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Classical Social Theory In 'Estranged Labor'

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Classical social theory is evident throughout fight club. At the beginning of the film, the nameless narrator that will be referred to as “Jack” experiences alienation as seen in Marx’s essay “Estranged Labor”. Alienation is a process where the world a person lives in starts to feel foreign to them. Jack works for a major car company and assesses the risks involved in malfunctioning parts using a formula that decides whether or not the company issues a recall on a defective product that was produced. He is alienated from the labor he produces because he receives little benefits for the work he produces and the company he works for receives most of the profits. Jack has no enjoyment or sense of gratification for the work he completes and produces …show more content…

The capitalist system creates a lower class whose labor allowed the system to function called the proletariat (Jack) and an upper class with more power that owned the production factories that the proletariat worked in called the bourgeoisie (the car company Jack worked for). These factories and the products of the labor produced in them were the source of power for the bourgeoisie. Class conflict happens because the bourgeoisie suppresses the proletariat and the proletariat revolts against the suppression. An example of this in “Fight Club” is when Jack starts rebelling against the company (the bourgeoisie) and eventually gets a settlement when he beats himself up in front of his boss and frames him for the “attack”.
In “The Fetishism of Commodities” Marx explains that we measure the value of the usefulness of things with money. Jack recognizes that he has become a slave to the fetishism of commodities, saying “we buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like” and that he is “a slave to ikea”. He is constantly making money just to spend money. He uses his material possessions to try to find meaning in his life and define who he is as a person. When his apartment explodes, he is forced to look this realization in the face because he has lost everything that him a consumerist

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