Billy Prior-Character Study Essay

* Prior is introduced in chapter 5 and is portrayed as very defensive ‘he stares straight through you’ Pg 41. * Prior is a 22-year-old second lieutenant whose neurosis manifests itself, initially, through an inability to talk or remember the events, which have led to his breakdown. * His is of a working-class background but his mother has done her best to push her son up the social ladder, regardless whether this is best for him. * Billy’s mothers desire to better himself has resulted in a rebellious tendency to continually question authority which is shown in many of his dialogues with prior. * He is an inquisitive and intelligent man but because he ‘broke down’ he feels his courage failed him. * Prior has a flippant, cynical attitude and his discussions with rivers are frequently tinged with sarcasm both against rivers and his methods, and against the war in general * He describes his feelings at going into battle in sexual terms; his wartime nightmares and sexual dreams become confused and this brings on a sense of self-revulsion. This in turn, leads Prior further into depression. * Prior’s sexual frustrations are bound up with his war neurosis and his need to prove himself both as a soldier and a man. * Billy feels he has a duty to serve his country but on the other hand his ambitions preempt this duty as a reason to return to war. He clearly has a deep desire to return to the front and prove to himself that he is not a coward but this feeling is reserved a little by self-preservation * Prior hides his feelings and this is shown in his writing. He is at times is quite satirical â€Å"not tonight, Wilhelm. I’ve got a headache†? * On page 49 he shows a more aggressive side when he is very aggressive towards rivers * He develops a relationship with Sarah a ‘Geordie’ girl on pages 89+130 * Prior stood up Sarah in the book which she did not like but it was because he had got back late the previous night when on his last expedition with Sarah. * Billy begins to show his feelings on page 120 as he starts to open up a little more about his experiences. * â€Å"I wasn’t wearing the badge because I was with a girl† Pg.95 This shows how Prior is embarrassed about staying at Craiglockhart and shows his caring side. * â€Å"I find myself trying to impress you’ on page 64 this shows a more caring side to Billy Prior and more subtle side to him. This would also help the reader further empathise with prior. * On page 55 the reader gets to meet priors readers and it soon becomes clear that Billy does not get on well at all with his father â€Å"he seemed too have no feeling for his son except content†-â€Å"Must I? I’m not proud† This shows another side to prior and the lack of love he has felt whilst growing up. * By page 104 the hypnosis begins to work and gets to him and after a few meeting cry’s. Prior grabs Rivers by the arms and began butting him in the chest. Hard enough to hurt. This shows how Rivers touched a nerve in the hypnosis and bridges are finally being crossed. * On page 105 we get to find out about his war experiences. Prior is a complex and confused character, who is lost and desperately in need of help. It is only when he is finally prepared to admit this to himself that his road to recovery can begin.

Foundation and Empire 23. The Ruins Of Trantor

The location of an objective upon the great world of Trantor presents a problem unique in the Galaxy. There are no continents or oceans to locate from a thousand miles distance. There are no rivers, lakes, and islands to catch sight of through the cloud rifts. The metal-covered world was – had been – one colossal city, and only the old Imperial palace could be identified readily from outer space by a stranger. The Bayta circled the world at almost air-car height in repeated painful search. From polar regions, where the icy coating of the metal spires were somber evidence of the breakdown or neglect of the weather-conditioning machinery, they worked southwards. Occasionally they could experiment with the correlations -(or presumable correlations)- between what they saw and what the inadequate map obtained at Neotrantor showed. But it was unmistakable when it came. The gap in the metal coat of the planet was fifty miles. The unusual greenery spread over hundreds of square miles, inclosing the mighty grace of the ancient Imperial residences. The Bayta hovered and slowly oriented itself. There were only the huge supercauseways to guide them. Long straight arrows on the map, smooth, gleaming ribbons there below them. What the map indicated to be the University area was reached by dead reckoning, and upon the flat area of what once must have been a busy landing-field, the ship lowered itself. It was only as they submerged into the welter of metal that the smooth beauty apparent from the air dissolved into the broken, twisted near-wreckage that had been left in the wake of the Sack. Spires were truncated, smooth walls gouted and twisted, and just for an instant there was the glimpse of a shaven area of earth – perhaps several hundred acres in extent – dark and plowed. Lee Senter waited