Disposable Lives, Disposable Bodies: Alienation, Surplus Value, and Super Exploited Labor at Duffy s Cut TJ Adams NEH Summer Institute A Perfect Storm at Duffy s Cut 28 July 2016
Disposable Lives, Disposable Bodies: Alienation, Surplus Value, and Super Exploited Labor at Duffy s Cut Rationale: The story of Duffy s Cut contains numerous opportunities for historical and critical interventions in a secondary level Social Studies classroom. One of the most telling themes that emerges from an investigation into the history of Duffy s Cut is the recognition of the role that super exploited labor played in the formation of our earliest railways at the dawn of the American Industrial Revolution and the almost complete devaluation of human life that was the true cost of these expansive building projects. Karl Marx was theorizing a powerful form of capitalist critique only a decade after the events at Duffy s Cut occurred and today his theories of alienation and surplus value are as useful and trenchant as they were when he wrote them in 1844. An examination of the deaths of Irish laborers at Duffy s Cut within the framework of Marxian critique can help students better understand the experiences of workers in 1832 and today during capitalist phases of production. Pennsylvania Standards Aligned System: CC.8.5.9-10.A: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, attending to such features as the date and origin of the information. CC.8.5.9-10.B: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of how key events or ideas develop over the course of the text. CC.8.5.9-10.I: Compare and contrast treatments of the same topic in several primary and secondary sources. CC.8.5.11-12.A: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole. CC.8.5.11-12.C: Evaluate various explanations for actions or events and determine which explanation best accords with textual evidence, acknowledging where the text leaves matters uncertain. CC.8.5.11-12.H: Evaluate an author s premises, claims, and evidence by corroborating or challenging them with other information. 8.1.12.A: Evaluate patterns of continuity and rates of change over time, applying context of events. 8.1.W.A: Evaluate patterns of continuity and change over time, applying context of events. 8.2.12.A: Evaluate the role groups and individuals from Pennsylvania played in the social, political, cultural, and economic development of the US and the world. 8.2.12.D: Evaluate how conflict and cooperation among groups and organizations in Pennsylvania have influenced the growth and development of the US and the world. 8.3.12.A: Evaluate the role groups and individuals from the U.S. played in the social, political, cultural, and economic development of the world.
Daily Lessons: Day 1: Introduce Karl Marx s biography and an overview of his work. Objective: Introduce Marx as a thinker in history as opposed to the historical caricature. Day 2: Introduce Dialectical Materialism and Marxian Base-Superstructure critique. Objective: Students should be able to use Marxian analysis in order to critique historical and sociocultural texts. Day 3: Review the Estranged Labor section of Marx s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Objective: Students will analyze the Marian concepts alienation and surplus value. 1) According to Marx, how is man alienated ( estranged ) from the following: a. The product of his labor b. The process of production c. Other men d. His species-life ( species-being ) 2) According to Marx, what is the object of labor? 3) How does Marx define private property? 4) How does productive energy produce species-life? Day 4: Review Herbert Marcuse s Socialist Humanism. Objective: Students will analyze Marcuse s critique of Marxism. 1) According to Marcuse, what did Marx underestimate about capitalism? 2) How does technological rationality restructure and subsume species-life? 3) According to Marcuse, what was the proper role of revolutionary action when he wrote the essay (1965)? Day 5: Guided lecture on the history of Duffy s Cut with references to History and Memory at Duffy s Cut and The Irish in Philadelphia. Objective: Students will analyze the various contributing factors to the deaths of Irish laborers at Duffy s Cut and employ a Marxian mode of analysis to the events. Lecture topics: 1) Irish immigration to Philadelphia 2) Construction of the Pennsylvania and Columbia Railway 3) Philip Duffy and the difficulty of Mile 59 4) Cholera Epidemic 5) What happened at Duffy s Cut 6) Archaeology at Duffy s Cut 1) In what ways can we say that the Irish laborers at Duffy s Cut experienced alienation? 2) Where the experiences of the Duffy s Cut workers historically unique to a certain confluence of conditions or can we in some way universalize them?
