In 2002 author Eric Schlosser wrote a bestseller book entitled Fast Food Nation: The dark Side of the All-American Meals. The book –like Upton Sinclair’s Jungle –sheds light on the rather grim underworld of the fast food industry. Like Carol Marx, Schlosser highlights the how fast food workers are exploited and underpaid for the profit of the capitalist bourgeoisies (i.e. the fast foods industry).
In the introduction to Wage Labor and Capital, Rivkin says, “That the secret to wealth is that workers are systematically underpaid” (558). According to Marx the bourgeoisies exploits its workers by paying them wages that is the equivalent of slave labor. Marx says, “Not only are they slaves of the bourgeoisies class, and of the bourgeoisies state; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over- looker, and, above all, by the bourgeoisies manufacturer himself” (5). Although companies like McDonalds make a hundred billons dollars every year; the rarely take time to consider their underpaid workers who must spend lengthy hours performing the same monotonous task over and over again. In Fast Food Nation Schlosser says, “Instead of relying upon a small, stable, well-paid, and well-trained workforce, the fast food industry seeks out part-time, unskilled workers who are willing to accept low wages” (68).
Teenagers and first generation immigrants make the perfect candidates for exploitation. They are less likely to complain about conditions, form unions, or complain about long hours. “These laborers, who sell themselves piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of the of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market” (Marx 5). The system of most fast food restaurants little or no room to rise up the social-economic ladder. Workers –like cheap objects –can be hired and fired at the whim and will of their employers. According to Marx, “The capitalist , it seems therefore, buys their labor with money” (659). The wages that worker make is eventually circulated back to that capitalist who reap the reward. Through this process the rich get rich and the poor stay poor. The bourgeoisies is able to acquire more land and goods; which Marx believed should be equally shared with everything. Like Schlosser, Marx accuses the capitalist of, “[stripping] away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced family relation to mere money relation” (Marx 2). The fast food industry has nearly wiped out the sentimental “mom and pop” chains that once doted the highways of American. Companies like Burger King, Wendy’s, Carols Jr., McDonalds, and Inn and Out made their money on the cheap labor of others.
Works Cited
Marx, Karl. "Wagr Labor and Capital". Rivkin, Julie. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Blackwell publishing; United Kingdom, 2004.
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation. New YorK: Harper Perennial, 2004