as the ship settled downward cautiously. It was a strange ship, not from Neotrantor, and inwardly he sighed. Strange ships and confused dealings with the men of outer space could mean the end of the short days of peace, a return to the old grandiose times of death and battle. Senter was leader of the group; the old books were in his charge and he had read of those old days. He did not want them. Perhaps ten minutes spent themselves as the strange ship came down to nestle upon the flatness, but long memories telescoped themselves in that time. There was first the great farm of his childhood – that remained in his mind merely as busy crowds of people. Then there was the trek of the young families to new lands. He was ten, then; an only child, puzzled, and frightened. Then the new buildings; the great metal slabs to be uprooted and tom aside; the exposed soil to be turned, and freshened, and invigorated; neighboring buildings to be tom down and leveled; others to be transformed to living quarters. There were crops to be grown and harvested; peaceful relations with neighboring farms to be established- There was growth and expansion, and the quiet efficiency of self-rule. There was the coming of a new generation of hard, little youngsters born to the soil. There was the great day when he was chosen leader of the Group and for the first time since his eighteenth birthday he did not shave and saw the first stubble of his Leader's Beard appear. And now the Galaxy might intrude and put an end to the brief idyll of isolation- The ship landed. He watched wordlessly as the port opened. Four emerged, cautious and watchful. There were three men, varied, old, young, thin and beaked. And a woman striding among them like an equal. His hand left the two glassy black tufts of his beard as he stepped forward. He gave the universal gesture of peace. Both hands were before him; hard, calloused palms upward. The young man approached two steps and duplicated the gesture. â€Å"I come in peace.† The accent was strange, but the words were understandable, and welcome. He replied, deeply, â€Å"In peace be it. You are welcome to the hospitality of the Group. Are you hungry? You shall eat. Are you thirsty? You shall drink.† Slowly, the reply came, â€Å"We thank you for your kindness, and shall bear good report of your Group when we return to our world.† A queer answer, but good. Behind him, the men of the Group were smiling, and from the recesses of the surrounding structures, the women emerged. In his own quarters, he removed the locked, mirror-walled box from its hidden place, and offered each of the guests the long, plump cigars that were reserved for great occasions. Before the woman, he hesitated. She had taken a seat among the men. The strangers evidently allowed, even expected, such effrontery. Stiffly, he offered the box. She accepted one with a smile, and drew in its aromatic smoke, with all the relish one could expect. Lee Senter repressed a scandalized emotion. The stiff conversation, in advance of the meal, touched politely upon the subject of fanning on Trantor. It was the old man who asked, â€Å"What about hydroponics? Surely, for such a world as Trantor, hydroponics would be the answer.† Senter shook his head slowly. He felt uncertain. His knowledge was the unfamiliar matter of the books he had read, â€Å"Artificial fanning in chemicals, I think? No, not on Trantor. This hydroponics requires a world of industy – for instance, a great chemical industry. And in war or disaster, when industry breaks down, the people starve. Nor can all foods be grown artificially. Some lose their food value. The soil is cheaper, still better – always more dependable.† â€Å"And your food supply is sufficient?† â€Å"Sufficient; perhaps monotonous. We have fowl that supply eggs, and milk-yielders for our dairy products – but our meat supply rests upon our foreign trade.† â€Å"Trade.† The young man seemed roused to sudden interest. â€Å"You trade then. But what do you export?† â€Å"Metal,† was the curt answer. â€Å"Look for yourself. We have an infinite supply, ready processed. They come from Neotrantor with ships, demolish an indicated area-increasing our growing space – and leave us in exchange meat, canned fruit, food concentrates, farm machinery and so on. They carry off the metal and both sides profit.† They feasted on bread and cheese, and a vegetable stew that was unreservedly delicious. It was over the dessert of frosted fruit, the only imported item on the menu, that, for the first time, the Outlanders became other than mere guests. The young man produced a map of Trantor. Calmly, Lee Senter studied it. He listened – and said gravely, â€Å"The University Grounds are a static area. We farmers do not grow crops on it. We do not, by preference, even enter it. It is one of our few relics of another time we would keep undisturbed. â€Å" â€Å"We are seekers after knowledge. We would disturb nothing. Our ship would be our hostage.† The old man offered this – eagerly, feverishly. â€Å"I can take you there then,† said Senter. That night the strangers slept, and that night Lee Senter sent a message to Neotrantor.

