1. Means of production are all the materials, artifacts and talent used to increase the value of something. On the other hand, Labor is the exclusive series of actions that can increase the value of something.

A construction worker uses shovels, cement, hammers, wood, paint (all means of production), to build (Labor) a house in a certain amount of time.

2. Value is the proportion of how much labor it takes to produce a something in normal circumstances. Value gets its own value from the need people sees in the labor of something to be valuable, hence, Labor itself is the only thing that can make something valuable or increase its value.

3. Value is the product of Labor, if labor is not implemented in a product its value stays the same, it doesn’t increase.

4. Labor is the process where the value of something increases, whereas Labor Power is the ability to labor, therefore is considered a commodity.

5. Is the value that the worker creates after the amount of labor power has been paid off, and this pure profit belongs exclusively to the capitalist. It is important because as we have been working with the definitions of owners and workers, the wealth of the capitalists is created pretty much based in the infinite amount of surplus value that amasses through the labor power of the workers, adding continuity to their life of no work and exploitation.

An artist creates a painting, its labor power is paid after its finished and he sells it to the capitalist to get tax deduction on that investment, later the artist dies, and then, the capitalist auctions the painting getting a huge amount of profit at the end, this one being the surplus.

1. Distinction between Owners and Employees:

• Owners are the individuals or families who own the wealth of society, living most of investments such as bonds, stocks, rent, mineral royalties and property income. They belong to the corporate owning class and their wealth is exceptionally large and it comes from the labor of other people.
• Employees are the ones who are exploited by the Owners and live out of wages, these can be considered factory workers, managers, doctors, lawyers, traders, CEOs. The Employee with her/his labor finishes the product for the Owner and gets a substantially small percentage in comparison to the sell and profits of the Owner.

In the gaming industry, the Owners of Sony made $18.19 billion in 2019, while paying their factory workers $25000 a year and their programmers and salespeople about $120000 (median wage) a year, still being an incredibly small percentage of the total profit.

2. Smith is saying that labor itself is the action that gives true value to all products or services created, and without it there would be no money at all.

3. In the eyes of socialists, class is not an identity, in fact, is seen as structural positions where all actions taken are based in an interdependency between the capital and the employees, where each one, is following a logical plan to maintain that position. Capitalists compete against other Capitalists in markets where the one who exploits the most out of their employees for profit wins, on the other hand workers must compete against other workers convincing capitalists just for the sake of getting a job and being able to eat. So, for socialists, class, is more about interests and actions rather than a common status.

In a more simplified way, liberals think class is an identity in politics because, they say your class is linked to the advantages and disadvantages you were born in, this being a combination of wealth, income and education and sometimes taking account things like “Cultural Capital”.

I honestly don’t believe that class is an identity and my example is two short questions, if you are born upper class, and you are raised in an environment where everybody has the same advantages as you, and then for any reason you lose all your wealth, income and you can’t exercise the degree you obtained with your education, does that make you a different class that you have to identify with?, what if you were the one who reached the life of a capitalist, in an old stage of your life, is the lower class you identity?

4. The close form of dependency is that Owners depend on employees to work for them to create them wealth, and employees need the working place from the owners to sell their labor to be able to live.

An example could be the coal mining towns, where employees who know how to mine sell their labor to the mine Owner, but, without miners, the owner of the mine would not be able to make money from it, he would have to do it himself and that’s not what capitalists do.

1. The similarities about how social class is discussed comes when mostly talking about income, and how you can find certain type of class in a respective area, but in reading 4.1, the difference is that they define class as a way of hierarchy seen in American culture and split into two:

• Objective social class, based on the things people own, like income, education, and occupation.
• Subjective social class, based strictly on how people see themselves.

2. The closest station to where I live is 36^th Ave. in Astoria on the N train line, I’m not surprised by the answer as the median rent is $2300 and the people who lives around are mostly, people who work for the service industry, graduates who work for the film industry or people who own restaurants or work in real estate, being a good mix of working and middle class.

