The declaration that anyone can "make it" in our society if they would just try hard enough, brings a bitter taste to mouth. Millions of workers try as hard as they can, work full-time year round, do odd jobs after their normal work is over, and still have a hard time making ends meet. What does this mean for our highly held ideals? It means that they are dead. Unbeknownst to the masses, they are existing for the advancement, not of themselves individually or collectively, but for the benefit of a handful of wealthy families. These oppressors daily rape the masses not only of the fruits of their labor, but also of their humanity. The masses are thus left not only impoverished but dehumanized, as well. Having very little, if any, property of their own, and stripped of their humanity, they spend their existence on the level of animal. They wake, produce, breed, and die, just as the horse wakes, offers labor power to pull the plow, procreates to ensure that in the future the plow will be pulled and then after a lifetime of service, having nothing but a broken body, is sent to the knackers. This is the life of most workers? No. More accurately, it is the "existence" of most workers. In order to live, one must be an active participant in creating and recreating the world of which he/she is a part. Workers, having lost their humanity, do not live. They merely exist. But, why is this?

According to Harry Braverman, in Labor and Monopoly Capital, "the labor process has become the responsibility of the capitalists" and as a result, the worker is stripped of his ability to concepualize his work and has become alienated. This alienation not only has ramifications for his workplace, but also outside of his workplace. In the workplace, workers are continually faced with the prospect of being further dehumanized and deskilled. They come to work and the first thing they do is to "clock in". This is just an example of how close they are being supervised. This close supervision is necessary for the capitalist because after the worker has been dehumanized, this means that she can no longer be respected or trusted. The antagonistic relation is created and continually advanced by the oppressor, or as he/she is often called, the capitalist or businessman. Throughout the workday the relentless capitalist pushes ever harder for the worker to produce, totally excluding the humanity of the worker from his mind. After leaving the monotony of work, the worker heads home for a little comfort. But, because of his work experience, what happens at home will not be much better. This may be because after experiencing a workay of submission, the worker may try to exert undue authority in the home setting; powerless at work, powerful at home.

Paulo Friere, in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, refers to this as the "existential duality" of oppressor/oppressed, which the worker, and according to Friere all of us, internalize as the reflection of our antagonistic economic structure. Therefore, upon reaching home, the worker unconsciously switches poles from oppressed to oppressor. Another reason why the home may not be much better and which fits well into the previous explanation, is because the worker is unable to live a dual existence of being human and being dehumanized. How can one be human only part of the time? It is impossible. Therefore, not only is the worker alienated from the workplace, but from her family as well. How does this fit into the previous explanation? How can there be a dual existence of the previous kind, but not the latter? This is under the contention that the antagonistic relation of oppressor/oppressed is dehumanizing for all who enter into it, oppressor as well as oppressed. When persons devalue others to the level of object, they in turn give up their own humanity. Not only do capitalists sadistically dehumanize all beneath them, but they masochistically dehumanize themselves. Therefore, dehumanization is central to the oppressor/oppressed relation. One cannot exist without the other. It is not surprising then that the homes of working class people are often places of little comfort and much turmoil. The workers cannot escape the consequences of the capitalist economic structure, not even in their own homes. Combined with economic hardship, something of which capitalists know nothing of (they have never had to worry about their electricity being shut off), their existence is very difficult to say the least. Making ends meet is not possible sometimes. Therefore, after coming home from a long, hard day of submission, or slavery (whichever term you prefer), they are faced with another struggle; that of keeping their family's collective head above water. -Winston