An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory

An Introduction to Marxist ECONOMIC THEORY Ernest Mandel 2 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc ) was the most influential exponent of Marxist economic theory in the Western world during the second half of the 20th century, and is best known for his masterful two-volume work Marxist Economic Theory (1962) and his brilliant Late Capitalism (1972).In the former, he demonstrated that it was possible, on the basis of the contemporary data, to reconstitute the whole economic system of Karl Marx 100 years after the first publication of Marx’s Capital. In the latter work, Mandel provided an explanation of the causes of the 20-year â€Å"wave† of rapid growth of the world capitalist economy after World War II, which also demonstrated that it would soon be followed by an indeterminately â€Å"long wave† of much slower economic growth, and recurrent social and political crises in the developed capitalist countries.Late Capitalism also provided the first comprehensive analys is of the new features of global capitalism that emerged in the post-war period and that are still with us today — transnational corporations as the dominant form of capitalist business organisation, the enormous growth of the services sector, the crucial role of state expenditure in propping up an economic system marked by financial instability, long-term stagnation punctuated by speculative booms, mindless consumerism and accelerating environmental destruction.This pamphlet, which was first published in French in 1964, provides a concise exposition of the elementary princples of Marxist economic theory. In the first section, Mandel elucidates the basic categories of Marx’s economic doctrine from the emergence of the social surplus product to the labour theory of value. In the second section, he explains the basic laws of motion of capitalism and its inherent contradictions.In the final second, he applies these to some of the new features exhibited by the new stage of imperialist capitalism that emerged after the second world war, which at the time he termed â€Å"neo-capitalism†. In his more mature work Late Capitalism, Mandel abandoned this term in favour of the designation â€Å"late capitalism†, explaining in the introduction to 4 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory that work that the designation â€Å"neo-capitalism† could be falsely â€Å"interpreted to imply either a radical continuity or discontinuity with traditional capitalism†.Instead, Mandel stressed that the â€Å"era of late capitalism is not a new epoch of capitalist development [but] merely a further development of the imperialist, monopoly-capitalist epoch† with â€Å"the characteristics of the imperialist epoch enumerated by Lenin† at the beginning of the 20th century remaining â€Å"fully valid for late capitalism†.? I. thE thEory of VAluE And surplus VAluE In the last analysis, every step forward in the history of civili sation has been brought about by an increase in the productivity of labour.As long as a given group of men barely produced enough to keep itself alive, as long as there was no surplus over and above this necessary product, it was impossible for a division of labour to take place and for artisans, artists or scholars to make their appearance. Under these conditions, the technical prerequisites for such specialisation could not possibly be attained. socIAl surplus product As long as the productivity of labour remains at a level where one man can only produce enough for his own subsistence, social division does not take place and any social differentiation within society is impossible.Under these conditions, all men are producers and they are all on the same economic level. Every increase in the productivity of labour beyond this low point makes a small surplus possible, and once there is a surplus of products, once man’s two hands can produce more than is needed for his own sub sistence, then the conditions have been set for a struggle over how this surplus will be shared. From this point on, the total output of a social group no longer consists solely of labour necessary for the subsistence of the producers.Some of this labour output may now be used to release a section of society from having to work for its own subsistence. Whenever this situation arises, a section of society can become a ruling class, whose outstanding characteristic is its emancipation from the need of First presented at an educational weekend organised by the Paris Federation of the United Socialist Party in 1963 and subsequently published in Les Cahiers du Centre d’Etudes Socialistes, February 1964. 6 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory working for its own subsistence.Thereafter, the labour of the producers can be divided into two parts. A part of this labour continues to be used for the subsistence of the producers themselves and we call this part necessary labour; the other part is used to maintain the ruling class and we give it the name surplus labour. Let us illustrate this by the very clear example of plantation slavery, as it existed in certain regions and periods of the Roman Empire, or as we find it in the West Indies and the islands of Portuguese Africa starting with the 17th century, on the great plantations which were established there.In these tropical areas, even the slave’s food was generally not provided by the master; the slave had to produce this himself by working a tiny plot of ground on Sundays and the products from this labour constituted his store of food. On six days of the week the slave worked on the plantation and received in return none of the products of his labour. This is the labour which creates a social surplus product, surrendered by the slave as soon as it is produced and belonging solely to the slavemaster.The work week, which in this case is seven days, can be divided into two parts: the work of one day, Sunday, constitutes necessary labour, that labour which provides the products for the subsistence of the slave and his family; the work of the other six days is surplus labour and all of its products go to the master, are used for his sustenance and his enrichment as well. The great domains of the early Middle Ages furnish us with another illustration. The land of these domains was divided into three parts: the communal lands consisting of forest, meadows, swamps, etc. the land worked by the serf for his own and his family’s subsistence; and finally, the land worked by the serf in order to maintain the feudal lord. The work week during this period was usually six days, not seven. It was divided into two equal parts: the serf worked three days on the land from which the yield belonged to him; the other three days he worked on the feudal lord’s land, without remuneration, supplying free labour to the ruling class. The products of each of these two very different types o f labour can be defined in different terms.When the producer is performing necessary labour, he is producing a necessary product. When he is performing surplus labour, he is producing a social surplus product. Thus, social surplus product is that part of social production which is produced by the labouring class but appropriated by the ruling class, regardless of the form the social surplus product