Prompt #1: Our Daily Bread
This picture looks like it is a part of Our Daily Bread because it is demonstrating an instance of the assembly line, in the process of mass meat production. The workers are all assigned one specific task – doing that task repeatedly for however long their boss needs them to. There are several scenes in Our Daily Bread that are similar if not identical to the image pictured above. For example, the movie showed scenes of workers repeatedly cutting the beaks off of chicks. The workers were so used to the process that they were immune to the screams of the chicks. They were expressionless and almost looked bored cutting off the beaks. This is the case with the workers in this image as well; the workers all look bored, as if they have been doing this all day for as long as they can remember. The workers are all in proximity of one another, but they all look disengaged with their co-workers. They each focus on the individual task that they are given, not concentrating on anything else but the work at hand. The next image displays another worker picking meat up and going to cut it. They are not interacting with any other worker, but rather, continuously doing the single task that they are given – over and over again. In Our Daily Bread, the workers were all going about their days in the same fashion. Working alongside machines that did half of the work, working in isolation, eating in isolation and taking smoke breaks in isolation. Marx argues that workers become alienated from their fellow workers in a capitalistic society. He stated that a worker’s tendency to cooperatively work with their fellow workers was crucial to their survival (55). However, in the assembly line, workers all complete their tasks in isolation. This is exactly what is seen in these images. This isolation also leads to a loss of creativity and individuality. Marx states, “Workers in capitalist society are alienated from their own human potential. Instead of being a source of transformation and fulfilment of our human nature, the workplace is where we feel least human, least ourselves. Individuals perform less and less like human beings as they are reduced in their work to functioning like machines” (55). This quote manifests itself into the two images. The disconnect between their consciousness and the work they do is evident as they are merely instruments of a much bigger system that is at work. Further, they are unable to explore their own individual and creative passions because the work they do is reduced down to what capitalistic society needs of them – and this need is usually for them to remain compliant and do the single repeated task they are given. Marx argues, “we no longer see our labor as an expression of our purpose. There is no objectivation. Instead, we labor in accordance with the purpose of the capitalist who hires and pays us” (53). Due to the workers only having their labor to offer and the capitalist being in complete control of the wages they earn, they become forced to become just another step in the manufacturing process. The workers in these images are all doing a single task, all in the same uniform, their bodies moving along in one specific motion, over and over. They are the furthest a person can be from individualistic. Lastly, Marx says that workers in a capitalist society become alienated from the product of their own labor (54). This is because the products they create are the capitalist’s private property. If the worker wants to own the product, they must purchase it like everybody else (54). This argument is evident in these images, as after the worker is done cutting the meat, they place it back on the conveyer belt and watch it go to the next step of the production process. They watch the product leave as quickly as they are handled it. Products such as the conveyer belt are a way to remind the worker that they are not in control and have no right to the products they are creating.
