DISCUSSION BOARD 5.1
1. In my understanding of the video I believe means of production are private owned money making tools. These tools can be stocks, real estate, factories, land, and in the video mentioned Youtube as a means of production owned by google. Not any property or owned thing can be a means of production, it needs to generate money enough for the owner to live out of the profit. Labor is the value that goes into that means of production.  If I owned a huge forest with thousands of trees, that land itself wil not produce value, I most have money to buy labor, and so the worker will harvest the wood for it to then be sold in the market for profit.  In other words, without the labor, there is no value to what I have. 
2. According to the video and as I mentioned before, labor is the only thing that can increase the value of what an owner has.  In other words, a product’s value will be measured by how much labor goes into the making of it. 
3. For a product to be profitable needs two things: Means of production and labor.  According to the video, labor is measured in time, days and years.  For example as the production of things automatizes the value of that good will decrease, because it will take less time to make. As more labor is needed, the greater the value of the good is. 
4. Labor power is the ability to labor, according to the video.  However, it does not make reference to all the hours we put into our labor, but to what it takes, what the owner has to invest to get the worker in.  For example, how much does it cost for McDonalds to get a worker to get to work? How many hours does that employee work? According to the video, the employee can cover the labor power investment maybe in half of his shift (I would guess that even in less time), so the rest of the time is just labor that goes into the owner’s pocket. Thus in my understanding, labor power refers to our worth, how much we are worth to the owner, how much does that owner has to put into us so I take the job. 
5. Surplus value refers to that extra time I work, the profit that the owner will make over the investment he is putting into my labor power. After a worker has covered what the owner has invested to get that worker’s labor, the rest becomes profit that goes to the owner’s pocket. This is important to understand because deconstructing this notion of success and how much work we put into achieving it, is just about how much money I can produce to the owner.  When we think about capital we little often think about teachers as workers within a huge means of production.   Teachers work long hours everyday to generate or educate laborers, but after their shift is over they will take work home.  Yes it is less of a money making activity, or at least indirectly, however that worker has long paid back what it takes to get him/her through the door and into the classroom. The profit that a worker generates after paying back for the labor power, is what is called surplus value. 

What is in the distinction that Reading 4.3 makes between owners and employees? Give an example of each. 

• According to the reading Wealth and Want in the United States, owners are those individuals or families that live mostly off investments such as, stocks, bonds, rents, mineral royalties, and other property income. For one to be considered an owner then, most live out off the work of others. Owners, according to the reading refer to both the fabulously wealthy stockholders of giant corporations and the struggling proprietors of small stores. However, the author makes it clear that struggling proprietors of small victims cannot or should not be considered as members of the corporate owning clas, as they are also victims of big business. 
• Employees have a greater range, it includes professionals and managers, people that would be considered as upper-middle and middle class, these could be compared to the manager of a plantation, his work was to extract more value-producing performance out of the enslaved people. In that case, the employees are the ones creating the wealth for the master. 

How do you understand the quote by Adam Smith on pg 28? what is it saying about labor?

• I believe Adam Smith was making clear that in other for capitalism to be successful, labor is a key part.  This, because he is saying that what makes the money, what adds the value to what the owner sells or owns is the labor.  The reading gives a great example of this: “what transforms a tree into a profitable commodity such as paper or furniture is the labor that goes into harvesting the timber, cutting the lumber and manufacturing, shipping, advertising, and selling the finished product”. If an owner has a tree plantation, but there is no labor into harvesting it and everything that needs to happen for that tree to become a product others can buy at the store, the owner has nothing more than a land full of trees.  It is an asset, it has value, but what makes it a money machine is the labor of the people that work for the owner, it is the workers the ones producing the money, while the owner profits it. 