may assume, whether this be one of natural products, or commodities to be sold, or money. Surplus value is simply the monetary form of the social surplus product. The Theory of Value and Surplus Value When the ruling class appropriates the part of society’s production previously defined as â€Å"surplus product† exclusively in the monetary form, then we use the term â€Å"surplus value† instead of â€Å"surplus product†. As we shall see later on, however, the above only constitutes a preliminary approach to the definition of surplus value. How does social surpl us product come into existence? It arises as a consequence of a gratuitous appropriation, that is, an appropriation without compensation, by a ruling class of a part of the production of a producing class.When the slave worked six days a week on a plantation and the total product of his labour was taken by the master without any compensation to the slave, the origin of the social surplus product here is in the gratuitous labour, the uncompensated labour, supplied by the slave to the master. When the serf worked three days a week on the lord’s land, the origin of this income, of this social surplus product, is also to be found in the uncompensated labour, the gratuitous labour, furnished by the serf.We will see further on that the origin of capitalist surplus value, that is to say, the revenue of the bourgeois class in capitalist society, is exactly the same: it is uncompensated labour, gratuitous labour, which the proletarian, the wage worker, gives the capitalist without rec eiving any value in exchange. coMModItIEs, usE VAluE And ExchAngE VAluE We have now developed several basic definitions which will be used throughout this exposition. A number of others must be added at this point. Every product of human labour normally possesses utility; it must be able to satisfy a human need.We may therefore say that every product of human labour has a use value. The term â€Å"use value† will, however, be used in two different senses. We will speak of the use value of a commodity; we will also talk about use values, as when we refer, for example, to a society in which only use values are produced, that is to say, where products are created for direct consumption either by the producers themselves or by ruling classes which appropriate them. Together with this use value, a product of human labour can also have another value, an exchange value.It may be produced for exchange on the market place, for the purpose of being sold, rather than for direct consumpt ion by the producers or by wealthy classes. A mass of products which has been created for the purpose of being sold can no longer be considered as the production of simple use values; it is now a production of commodities. The commodity, therefore, is a product created to be exchanged on the market, as opposed to one which has been made for direct consumption. Every 8 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory commodity must have both a use value and an exchange value.It must have a use value or else nobody would buy it, since a purchaser would be concerned with its ultimate consumption, with satisfying some want of his by this purchase. A commodity without a use value to anyone would consequently be unsaleable, would constitute useless production, would have no exchange value precisely because it had no use value. On the other hand, every product which has use value does not necessarily have exchange value. It has an exchange value only to the extent that the society itself, in whi ch the commodity is produced, is founded on exchange, is a society where exchange is common practice.Are there societies where products do not have exchange value? The basis for exchange value, and a fortiori for trade and the market place, is constituted by a given degree of development of the division of labour. In order for products not to be directly consumed by their producers, it is essential that everybody should not be engaged in turning out the same thing. If a particular community has no division of labour, or only its most rudimentary form, then it is clear that no reason for exchange exists. Normally, a wheat farmer has nothing to exchange with another wheat farmer.But as soon as a division of labour exists, as soon as there is contact between social groups producing different use values, then exchange can come about, at first on an occasional basis, subsequently on a more permanent one. In this way, little by little, products which are made to be exchanged, commodities, make their appearance alongside those products which are simply made for the direct consumption of their producers. In capitalist society, commodity production, the production of exchange values, has reached its greatest development.It is the first society in human history where the major part of production consists of commodities. It is not true, however, that all production under capitalism is commodity production. Two classes of products still remain simple use value. The first group consists of all things produced by the peasantry for its own consumption, everything directly consumed on the farms where it is produced. Such production for self-consumption by the farmer exists even in advanced capitalist countries like the United States, although it constitutes only a small part of total agricultural production.In general, the more backward the agriculture of a country, the greater is the fraction of agricultural production going for self-consumption. This factor makes it extreme ly difficult to calculate the exact national income of such countries. The second group of products in capitalist society which are not commodities but remain simple use value consists of all things produced in the home. Despite the fact that considerable human labour goes into this type of household The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 9 production, it still remains a production of use values and not of commodities.Every time a soup is made or a button sewn on a garment, it constitutes production, but it is not production for the market. The appearance of commodity production and its subsequent regularisation and generalisation have radically transformed the way men labour and how they organise society. thE MArxIst thEory of AlIEnAtIon You have no doubt already heard about the Marxist theory of alienation. The emergence, regularisation and generalisation of commodity production are directly related to the expanding character of this phenomenon of alienation.We cannot dwell on this aspect of the question here but it is extremely important to call attention to it, since the history of trade covers far more than the capitalist era. It also includes small-scale commodity production, which we will discuss later. There is also a postcapitalist society based on commodities, a transitional society between capitalism and socialism, such as present-day Soviet society, for the latter still rests in very large measure on the foundations of exchange value production.Once we have grasped certain fundamental characteristics of a society based on commodities, we can readily see why it is impossible to surmount certain phenomena of alienation in the transitional period between capitalism and socialism, as in Soviet society, for example. Obviously this phenomenon of alienation