Day 6: Watch and discuss the HBO Real Sports segment Childhood Lost from Episode 138. Objective: Students will witness a visual representation of contemporary exploited labor. Day 7: Review and discuss Chapter 8 ( The Most Dangerous Job in America ) of Eric Schlosser s Fast Food Nation. Objective: Students will analyze, compare, and contrast alienation in contemporary meatpacking plants with the events at Duffy s Cut. Essential Question: 1) How were the experiences of the Irish laborers at Duffy s Cut similar to the workers in the meatpacking plants? 2) Are the cultural-religious components of immigrant labor backgrounds in both stories a primary or secondary phenomenon of the exploitation of these workers? Day 8: Assign the final project. Students will write a critical essay addressing the following prompt: The experiences of labor under the imposed conditions of capitalism are strikingly similar across various historical, cultural, and economic landscapes. Karl Marx s critiques of capitalism in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 remain powerful critical tools that can help us better understand the experiences of exploited workers. In your paper, describe the various similarities and differences between the forms of alienation experienced by workers at Duffy s Cut in 1832 with the experiences of presentday goldminers in La Rinconada as described by William Finnegan in his article Tears of the Sun.
Literature Review Barboza, David & Duhigg, Charles. (January 25 th 2012 ). In China, Human Costs Are Built into an ipad. New York Times: Barboza and Duhugg s article uncovers the deplorable working conditions on the Apple supply and assembly chain at factories on China. The article helps readers to globalize the workers conditions that the students might learn about from the Duffy s Cut history. Clark, Dennis. (1973). The Irish in Philadelphia (Ch. 1 & 2): The first two chapters of Clark s book introduce readers to some of the historical conditions of Irish immigration to Philadelphia in the 19 th century. Goldberg, Bernard. (September 16, 2008). Childhood Lost. Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, Los Angeles, HBO: Real Sports, who were unsuccessfully sued over the segment, provides the viewer with an intimate, unflinching look at the human cost of child labor. Finnegan, William. (April 20 th, 2015). Tears of the Sun. The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/20/tears-of-the-sun La Rinconada, the highest altitude human settlement in the world, is a small Peruvian city where gold miners work under dangerous conditions in the hopes of providing a better life for themselves and their families. Finnegan s article humanizes the plight of labor with in-depth, emotional, journalistic portraits of the lives of these workers. Marcuse, Herbert. (1965). Socialist Humanism. In Erich Fromm (ed.), Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium, (107-177), Carden City, NY: Doubleday. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/1965/socialist-humanism.htm Marcuse s revision of Marxist critique was influential on the formation of the American New Left in the 60 s. Marcuse challenges some of Marx s assumptions while renewing what is vital in Marxian approaches to critique. Marcuse s essay can be helpful in efforts to update theories of alienation and surplus value for more contemporary political-economy. Marx, Karl. (1959). Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 ( Estranged Labor section), Moscow: Progress Publishers: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm Marx s writings on alienated labor ( estranged labor ) have been influential on Western Marxism and the American New Left s critique of the experience of labor under capitalism. While Marx was writing specifically about manufacturing conditions his theories of alienated labor and surplus value are remarkable robust and can be utilized in contemporary critiques of workers under more recent forms of capitalist production. Schlosser, Eric. (2001). Fast Food Nation (Ch. 8.). New York: Houton Mifflin: Schlosser s remarkably far-reaching examination of the fast food industry covers every facet of a system based on suffering. Chapter 8, entitled The Most Dangerous Job, focuses on the human cost of fast food as Schlosser details the workday horrors experienced by laborers in meat-processing plants in the America heartland. This chapter stands as a compelling testimony to extreme forms of worker alienation in contemporary American economic life. Silvers, Jonathan. (February 1996). Child Labor in Pakistan. Atlantic. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm The most troubling form that surplus value takes is when it is extracted form children. Silvers article lays bare the exploitive cruelty of child labor in Pakistan and helps us to understand the ways in which the exploitation of labor becomes normalized and encoded in cultural contexts. Watson, William. (Spring-Summer 2014). History and Memory at Duffy s Cut. Railroad History, no. 211, 76-87: Immaculata University History Professor Dr. William Watson is the academic responsible for the discovery of the mass grave at Duffy s Cut. This essay provides much of the essential historical background of the Duffy s Cut story.