Hollywood and Marx

“Swing Shift” was a movie made in 1984, starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, which presented America in a time of war, and women had to take on the factory responsibility for the men. Prior to the war women were not allowed to work in the factories, and when the war ended the capitalist industry businessmen wanted to kick them out of the workforce again. This is a clear example of Marx’s theory that “labor power, therefore, is a commodity, neither more nor less than sugar” (Marx 659). The capitalist factory owners used the “free labor” market to make their profits of the women, because they did not have enough men to keep up production. The women’s “wage labor” have no “exchange value” before the men went of to war, because it was not acceptable in societies underlying rules for gender categories. Marx had a theory that “we are all situated historically and socially, and our social and historical contexts “determine” or shape our lives” (Marx 644). That completely holds true for the women portrayed in this movie, because the war happened at the time they were alive and allowed for the gender roles to be lifted due to necessity. However, their historical time gave them an insight into freedoms that women before them had no opportunity to witness, so with their new found experience the women were able to fight for more rights. The era they lived in and the society they found themselves apart of, shaped their lives, outlooks on social norms, and determined their course of action.
The movie really showed how much power the capitalist has, but at the same time it revealed the interdependent relationship with the wage worker. As Marx put it, “capital presupposes labor; wage labor presupposes capital. They reciprocally condition the existence of each other; they reciprocally bring forth each other” (Marx 664). The capitalist has the authority to fire an employee at any given point in time, which is apparent when the women are let go after the end of the war. The labor however is extremely necessary for the capitalist and without other people working the factories the business would collapse. The worker have a lot more power than they realize, but the necessity to bring income into the household can hold them back from exercising their power. The worker are being manipulated and exploited by the capitalist, and this movie shows that in its bare truth with the women issue of labor. In the Manifesto of the Communist party, Marx wrote, “for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation” (Marx Ch.5). In the movie the capitalist employed the women to work due to patriotism and that their work would not only keep their households alive with income, but that they would be helping the cause of the war. The capitalist, however, just needed people working in the factories in order to keep the products coming and the profits rolling. As long as the work was being done they were happy, but as soon as the men came home the capitalist was ready to drop the women workers, because men were stronger and had a larger “exchange value” for their labor.

Works Cited
Marx, Karl. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. 2nd ed. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. p. 643-646, 650-672, Ch.6