does not exist — at least in the same form — in a society where commodity production is unknown and where the life of the individual and his social activity are united in the most elementa ry way. Man works, but generally not by himself; most often he is part of a collective group having a more or less organic structure.His labour is a direct transformation of material things. All of this means that labour activity, the act of production, the act of consumption, and the relations between the individual and his society are ruled by a condition of equilibrium which has relative stability and permanence. We should not, of course, embellish the picture of primitive society, which was subject to pressures and periodic catastrophes because of its extreme poverty. Its equilibrium was constantly endangered by scarcity, hunger, natural disasters, etc.But in the periods between catastrophes, especially after agriculture had attained a certain degree of development and when climatic conditions were favourable, this kind of society endowed all human activities with a large degree of unity, harmony and stability. Such disastrous consequences of the division of labour as the elimin ation of all aesthetic activity, artistic inspiration and creative activity from the act 10 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory of production and the substitution of purely mechanical and repetitive tasks were nonexistent in primitive society.On the contrary, most of the arts, music, sculpture, painting, the dance, were originally linked to production, to labour. The desire to give an attractive and appealing form to products which were to be used either by the individual, his family, or larger kinship groups, found a normal, harmonious and organic expression within the framework of the day’s work. Labour was not looked upon as an obligation imposed from without, first of all because it was far less intense, far less exhausting than under capitalism today. It conformed more closely to the rhythms of the human organism as well as to the rhythms of nature.The number of working days per year rarely exceeded 150 to 200, whereas under capitalism the figure is dangerously cl ose to 300 and sometimes even greater. Furthermore, there was a unity between the producer, his product and its consumption, since he generally produced for his own use or for those close to him, so that his work possessed a directly functional aspect. Modern alienation originates basically in the cleavage between the producer and his product, resulting both from the division of labour and commodity production.In other words, it is the consequence of working for the market, for unknown consumers, instead of for consumption by the producer himself. The other side of the picture is that a society which only produces use values, that is, goods which will be consumed directly by their producers, has always in the past been an impoverished society. Not only was it subject to the hazards of nature but it also had to set very narrow limits to man’s wants, since these had to conform exactly to its degree of poverty and limited variety of products.Not all human wants are innate to man . There is a constant interaction between production and wants, between the development of the productive forces and the rise of new wants. Only in a society where labour productivity will be developed to its highest point, where an infinite variety of products will be available, will it be possible for man to experience a continuous expansion of his wants, a development of his own unlimited potential, an integrated development of his humanity. thE lAw of VAluEOne of the consequences of the appearance and progressive generalisation of commodity production is that labour itself begins to take on regular and measurable characteristics; in other words, it ceases to be an activity tied to the rhythms of nature and according with man’s own physiological rhythms. Up to the 19th century and possibly even into the 20th, the peasants in various regions of Western Europe did not work in a regulated way, that is to The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 11 say, they did not work with the same intensity every month of the year.There were periods in the work year when they worked very hard and other periods, particularly during the winter, when all activity virtually came to a halt. It was in the most backward agricultural areas of most of the capitalist countries that capitalist society, in the course of its development, found a most attractive source of reserve manpower, for here was a labour force available for four to six months a year at much lower wages, in view of the fact that a part of its subsistence was provided by its agricultural activity.When we look at the more highly developed and prosperous farms, those bordering the big cities, for example, and which are basically on the road to becoming industrialised, we see that work is much more regular and the amount of expended labour much greater, being distributed in a regular way throughout the year, with dead seasons progressively eliminated. This holds true not only for our times but even as early as the Middle Ages, at least from the 12th century on.The closer we get to the cities, that is to say, to the marketplace, the more the peasant’s labour becomes labour for the market, that is to say, commodity production, and the more regulated and more or less stable his labour becomes, just as if he were working inside an industrial enterprise. Expressed another way, the more generalised commodity production becomes, the greater the regulation of labour and the more society becomes organised on the basis of an accounting system founded on labour.When we examine the already fairly advanced division of labour within a commune at the beginning of commercial and craft development in the Middle Ages, or the collectives in such civilisations as the Byzantine, Arab, Hindu, Chinese and Japanese, certain common factors emerge. We are struck by the fact that a very advanced integration of agriculture and various craft techniques exists and that regularity of labour is true for the countrysi de as well as the city, so that an accounting system in terms of labour, in labour-hours, has become the force governing all the activity and even the very structure of the collectives.In the chapter on the law of value in my Marxist Economic Theory, I give a whole series of examples of this accounting system in work-hours. There are Indian villages where a certain caste holds a monopoly of the blacksmith craft but continues to work the land at the same time in order to feed itself. The rule which has been established is this: when a blacksmith is engaged to make a tool or weapon for a farm, the client supplies the raw materials and also works the blacksmith’s land during the whole period that the latter is engaged in making the implement.Here is a very transparent way of stating that exchange is governed by an equivalence in work-hours. In the Japanese villages of the Middle Ages, an accounting system in work- 12 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory hours, in the liter al sense of the term, existed inside the village community. The village accountant kept a kind of great book in which he entered the number of hours of work done by villagers