Reading Response 1

Sadie Inman

September 1, 2020

Critical Geography

Response Paper 1  

Karl Marx, in The German Ideology, brings up the important point that your reality shapes your consciousness. When approaching the topics of capitalism and the material world it’s important to remember how your reality has shaped you. If you have grown up in a stable home with an abundance of food and opportunities you are not going to have the same perspective and mind as someone who went hungry and struggled throughout their life. Understanding that your historical, socioeconomic, and social background effects your consciousness allows you to keep that bias in mind when dealing with hard issues such as slavery and racial discrimination. These are issues brought up in A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. In this book, Raj Patel and Jason Moore explain how capitalism came to be through a progressive “cheapening” of important aspects of the world. This ties into Marx’s theory that the mode of production creates the reality of the period. As the world progressed from feudal farms to slavery to mass factory production the reality of the working class has changed drastically. 

The way that every American views clothes shows the effects of the mode of production on their reality. It’s called “fast fashion” and the premise is low-quality clothing for astoundingly low prices. Therefore you can buy more and value your things less. This idea stems from capitalism and the view that the cost of production must continue to lower. Colonialism, a now highly derogative term, was based on the fundamentals of capitalism: 1) That nature is for us to use 2) There must be new frontiers to expand out to. The dichotomy between nature and people morally allows capitalism to be based on expansion and exploitation. This exploitation sustains the idea of cheap. For the consumer to receive cheap products there must be multiple levels of compromise. The resources that the product is made of, the energy it takes to produce it, the care of the workers, and especially the lives must be cheap. This ideology hurts the land, the environment, the people, and the society that it operates within. 

Marx recognizes these ideas of cheap and little value trickling down. The working class is not treated well and does the majority of the labor. He calls for a revolution to upturn the capitalist mode of production lead by the working class. Throughout history, there have been many attempts at a revolution when the working class decides they no longer accept their circumstances. Peasants went on strike from their Lords in feudal Europe. Combined with the black death, it brought that mode of production to an end because circumstances changed and the Lord’s ways no longer worked. The slaves escaped the sugar cane plantations and burned down portions of the sugar, but their efforts were too scattered and had little effect. 

The ruling class wants to believe that they are the only intellectuals and hold all the reason, but Antonio Gramsci writes in An Anthology of Western Marxism, “All men are intellectuals…but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals”. These men don’t hold a profession that is considered intellectual, but they are the ones that can recognize the injustice and convince others to stand with them. These intellectuals are often the center of the revolution. They are the ones that Marx is calling upon to turn the world upside down.