual commodities.

In capitalist society, almost no one has the means to produce their own necessities, no one has the time nor the material resources to make their own food, clothing, shelter, and the things that give them pleasure in order to survive and be enjoy life. To get those things, we need to exchange whatever we have for money (for the vast majority of people it is only our mere ability to work that we can exchange; or for those more fortunate, with enough resources or money that can be capital, it is the products that they produce–alongside the people from the latter group that they hire).

Thus arise a historically strange mode of production where, in their own privacy, people with the resources they have (the commodities they bought beforehand) produce their own commodities (e.g., the worker produces their skills, the baker produces their bread, the clothing-manufacturer produces their clothes and whatnot) before going out to market and finally attempting to have them exchanged for money, all in order to once again buy another set of commodities and restart the process. This product must not only be useful to society in some way, but the degree of general human labor manifested within it must be on par with the rest of society. Because there is no overarching rationale for how society meets its needs, because resources are owned by private individuals and entities who can (theoretically) do whatever they want with them, the inevitable fact arises that you have multiple producers of the same type of thing who are in competition with one another to maintain their own existence (i.e., they must produce products with a competitive edge that distinguishes them from everyone else producing the same thing, regardless of how little resources they have, in order to make enough money to not only literally survive but also purchase the necessary resources to continue producing what they do).

From the consumer’s perspective, then, we have what we see in the supermarket: finished products surround us with tens or more variations of the exact same type of thing, all made by different entities and individuals in different places at different times, all of them being individual manifestations of general human labor whose particularities and conditions we are utterly unaware of and divorced from. Our only concern is to get as much bang for our buck. Whether the meat we buy came from a cow spending its entire life in an overcrowded facility with little to no movement while being fed the most horrendous slop and enduring the most atrocious abuse before being gassed to death, or if it spent its life grazing and frolicking on an open field owned by farmers who cared for them before being gently led into a slaughterhouse to be swiftly and painlessly killed–we don’t know. Presented to us in plastic wrap under a warm light accentuating its appeal with a price tag, they look almost identical. It is entirely coincidental if we do know each meat’s respective “behind the scenes”, or if they are separated or labelled to express their differences in productive process: maybe we as individuals really care about animals while simultaneously having the money to afford more expensive yet ethical options, maybe our local government mandates the differentiation or separation of ethically made and unethically made meats, or maybe the particular retailer we’re purchasing from does that differentiation for their own reasons–all of these are extrinsic impositions upon capitalism, they are our coping mechanisms for the way our society is structured. And this point I make with meat at a supermarket is present everywhere–in smartphones, clothing, cars, and so on.

While the conservative’s reaction to the immoralities involved in the production of commodities is to simply “trust the market”, and while the liberal’s reaction is to continue creating more government agencies and to further fund existing ones in order to crack down on these immoralities in an attempt to regulate or abolish them entirely–both “responses” do not address the fundamental structures within capitalism itself that produce these problems. And as Marx & Engels have shown throughout their works, these are not just problems arising from capitalism in particular (only their most extreme variations) but are problems arising from the very nature of private property itself. They cannot be solved by simple redistribution of property ownership to some new collective of people with the masses at large still remaining resourceless and powerless–as they have been for the entirety of human civilization. The only solution–the repugnant conclusion that anyone who is to take from Marx while following his logic has to admit unless their aim is to distort his ideas and make them seem more palatable for a capitalist-controlled society–is the total reorganization and restructuring of how humanity meets its needs toward total common ownership of property: for production to no longer occur in private but in its rightfully social and cooperative setting with all possible resources mobilized to produce the best variation, for production and how we consume our resources during it to be rationally determined as per our needs; and for the productive lives of individuals to not be spent doing the exact same monotonous, alienating, mind-and-body-numbing labor whose end result they can’t even enjoy for themselves, or which doesn’t really even express their full creative potential and identity.

In “Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History,” Moretti delves into how the problem in which we construct the object of literary inquiry, is how we try to understand the field. He explains that instead of putting together “separate bits” of understanding to form an idea about a subject, it needs to be seen as a “collective system” (Moretti 2255). The reason why these small pieces of readings cannot be “sum[med]” up is due to the number of novels there are in the world now (Moretti 2255). There is simply no way to read all of them and grasp a full understanding. In order to better understand how to do this, Moretti mentions the three temporal orders found in social historians’ work: The moment, the cycle and the longue durée. The moment is an “individual event” that is being observed (Moretti 2262). The longue durée is the long period of time that is studied. These are the chunks in history that are analyzed. The most important time frame that Moretti urges others to focus is the cycle, or pattern. This is the “temporary structure within the historical flow” (Moretti 2263). 