on each others’ fields, since agriculture was still mainly based on cooperative labour, with harvesting, farm construction and stock breeding being done in common.The number of work-hours furnished by the members of one household to the members of another was very carefully tallied. At the end of the year, the exchanges had to balance, that is, the members of household B were required to have given household A exactly the same number of work-hours which members of household A had given household B during the year. The Japanese even refined things to the point — almost 1000 years ago! where they took into account that children provided a smaller quantity of labour than adults, so that an hour of child labour was â€Å"worth† only a half-hour of adult labour. A whole system of accounting was set up along these lines. There is another example which gives us a direct insight into this accounting system based on labour-time: the conversion of feudal rent from one form to another. In feudal society, the agricultural surplus product could take three different forms: rent in the form of labour (the corvee), rent in kind, and money rent.When a change is made from the corvee to rent in kind, obviously a process of conversion takes place. Instead of giving the lord three days of labour per week, the peasant now gives him a certain quantity of wheat, livestock, etc. , on a seasonal basis. A second conversion takes place in the changeover from rent in kind to money rent. These two conversions must be based on a fairly rigorous accounting in work-hours if one of the two parties does not care to suffer a loss in the process.For example, if at the time the first conversion was effected, the peasant gave the lord a quantity of wheat which required only 75 workdays of labour, whereas p reviously he had given the lord 150 workdays of labour in the same year, then this conversion of labour-rent into rent in kind would result in the sudden impoverishment of the lord and a rapid enrichment of the serfs. The landlords — you can depend on them! — were careful to see to it when the conversion was made that the different forms of rent were closely equivalent. Of course the conversion could eventually turn out to be bad one for one of the participating classes, for example, against the landlords, if a sharp rise in agricultural prices occurred after rent was converted from rent in kind to money rent, but such a result would be historical in character and not directly attributable to the conversion per se. The origin of this economy based on an accounting in labour-time is also clearly apparent in the division of labour within the village as it existed The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 13 between agriculture and the crafts. For a long time the division rem ained quite rudimentary.A section of the peasantry continued to produce part of its own clothing for a protracted historical period, which in Western Europe extended almost a thousand years; that is, from the beginning of the medieval cities right up to the 19th century. The technique of making clothing was certainly no mystery to the cultivator of the soil. As soon as a regular system of exchange between the farmer and textile craftsman was established, standard equivalents were likewise established — for example, an ell of cloth [a measure varying from 27 to 48 inches] would be exchanged for 10 pounds of butter, not for 100 pounds.Obviously the peasants knew, on the basis of their own experience, the approximate labour-time needed to produce a given quantity of cloth. Had there not been a more or less exact equivalence between the time needed to produce the cloth and the time needed to produce the butter for which it was exchanged, there would have been an immediate shift i n the division of labour.If cloth production were more lucrative than butter production, the butter producers would switch to producing cloth. Since society here was only at the threshold of an extreme division of labour, that is to say, it was still at a point where the boundaries between different techniques were not clearly marked, the passage from one economic activity to another was still possible, particularly when striking material gains were possible by means of such a change.In the cities of the Middle Ages as well, a very skilfully calculated equilibrium existed between the various crafts and was written into the charters which specified almost to the minute the amount of labour-time necessary for the production of different articles. It is inconceivable that under such conditions a shoemaker or blacksmith might get the same amount of money for a product which took half the labour-time which a weaver or other artisan might require in order to get the same amount of money f or his products.Here again we clearly see the mechanism of an accounting system in workhours, a society functioning on the basis of an economy of labour-time, which is generally characteristic of the whole phase which we call small-scale commodity production. This is the phase intervening between a purely natural economy, in which only use values are produced, and capitalist society, in which commodity production expands without limit. dEtErMInAtIon of thE ExchAngE VAluE of coMModItIEsOnce we have determined that the production and exchange of commodities becomes regular and generalised in a society based on an economy of labourtime, on an accounting system in work-hours, we can readily understand why 14 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory the exchange of commodities, in its origins and inherent nature, rests on this fundamental basis of an accounting system in work-hours and consequently follows this general rule: the exchange value of a commodity is determined by the quanti ty of labour necessary to produce it.The quantity of labour is measured by the length of time it takes to produce the commodity. This general definition of the labour theory of value is the basis of both classical bourgeois political economy from the 17th century to the beginning of the 19th century, from William Petty to Ricardo; and Marxist economic theory, which took over the theory of labour value and perfected it. However, the general definition must be qualified in several respects.In the first place, not all men are endowed with the same capacity for work, with the same strength or the same degree of skill at their trade. If the exchange value of commodities depended only on the quantity of labour expended individually, that is, on the quantity of labour expended by each individual in the production of a commodity, we would arrive at this absurdity: the lazier or more incompetent the producer, and the larger the number of hours he would spend in making a pair of shoes, the gr eater would be the value of the shoes!This is obviously impossible since exchange value is not a moral reward for mere willingness to work but an objective bond set up between independent producers in order to equalise the various crafts in a society based both on a division of labour and an economy of labour-time. In such a society wasted labour receives no compensation; on the contrary, it is automatically penalised. Whoever puts more time into producing a pair of shoes than the average necessary hours — an average determined by the average productivity