1. What are your thoughts on the main argument of Reading 4.4 that class is NOT an identity? I believe the reading wants to argue that class is more or that goes deeper than another identity because class referst o an entire structure that imposes very specific logics of action on people in society.  The Marxist idea of: “what you have determines what your get”, place things on perspective to me.  If I think class from this perspective, class then becomes an intersection where all types of identities regardless sex, gender or “race”, ended up in two big piles: Owners and Workers.  You either own the means of production or you ended up (no matter how much you make) selling your labor in order to survive.  And contrary to for example, my social identities don’t depend necessarily on others to be, I do not depend on white people’s identities to be a latinx person, when talking about class there is an interdependence within capitalist and workers where workers are dependent on a given capitalist or firm for a job and that same capitalist depend on a worker and their ongoing exploitation in order to maintain their position as owners. So class, in my opinion is deeper than an identity it is more complex, but it can also be the point of encounter for people to realize the means for our liberation. “We can’t solve our problems unless there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power” (MLK). 
2. How do you understand the argument Reading 4.4. makes when stating that “class structures are built around a close form of dependency”? What is this close form of dependency, and can you think of an example? The reading -brilliantly I must add- argues on the dependency owners and workers have.  The author argues that to be a worker means, necessarily, to be dependent on a given capitalist or firm for a job… and that to be a capitalist means to be engaged in the ongoing exploitation of particular workers in order to maintain that position”. Furthermore, the author states that this relationship means that the worker will always and everywhere will be in a position of having their interest at least threatened by the capitalist, and the capitalist will find themselves coming to the table of negotiation to meet the workers needs because it is the worker who creates the profit they make.  And that dependency goes beyond capitalist and workers, government and society as a whole also depends on the capitalist to keep producing and making profit, capitalist can choose not to produce or invest if they don’t think profits will be hight enough.  This makes according to the reading, that all of society to be compelled to ensure that their profitability stays high enouf to keep them producing, no matter the cost of the rest of society. An example of this dependency can be seen with Amazon for example.  How much profit Amazon has been creating for the last four years alone? That profit would not be possible without the workers that goes from the delivery person, to the people in the warehouse, the managers, the IT people who run their apps and other platforms, the postal office, etc.  Resently workers of Amazon stand up against some policies withing the institution, that put Amazon on a very difficult position, bringing the owner to the table of conversation, showing what the reading states about that power workers can have over the owner, because the capitalist’s profits highly depends on them.  That relationship that takes place with the rest of society, that feels compelled to make sure Amazon keeps making profit to ensure economical stability, can be seen in the tax reform passed by Trump Administration.  Where Amazon paid $0 in taxes, making more profit than ever, all under the assumption that Amazon will create more warehouse and so more jobs. 

1. Do you notice any similarities in the way social class is discussed in readings 4.1 and 4.2? Do you notice any differences in the way these two readings DIFFERENTIATE between social classes? I think both readings deconstruct the notion that we have different classes in our society.  The idea of how the system divides us is pretty much an imagination rather than a reality.  We tend to see the city as lower, working, middle and upper class.  When the reality according to both readings -in my opinion- is that a capitalist society only has two classes, you either own a means of production or you either sell your labor to that capitalist.  I believe the reading Wealth and Want in the United States, goes into classifications of that working class, while the other just puts us all in one big pile.  With this, I mean that Parenti, deconstructs a little bit more the relationship there is between the executives (who are still workers, not owners) and the regular employee.  While the other reading works on make the precision that we are all workers and cannot be capitalist unless you own a means of production with workers that generates wealth for you. Both would agree on the reality of owner-worker dependency and as the only two classes, however, Parenti acknowledges the different tiers that exist within the working class and how the owners have always used these “professional”-ranking workers to basically extract more value-producing performance from other employees.  It makes just sense to me that the system then has created this imagination of different social classes because it will give the sense to workers they are going up, getting close to being the owner, and creates a segregating idea that we are not in the same boat, all enslaved people owned by the same slave master. 
2. Pick the station closest to where you live. Using the concepts from Reading 4.1, what social class tends to live in your neighborhood? Are you surprised (or not) by the answer? Do you feel it is an accurate representation of the people living in your neighborhood?

I live in StuyTown in 14 and first, using the concepts of the reading and looking the income around the L train station in 14th and 1st Ave, it looks like the social class living around this neighborhood is workers, but professional workers.  This does not surprise me to a point.  In the one hand, this is numbers from nine years, and I believe this neighborhood has been changing a lot in the last years alone.  Gentrification here is still an ongoing process here.  If you walk down Ave A, you will find what used to be a Puerto Rican neighborhood that still has members of the Latinx community living around.  Also StuyTown, which happens to be a very expensive rent property, used to be a massive project, that became this private living area, that now is super expensive to live in.  However, there are still people living in this complex that have their apartments since 1960s and have managed to fight against or assimilate to the gentrification process.  It surprised me because knowing the prices of rent around this area, you would think the income would’ve been greater than what it shows in the graphic. It does not surprise me that it also shows that the people living around this area are what the reading calls professionals and managers: teachers, doctors, nurses, executives, etc. 

1. Based on Reading 4.2, do you notice a general pattern about social classes in NYC? I would agree there is a general pattern that increases as gentrification keeps moving and pushing people out.  It seems that the professional or manager working class, and the owners tend to live in the city or closest to the city.  All while they keep pushing the rest of the workers outside of the city because their salaries would never allow them to afford to live in Soho for example. This is just another way -in my opinion- to feed the imagination that there are different classes other than workers and capitalist, giving a sense of power, exclusivity, realization, and success to those responsible to extra more value-producing performance from other employees, to secure the capitalist keep making profit out of all them.

Ideology is a set of ideas, believes, or practices that are set up, most of the time, by the people in power. We are talking about the construction of imaginations around what to believe as solid, what we deemed to be a priority, morally acceptable, and how society should look like and operate. 