3. The pattern is that the people with higher income (higher class) tend to live in areas closer to where hedge funds are or areas where you find people related to the fashion industry, either very close to Manhattan or in Manhattan. However, the income inequality is very noticeable the further you go from Manhattan more into the outskirts of the metropolitan area, where in some cases the difference between incomes can easily be $100,000. The data

1. Repressive state Apparatus is an exclusive part of the government like police, the army, the prison system or the judiciary, that from Althusser’s point of view are meant to inhibit people from their individual freedoms, controlling society by fear. An example could be when protesting, people suffer from police brutality, because this type of actions is a disruption of the actual status quo.

2. Ideological State Apparatus is also a part of the government but not all of the time, it can be entities like schools, political groups o media conglomerates, religious groups, where they teach you to obey, and present situations where supposedly you have “options” and can “chose”, when in fact at the end is all part of the status quo.

3. The differences might be that the RSA tells you what not to do or how not to act, and what the consequences would be if you act against the guidelines that are implemented in the status quo, and, the ISA tells you what to think and how to obey the guidelines so you are a piece of the elitist groups to maintain their grasp on power.

4. Cancel/woke culture and the LGBT movement in America

1. Ideology is a set of thoughts and behaviors we are taught to follow so a certain status quo in the society we live in prevails, nevertheless these characteristics are such a part of ourselves that we are not conscious of them, moreover, is also a way of social control, that powerful groups have over individuals. Catholicism is a good example of ideology, when born people is taught to believe in God, they get baptized and share behaviors from the people who follow this believes, since they have always known this environment, they think is how things are always going to work, that it is good and if they follow what the people who is the bridge between God and humanity they will be rewarded with an eternity of heaven.

2. I understand this as a difference between extreme liberties or more government regulated lives, both looking for what they think is the right path for a better society. What it seems to draw the line between Conservatives and Liberals comes when talking about Freedom, Economy and Religion. Conservatives feel identified with political groups who look for protection of individual liberties, tax reliefs, free market, less discretionary spending, bigger military and support political groups that are pro-life, on the other hand Liberals focus more on equality and how society could work better with more regulations from the government, while spending less money in the military and using the money for causes like poverty, education, science or environmental matters, also making this happen with higher taxation. Trump’s administration focused more in give big companies deals that benefited them enormously, not paying attention to the environmental impact this could have, and also cut funds from the healthcare and education system while the military and police were able to spend more, and with this actions give lower tax rates to the people, now, with the new Biden administration and with the current pandemic we cans see the continued help to the large amount of unemployed Americans who have been affected, and focusing in better tax policies that could end up in the educational system helping people with student loans debt or serve as a base for free tuitions.

3. I understand Althusser’s definition of ideology as a relationship between individuals and the way of how they exist and follow what they have been taught by others, so they can keep being subjects that functions as the base that maintains a certain status quo, subsequently reinforcing these believes into the next generation.

1. M. Alexander’s argument is based in the study of how the War on Drugs started when drug crimes were in decline, and that how a few years later, crack cocaine started to spread rapidly in the poor black neighborhoods of America. In fact, the media, supported by Reagan’s administration brought to the public eye the stereotype as the enemy of the War on Drugs, who were mostly poor black Americans. M. Alexander also contrasts the hugely different outcome of convictions and sentences between whites and people of color, even though all colors use and sell illegal drugs in a similar rate, and the ones more likely to engage in drug crimes are the young white Americans. Consequently, this puts a large number of persons of color specially blacks in the outskirts of society due to the type of image and criminal records they’ve been given due to the War on Drugs, therefore, Alexander suggests that the main explanation of why so many people are sent to jail, is because, the American government uses this as tool of social control against minorities and people of color.

2. The racial disparities cannot be explained because all colors sell and use drugs in a similar rate. White young Americans engage more often in drug crimes, still when people of color see themselves in the same situation, they can get sentences that are as M. Alexander says, “twenty to fifty times greater than those of white men”, creating a disparity, as seen in some major cities affected by the War on Drugs, where as many as 80% of young African Americans have a criminal record.

3. I understand the phrase “the American penal system has emerged as a system of social control unparalleled in world history.” as that the penal system is a tool of social control from the American government towards minorities, where they control their liberty and as they have already entered the penal system due to a crime it also controls their future because these subjects of incarceration end up living as outcasts of mainstream society, and that this way of control has never been seen in history before.