of labour and recorded in the Guild Charters, for example! such a person has wasted human labour, worked to no avail for a certain number of hours. He will receive nothing in exchange for these wasted hours. Expressed another way, the exchange value of a commodity is not determined by the quantity of labour expended by each individual producer engaged in the production of this commodity but by the quantity of labour socially necessary to produce it. The expression â€Å"socially necessary† means: the quantity of labour necessary under the average conditions of labour productivity existing in a given country at a given time.The above qualification has very important applications when we examine the functioning of capitalist society more closely. Another clarifying statement must be added here. Just what do we mean by a â€Å"quantity of labour†? Workers differ in their qualifications. Is there complete equality between one person’s hour of work and everybody else’s, regardless of such differences in skills? Once again the question is not a moral one but has The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 15 o do with the internal logic of a society based on an equality between skills, an equality in the marketplace, and where any disruption of this equality would immediately destroy the social equilibrium. What would happen, for example, if an hour’s work by an unskilled laboure r was worth as much as an hour’s work by a skilled craftsman, who had spent four to six years as an apprentice in acquiring his skill? Obviously, no one would want to become skilled. The hours of work spent in learning a craft would be wasted hours since the craftsman would not be compensated for them after becoming qualified.In an economy founded on an accounting system of work-hours, the young will desire to become skilled only if the time lost during their training period is subsequently paid for. Our definition of the exchange value of a commodity must therefore be completed as follows: â€Å"An hour of labour by a skilled worker must be considered as complex labour, as compound labour, as a multiple of an hour of unskilled labour; the coefficient of multiplication obviously cannot be an arbitrary one but must be based on the cost of acquiring a given skill. It should be pointed out, in passing, that there was always a certain fuzziness in the prevailing explanation of c ompound labour in the Soviet Union under Stalin which has persisted to this very day. It is claimed that compensation for work should be based on the quantity and quality of the work, but the concept of quality is no longer understood in the Marxist sense of the term, that is to say, as a quality measurable quantitatively by means of a specific coefficient of multiplication. On the contrary, the idea of quality is used in the ourgeois ideological sense, according to which the quality of labour is supposed to be determined by its social usefulness, and this is used to justify the incomes of marshals, ballerinas and industrial managers, which are ten times higher than the incomes of unskilled labourers. Such a theory belongs in the domain of apologetics despite its widespread use to justify the enormous differences in income which existed under Stalin and continue to exist in the Soviet Union today, although to a lesser extent.The exchange value of a commodity, then, is determined by the quantity of labour socially necessary for its production, with skilled labour being taken as a multiple of simple labour and the coefficient of multiplication being a reasonably measurable quantity. This is the kernel of the Marxist theory of value and the basis for all Marxist economic theory in general.Similarly, the theory of social surplus product and surplus labour, which we discussed at the beginning of this work, constitutes the basis for all Marxist sociology and is the bridge connecting Marx’s sociological and historical analysis, his theory of classes and the development of society 16 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory generally, to Marxist economic theory, and more precisely, to the Marxist analysis of all commodity-producing societies of a precapitalist, capitalist and postcapitalist character. hAt Is socIAlly nEcEssAry lAbour? A short while back I stated that the particular definition of the quantity of socially necessary labour for producing a commod ity had a very special and extremely important application in the analysis of capitalist society. I think it will be more useful to deal with this point now although logically it might belong to a later section of this presentation. The totality of all commodities produced in a country at a given time has been produced to satisfy the wants of the sum total of the members of this society.Any article which did not satisfy somebody’s needs, which had no use value for anyone, would be a priori unsaleable, would have no exchange value, would not constitute a commodity but simply a product of caprice or the idle jest of some producer. From another angle, the sum total of buying power which exists in this given society at a given moment and which is not to be hoarded but spent in the market, must be used to buy the sum total of commodities produced, if there is to be economic equilibrium.This equilibrium therefore implies that the sum total of social production, of the available pro ductive forces in this society, of its available work-hours, has been distributed among the various sectors of industry in the same proportions as consumers distribute their buying power in satisfying their various wants. When the distribution of productive forces no longer corresponds to this division in wants, the economic equilibrium is destroyed and both overproduction and underproduction appear side by side.Let us give a rather commonplace example: toward the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, a city like Paris had a coach-building industry, which together with associated harness trades employed thousands or even tens of thousands of workers. In the same period the automobile industry was emerging and although still quite small it already numbered some scores of manufacturers employing several thousands of workers. Now what is the process taking place during this period? On the one hand, the number of carriages begins to decline and on the other, the number of a utomobiles begins to increase.The production of carriages and carriage equipment therefore shows a trend toward exceeding social needs, as these are reflected in the manner in which the inhabitants of Paris are dividing their buying power; on the other side of the picture, the production of automobiles is below social needs, for from the time the industry was launched until the advent The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 17 of mass production, a climate of scarcity existed in this industry. The supply of automobiles on the market was never equal to the demand. How do we express these phenomena in terms of the labour theory of value?We can say that in the carriage industry more labour is expended than is socially necessary, that a part of the labour expended by the sum total of companies in the carriage industry is socially wasted labour, which no longer finds an equivalent on the marketplace and is consequently producing unsaleable