These temporary structures refer to the temporary combinations of genres that rise and fall over time. Since they are temporary there is no structure because its popularity fades away to a certain extent (Moretti 2263). The structures mentioned are the “order [and] patterns” that repeat over time, but since it is not permanent, it is unstable (Moretti 2263). Moretti explains how, instead of new genres being released every couple of years, there is only a certain group of genres that have risen and fallen together that “cluster in just thirty years” (Moretti 2268). One might assume that it can be due to new historical events and trauma that have occurred, but that is highly unlikely, because just one event cannot wipe out a group of genres that were once popular. The change that must occur to allow these genres to vanish, must be “common” and “external” (Moretti 2268). In order to understand how the change must be external, Moretti brings up the idea of a “chang[ing] ecosystem” (Moretti 2268). If there is no one alive to read those genres, then those genres will dissipate and not be popular anymore. This change in audience is due to the new generations. Over time there will always be a new wave of generations that have a certain set of genres that they are most interested in. 

These waves of genres, however, are difficult to analyze within quantitative data. Moretti uses the example of “Planet Hollywood,” where American comedies were not very successful in other countries. This lies in the “form” (Moretti 2272). When comedies are translated, it is difficult for jokes to translate because they depend on their original language to make the joke stick. This is the flaw within analyzing the quantitative data on these genres over the years. 

Within the “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844”, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels describe the wretchedness of the Working man as Capitalism has become the bane of our existence. Capitalism isn’t fair — while it separates people into the property owners and the propertyless workers, competition has always favored property owners as even the Worker’s wages are based around their interests, ultimately hindering the movement of social classes. The Worker, in essence, has become a commodity whose labor is sold. However, Marx and Engels point out a morbid irony as we see the Worker’s production become his own competition — as if the employer weren’t enough competition -– creating an inverse proportion as it gains a higher value at the Worker’s devaluation. In other words, the more one works the poorer one is. 

This paradox is a direct result of appropriation as, “Whatever the product of his labour is, he [the Worker] is not.” The product — a material object — is alien to its producer; Therefore, to the Worker, the act of labor is a loss of reality where one not only sells their time but also gives up that part of their life along with their power to the object, stripping them of their authenticity such that they are unable to feel happy nor at home when in labor. To the Worker, competition is the objectification of labor; It is the instance where the product actively confronts the worker as hostile — in its independence it forces the worker to increase his labor to make ends meet, despite simultaneously depriving them of the means to life as competition increases and the supply to meet one’s physical subsistence decreases. Consequently, the Worker engages in forced labor, an act of self-sacrifice where one is a slave to their object — an act that would not exist without compulsion. Appropriation is alienation; as the Worker sells his time, labor, and creation, in the end even his autonomy is lost as he belongs to another. To Marx and Engels, the man who no longer governs his actions for the sake of making ends meet under a Capitalist society, is not a man but an animal.

The interrelation between labor and the laborer exists without equilibrium. The method of mass production through capitalism establishes a barrier within the feudal system. The economic status of people in a capitalist society consists of the avaricious and those who are merely making ends meet. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels discuss the sacrifice of one’s vitality and devotion to their work and how it is parallel to the system that divides the avaricious producer or distributor and the laborer. Though one does not exist without the other, the self-immolation of the hard worker allows the production of commodities to excel. The creation of a product is a form of devaluing a person since the larger the number of products that are made, the less valuable the object itself becomes. The worker who does not find fulfillment in his work loses a part of himself in order to initiate production. The objectification of work is what separates the worker from the labor. However, the concern of the matter deepens when the worker’s effort into that very labor, takes away a part of himself. A portion of oneself is transformed into an object and then classified as production. “The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844” states, “the greater the product, the less is he himself” (655). The economic conceptualization of capitalism views workers as a commodity. The objectification of labor itself is responsible for the alienation of an individual from their work. Marx and Engels theorize that the political economy camouflages this very alienation through the relationship and connection of the laborer and the production. Production is accountable for detachment as the activity of labor and its results are depersonalized. This endeavor is an external factor that is not directly affiliated with one’s being. As a consequence, the worker does not feel satisfaction until they are outside the environment of the labor. The worker is not at home when he is involved in the production and they are at home when they are not. Marx and Engels share that this mentality towards work and production signifies that the worker is coerced into committing to production. The worker, in order to support themselves and cater to their multiple responsibilities, is a slave to the functions of the capital organization. It is evident that Marx and Engels hold resentment towards the capitalist movement and the authority of property owners over propertyless workers. Nevertheless, this “money system” still corrupts our modern society.

Ideology is a term that has been used in many different contexts, but at its core, it refers to the system of beliefs, values, and ideas that shape and guide our understanding of the world. Williams argues that ideology is not something that exists independently in society or culture, but it’s instead a fundamental part of it. He suggests that it plays a significant role in shaping our perceptions of reality.

Williams argues that cultural practices, such as literature, art, and mass media, are not neutral but are actively involved in the production of ideology. For example, the dominant ideology in capitalist societies is often reinforced through the mass media, which spread messages that promote consumerism and individualism.

