Heart of Working

written by Ikhwan Jamaludin (work)

Working is something that we want to do and we wish to do but, it is not something that we force to. By watching the first part of Modern Times, it shows the reality of the capitalism world. The doctrine of the capitalism is basically referred to the profit making. It means, capitalism does not care of anything except for profit making. Like what Professor Perry said in his lecture, concept of profit making is from money to commodity to more money. This concept tells us to the idea of the importance of profit making in term of commodity with ignoring other things such as welfare of employee, environmental care, or etc. This idea was pictured clearly in Modern Times movie. In this movie, we can see all the labors were working with specific division type of work as in detail. Each specific work will be conducted by at least one worker or more and they will responsible in what are they doing. Division of labor in detail will cause the deskilled of labor. It means, they cannot expand their ability or talent in doing other jobs that may they can do better with it. This particularly problem has been explained by Harry Braverman in 'Labor and Monopoly Capital' where he explained in the chapter of Scientific Management; the first principle of Capitalist management is "the dissociation of the labor process from the skills or workers". Besides that, every movement of the workers always is being watched by the employer like there is no freedom for the workers is also one of the examples of the Capitalist Scientific Management. This problem is shown clearly in the scene when Charlie was stopped by his boss from taking a short rest at the toilet. This circumstance was related to the Harry Braverman's third principle that is "the use of this monopoly over the knowledge to control each step of the labor process and its mode of execution". Nowadays, the concept of Capitalism is being used by the countries that have power in economy and politics even we know this concept has something wrong with it. For them, Capitalism is sweet and acceptable, but for me it is not. Capitalism has some problems and we admit it, even we cannot do anything except we have power to avoid it.