I was in class today and we were talking about the German philosopher Hegel, who believed in questioning what's given.
A basic example would be this: When you go to school, you and the other students go to the desks and find a seat. You don't go to the front of the room, that is where the teacher stands. We do this year after year, without giving it a second thought. It's just..what you do. But why? How and when did these actions become second nature?
Marx had an idea when he was young that this applies to objects as well. We look at a chair and see a chair. It's what it is. But Marx looked at it and saw congealed labor. Not just stuff. This chair has a history; there were many events that transpired before it came to rest in your home. He wanted workers to realize that they were the backbone of production, without which nothing would get done.
I was reading on Reddit the other day about this guy from Australia who has been working in New York for the past few months, and he can't believe the work culture here. In his post he detailed how many days off from work employees have in Australia, and compared to the US, it sounds like a dream. America was founded on hard work and high production, but somewhere along the way we mutated into a culture of staying late, working long hours for an increasingly disproportionate reward. We are continuing to produce at high levels, but there is no pride in it anymore.
This is unrelated, but it's so crazy to me how the media is still trying to make Bernie Sanders go away. I was listening to the radio and they were talking about Trump and Cruz, and then they said, "And Hillary Clinton has officially won on the democratic side, but only by a few votes." And then they moved on! They didn't even say this guys name. Wild.