A growing trend in the early 2000’s was for CEO’s and other high ranking executives of multimillion dollar corporations to be stealing from that corporation, the Enron scandal, is a very good example of this. Before Enron filed for bankruptcy in late 2001 it was a very successful energy company based in Huston, Texas. High ranking executives messed with paperwork making it seem like everything was okay with the company when really they were racking up debt, and a lot of it. Using the father of communism, Karl Marx, one can easily explain why the Enron scandal happened.
Our current capitalist society is very different from the communist one Marx envisioned. Marx’s ideal society is one in which people would live as equals and help one another if need be, in our current capitalist society however, we wish to give the means of production to a few. In Marx’s society there were the bourgeoisie and the proletariat or those who owned and those who labored. The bourgeoisie or the capitalist class from Marx’s day are very similar to current day high ranking executives and CEO’s of companies; it is these select few people that own the means of production. Owning the means of production is what allows them to exploit and alienate other employees. In regards to the Enron scandal it was these “bourgeoisie” that were hiding the problems within the company, and it was these people that were able to hire others to help keep this out of the limelight and away from the public, for a certain period of time at least.
Marx explains in “Wage Labour and Capital” how labor becomes a commodity, that is how labor can be bought/sold, and the problems created with this, such as alienation and exploitation. Alienation and exploitation are important concepts to understand; exploitation is the extraction of a surplus value and alienation is the experience of part of oneself as alien – separated from work, product of work, self, and others. It is possible that the high ranking executives from Enron felt alienated when it came to their work. Feeling this alienation could be what allowed them to take advantage of those under them; because they felt separated from their work and the product of their work i.e. the good of the overall company, they may have been able to over look the fact that their actions would directly effect and effect their fellow employees in a very negative way. The actions of these high ranking executives cost many people their jobs and their livelihoods which not only affected those employees but also those employees’ families and loved ones. It is safe to assume that those who held these high ranking executive positions, the “bourgeoisie”, were well off which may be why they were able to exploit the “proletariat.” The “bourgeoisie” did not see the use-value in their employees. Marx explains in “Commodities and Money” use-value to be the value inherent in the utility of an object, that is the quality of this object, with that object being lower ranking employees in this case. Without these lower ranking employees the company would not have functioned in a way possible for Enron to be as successful of a business as it once was. It was these employees that were the bread and butter of the company while the high ranking executives made company decisions that more often than not benefited them. These higher ranking employees did not see the use-value in their employees which allowed them to take advantage of them in exchange for making a lot of money. In the same piece “Commodities and Money” Marx’s explains exchange-value, the value an object can attain when sold or exchanged. With the case of Enron, the higher ranking executives exchanged their personal wealth for the overall wellbeing of the company itself; that is to say that they were looking out for themselves and only themselves.
Our current capitalist society is very different from the communist one Marx envisioned. Marx’s ideal society is one in which people would live as equals and help one another if need be, in our current capitalist society however, we wish to give the means of production to a few. In Marx’s society there were the bourgeoisie and the proletariat or those who owned and those who labored. The bourgeoisie or the capitalist class from Marx’s day are very similar to current day high ranking executives and CEO’s of companies; it is these select few people that own the means of production. Owning the means of production is what allows them to exploit and alienate other employees. In regards to the Enron scandal it was these “bourgeoisie” that were hiding the problems within the company, and it was these people that were able to hire others to help keep this out of the limelight and away from the public, for a certain period of time at least.
Marx explains in “Wage Labour and Capital” how labor becomes a commodity, that is how labor can be bought/sold, and the problems created with this, such as alienation and exploitation. Alienation and exploitation are important concepts to understand; exploitation is the extraction of a surplus value and alienation is the experience of part of oneself as alien – separated from work, product of work, self, and others. It is possible that the high ranking executives from Enron felt alienated when it came to their work. Feeling this alienation could be what allowed them to take advantage of those under them; because they felt separated from their work and the product of their work i.e. the good of the overall company, they may have been able to over look the fact that their actions would directly effect and effect their fellow employees in a very negative way. The actions of these high ranking executives cost many people their jobs and their livelihoods which not only affected those employees but also those employees’ families and loved ones. It is safe to assume that those who held these high ranking executive positions, the “bourgeoisie”, were well off which may be why they were able to exploit the “proletariat.” The “bourgeoisie” did not see the use-value in their employees. Marx explains in “Commodities and Money” use-value to be the value inherent in the utility of an object, that is the quality of this object, with that object being lower ranking employees in this case. Without these lower ranking employees the company would not have functioned in a way possible for Enron to be as successful of a business as it once was. It was these employees that were the bread and butter of the company while the high ranking executives made company decisions that more often than not benefited them. These higher ranking employees did not see the use-value in their employees which allowed them to take advantage of them in exchange for making a lot of money. In the same piece “Commodities and Money” Marx’s explains exchange-value, the value an object can attain when sold or exchanged. With the case of Enron, the higher ranking executives exchanged their personal wealth for the overall wellbeing of the company itself; that is to say that they were looking out for themselves and only themselves.