Marx, Academics, and Exploitation

Who is really exploiting whom after all?

When Marx famously said “workers of the world, unite” he didn’t mean in the basements of learning we now call universities.  

After all, most professors teaching Marx aren’t really workers.  At best the closest these professors get to work is enviously watching successful members of the middle class enjoy the fruits of their labor while they choke on the bitterness of their resentment.

For them trying to cope with these juvenile emotions is the closest they get to real work.

But what Marx wanted to do is to free the exploited not to provide self-help for spiritual cripples and the emotionally disabled.

Today that’s what shows like Oprah and The View are for.  

That has nothing to do with philosophy nor Marx.

Instead what Marx was actually thinking about is how laborers -- i.e. blue collar workers -- could live in a world free of exploitation at a time when laborers worked ten hour days in grimy dreary conditions.

Things are clearly different today.  After all in modern times nearly no one, especially lackadaisical professors, works in such conditions.

From this vantage then Marx might be inclined to reconsider the nature of exploitation by reconsidering who it is that is doing the exploiting.  It’s evident it is no longer capitalists.  

For capitalists are no longer forcing one sided deals on laborers who have no choice but to accept low wages in dangerous work environments.

Instead workers are shackled by another form of oppression -- debt.  Over forty-three million American workers are saddled with government backed student loan debt.  

Perhaps then if Marx were alive today capitalists wouldn’t be the oppressors but the oppressed -- and perhaps he’d join us in thinking about a world free of government, not capitalist, exploitation.

Zigmund Reichenbach holds a M.A. in Philosophy from West Chester University.  You can find him commenting on news stories of national and state interest at his Facebook page Zigmund Reichenbach -- Commentator or you can follow him on Twitter @zreichenbach1.  Additionally you can find episodes of the weekly Sunday podcast (4PM) that airs via Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter at this link here. 

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