In this lesson, we were able to approach different types of ideologies that have to do with politics, society and economy. Examples of different ideologies can be capitalism and socialism.  These are ideologies that revolts around economic, politics and society.  On one hand capitalism sustain free market, defend big business and have specific ideas on what a “good” society looks like.  Capitalism in my opinion, can also be very much tight to the ideology of White Supremacy that we saw previously in class. This economical ideology of capitalism has serve to the purpose of defending a system of wealth, power and privilege, key to keep the world white.  On the other hand socialism strive to “modify the corporate capitalist system with a system of public ownership”, cooperatives, factories own by the government, and so on.  A society that prioritize the common wealth and social services, much needed to give equal chances or opportunities.  I wonder within this type of ideological system, how would people build wealth or if there is a top where people can go? That can also be my capitalist mind speaking since all I have ever known is capitalism in all its different colors of oppression. 

1. We grew up learning that you go to jail as a punishment you deserve for something you did.  If you end up in jail it is a clear consequence of your actions and that consequence would be equitable to those actions you made.  When we think about the jail system we are thought to think that every one that is there is a criminal and they are paying back for the criminal activities.  We also learned for so long that we were on a crucial war against the evil of drugs, you use, you sell, you go to jail.  Interestingly Michael Alexander puts in perspective a different reason.  As a result of the drug war “in less than thirty years, the U.S penal population exploded from around 300,000 to more than 2 million, with convictions accounting for the majority of the increase”. Making the U.S the country with a higher rate of incarceration in the world. The reason for this is not a relationship between crime and penalty as we often think, rather a relationship of racial disparity, a result of policies that look to put black and brown people back to their places. Alexander states that “there is no truth to the notion that the War on Drugs was launched in response to crack cocaine, rather when the drug war was announced by President Regan, the crack was not a crisis or the main issue in poor black and brown communities”.  The issue started right after, so rather than stop or minimize the drug issue it created it and spread it.  Even deeper than this or to actually speak to how deep White Supremacy is into this, Alexander explains how the War on Drug campaign just makes sense with the theories and generational speculation in poor black communities that the War on Drugs was part of a genocidal plan by the government.  To this, she speaks about how the CIA knew drugs was been smuggled into the country and into primary black communities and they allowed that to happen. 
2.  The racial disparities in the rates of incarceration cannot be explained by rates of drug crimes, because first: “governments use punishment primarily as a tool of social control, and thus the extent or severity of the punishment is often unrelated to actual crimes”. Second, Alexander points remarkably well the reality that studies show that people of ALL colors use and sell illegal drugs at similar rates, furthermore, other statistical research suggests that whites, particularly white youth, are more likely to engage in drug crime than people of color. However the reality of the population in jail today does not reflect that reality, in fact, “80 percent of young African American men now have criminal records and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their life”, a sentence that will most likely condemn them to live in poverty. 
3. Social control is important for governments like ours.  A government that defines nationalism and patriotism with a white face and terrorism, looting, laziness, and crimes with black and brown faces.  Social control is a big thing for imperialist governments, it is most important for White Supremacy structures.  You cannot oppress, and you definitely cannot make wealth out of the people you oppress if first you cannot control them.  I think social control starts with the dehumanization of the other, followed by the criminalization of their own being, then you deny to that person any possible access to gain power.  With the song of “law and order” President Nixon saw that opportunity to disguise persecution and “social control” of the “loud minority” with all legal power of the government.  Even before that slavery, and even before that genocide of my indigenous ancestors all across the American Continent.  Social control in our context has been used and it is still used with the purpose of maintaining and defending a system of power, wealth and privilege, that can only exist if we people of color, stay in our lane, while dreaming to escape to the north, have a job, a beautiful house and a backyard.

Social racist politicians chose to frame their defense of racial segregation through the language of “law and order” since Nixon’s administration.  Nixon’s campaign rise in a time of a lot of social discomfort or malaise about how the “progressive” government of LBJ failed to provide to the needs of the people because of the Vietnam war, they (southerners) were not happy about segregation, civil rights social unrest, anti-war protest, and the new queer liberation movement. The United States of America was living a time of social unrest likely in a way to what we experienced last 2020 summer.  Nixon used coded racism to appeal to what he called “the silent majority”. White-suburban and southerners that were not comfortable or this not feel represented by the new “liberal” democratic party.  With Law and Order, Nixon is calling and promising the stop of protest voiced by the minorities in the country.  To bring things to normality, or to what it was (America Great Again) means to give back to the white people their privilege their comfort of superiority.  We are right, they are wrong, we are patriots they are terrorists, type of relationship. Law and Order became a coded speech to ensure to those white privileged people that their ideas, their America, their privileged reality, their way of life will not suffer more, they are the majority, they are the representation of American Values. 
Donald Trump and the Republican party are the greatest examples of the effects of Nixon’s Southern Strategy.  He tapped into the fears of White People losing privilege or more than anything being forced to share it. The Make America Great Again was the “law and order” of Trumps campaigns.  A promise to those southerners and northerners white people, that their “American way of life” will never change, or rather will comeback again, a white America, with white supremacy values and beliefs.