Williams also highlights the ways in which ideology can be contested and challenged. He argues that dominant ideologies are never completely hegemonic and that there is always the potential for oppositional and alternative ideologies to emerge. Williams refers to these oppositional ideologies as “counter-hegemonic” and argues that they play an important role in social change.

One of the most significant contributions of Williams’ theory of ideology is his emphasis on the relationship between language and ideology. Williams argues that language is not simply a tool for communication but is actively involved in the production and reproduction of ideology. Language, according to Williams, is always ideological and is shaped by the social and historical contexts in which it is used. This means that the meanings of words and phrases are not fixed but are constantly evolving and changing in response to shifts.

Williams’ theory of ideology has been influential in many fields including media studies, communication, and cultural studies. His emphasis on the role of culture in shaping and reproducing dominant ideologies has been particularly significant in the study of media and mass communication. Williams’ work has also been important in the development of critical theory and the critique of power relations in society.

In conclusion, Raymond Williams’ analysis of ideology in “Keywords” has been a significant contribution to our understanding of the relationship between culture, language, and power. Williams’ emphasis on the active role of culture in shaping and reproducing dominant ideologies has been influential in the study of media and communication. His theory of ideology has also been important in the development of critical theory and the critique of power relations in society. Overall, Williams’ work remains an important resource for scholars and students interested in the study of culture, media, and communication.

In “from Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844” Marx and Engles explore the relationship between workers and owners and the psyche of the worker. They make the argument that under the current economic system of capitalism, the relationship between workers and owners is inherently exploitative and hinders the quality of life of the worker. The role and responsibilities of having the title of a “worker” requires a selfless submission to the system of production. A system that not only reduces human interaction to production and consumption but is also inescapable. “His labour is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labour. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it”. They go further to argue that all labor is inherently forced labor because the worker does not do it out of desire but rather need. A worker works for a living wage, a living wage is a necessity for survival. By making the worker dependent on a wage, the owners of property and capital essentially own the workers. By expending much of their time and effort into basic survival, which ultimately benefits the owners rather than themselves, the workers lose touch with their humanity at the cost of themselves “they lack control and knowledge of themselves and never achieve their full human potential”. Because labor is done out of necessity and not desire, time invested into producing for owners is time taken away from oneself. Labor is for the benefit of the owner not the worker and is even performed at the detriment of the worker, because this dependency on a wage deprives the worker of agency, keeping them from reaching the full potential of their humanity on their own terms rather than that of the owner. Marx and Engles wrote “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range”. The better a worker becomes at their job, the less value they have as a worker because the value of the products that they produce inflates, requiring more to be produced to be considered valuable, “enables him to exist, first, as a worker; and, second, as a physical subject” the worker becomes a means to an end valued for the labor they provide rather than their humanity, being reduced to a replaceable entity as in the eyes of the owner, the labor that they perform could be replicated by anyone as long as the end result is the same, meaning that the role of the worker is inherently harmful to oneself as the cycle of dependency it creates not only strips you of your humanity but does so for essentially no gain in return.

Analyzing Karl Marx, he makes various remarks on the concept of ideology, where he views it as a form of peoples ideas, theories, statements etc. that are used to partner with the tactics of manipulation. Although it can be set in a way of a positive mainstream, Marx tackles this by shining the light on how it shatters the truth of what humans are naturally supposed to see. Everything has manipulated our interpretations of what should be easily understood as or portrayed and we form these presumptions and hypotheses to question and develop new meaning to what is naturally perceived. It’s said we start from the ground and come up. Making factories etc, forming teams and moving along the way, however it doesn’t do so in a clean linear way, more so without  a clear agenda. When Marx mentions the phrase, “camera obscura”, he highlights how when a camera takes a picture it doesn’t come out in the way we intentionally see it without the camera. When that picture is taken, it becomes inverted and that breeds a concept of confusion, sparking allegations that there is more to explore. It becomes a phenomenon that needs exploration and it’s no longer what it once was. With the mention of our consciousness as well it breeds an unfamiliarity and therefore we alter our mind to conform to the theories of our own instead of to reality. Marx goes on to state, “Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life”. With this statement, he seems to construct the idea that when we don’t acknowledge the reality of the situation, our mind can’t see any of the naturality and we just see what we fixated amongst our state of mind. We can change that altercation of submitting to the phenomena of an obscure ideology and focus on the state of the world.

All of what we think of as literature, and culture is a form of ideology. Its purpose is to form ourselves and give a map of how we can maneuver through that within society. Believing that the realms of ideas, literature, and everything that makes up the culture comes from human interactions, Marx maintains the idea that it’s our job to keep shining light on the naturality of the world. His relationship to culture is full where he says language and culture flow out of real relations, and we as humans transform things through the practice of our labor. He continues to let on the idea that we as people that are part of the economy should use our full vision of the world and not let the obstruction of manipulation influence how we showcase it to others.