goods. In capitalist society, when goods are unsal eable it means that an investment of human labour has been made in a specific industrial branch which turns out to be socially unnecessary labour, that is to say, it is labour which finds no equivalent in buying power in the marketplace.Labour which is not socially necessary is wasted labour; it is labour which produces no value. We can see from this that the concept of socially necessary labour embraces a whole series of phenomena. For the products of the carriage industry, supply exceeds demand, prices fall and goods remain unsaleable. The reverse is true in the automobile industry where demand exceeds supply, causing prices to rise and under-production to exist. To be satisfied with these commonplaces about supply and demand, however, means stopping at the psychological and individual aspects of the problem.On the other hand, if we probe into the deeper social and collective side of the problem, we begin to understand what lies below the surface in a society organised on the basi s of an economy of labour-time. The meaning of supply exceeding demand is that capitalist production, which is anarchistic, unplanned and unorganised, has anarchistically invested or expended more labour hours in an industrial branch than are socially necessary, so that a whole segment of labour-hours turns out to be pure loss, so much wasted human labour which remains unrequited by society.Conversely, an industrial sector where demand continues to be greater than supply can be considered as an underdeveloped sector in terms of social needs; it is therefore a sector expending fewer hours of labour than are socially necessary and it receives a bonus from society in order to stimulate an increase in production and achieve an equilibrium with social needs. This is one aspect of the problem of socially necessary labour in the capitalist system. The other aspect of the problem is more directly related to changes in the productivity of labour.It is the same thing but makes an abstraction of social needs, of the â€Å"use value† aspect of production. In capitalist society the productivity of labour is constantly changing. Generally speaking, there are always three types of enterprises (or industrial sectors): those which are technologically right at the social average; those which 18 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory are backward, obsolete, on the downgrade, below the social average; and those which are technologically advanced and above average in productivity.What do we mean when we say a sector or an enterprise is technologically backward and has a productivity of labour which is below the average? Such a branch or enterprise is analogous to our previously mentioned lazy shoemaker, that is, it is one which takes five hours to produce a specific quantity of goods in a period when the average social productivity demands that it be done in three hours. The two extra hours of expended labour are a total loss, a waste of social labour.A portion of the t otal amount of labour available to society having thus been wasted by an enterprise, it will receive nothing from society to compensate it. Concretely it means that the selling prices in this industry or enterprise, which is operating below average productivity, approach its production costs or even fall below them, that is to say, the enterprise is operating at a very low rate of profit or even at a loss. On the other hand, an enterprise or industrial sector with an above average level of productivity (like the shoemaker who can produce two pairs of shoes n three hours when the social average is one pair per three hours) economises in its expenditure of social labour and therefore makes a surplus profit, that is to say, the difference between its costs and selling prices will be greater than the average profit. The pursuit of this surplus profit is, of course, the driving force behind the entire capitalist economy. Every capitalist enterprise is forced by competition to try to get greater profits, for this is the only way it can constantly improve its technology and labour productivity.Consequently all firms are forced to take this same direction, and this of course implies that what at one time was an aboveaverage productivity winds up as the new average productivity, whereupon the surplus profit disappears. All the strategy of capitalist industry stems from this desire on the part of every enterprise to achieve a rate of productivity superior to the national average and thereby make a surplus profit, and this in turn provokes a movement which causes the surplus profit to disappear, by virtue of the trend for the average rate of labour productivity to rise continuously.This is the mechanism in the tendency for profit rates to become equalised. thE orIgIn And nAturE of surplus VAluE And now, what is surplus value? When we consider it from the viewpoint of the Marxist theory of value, the answer is readily found. Surplus value is simply the monetary form of th e social surplus product, that is to say, it is the monetary form of that part of the worker’s production which he surrenders to the owner of the means of production without receiving anything in return. The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 19 How is this surrender accomplished in practice within capitalist society?It takes place through the process of exchange, like all important operations in capitalist society, which are always relations of exchange. The capitalist buys the labour-power of the worker, and in exchange for this wage, he appropriates the entire production of that worker, all the newly produced value which has been incorporated into the value of this production. We can therefore say from here on that surplus value is the difference between the value produced by the worker and the value of his own labourpower. What is the value of labour-power?In capitalist society, labour-power is a commodity, and like the value of any other commodity, its value is the quanti ty of labour socially necessary to produce and reproduce it, that is to say, the living costs of the worker in the wide meaning of the term. The concept of a minimum living wage or of an average wage is not a physiologically rigid one but incorporates wants which change with advances in the productivity of labour. These wants tend to increase parallel with the progress in technique and they are consequently not comparable with any degree of accuracy for different periods.The minimum living wage of 1830 cannot be compared quantitatively with that of 1960, as the theoreticians of the French Communist party have learned to their sorrow. There is no valid way of comparing the price of a motorcycle in 1960 with the price of a certain number of kilograms of meat in 1830 in order to come up with a conclusion that the first â€Å"is worth† less than the second. Having made this reservation, we can now repeat that the living cost of labour-power constitutes its value and that surplus value is the difference between this living cost and the value created by this labour-power.The value produced by labour-power can be measured in a simple way by the length of time it is used. If a worker works 10 hours, he produces a value of 10 hours of work. If the worker’s living costs, that is to say, the equivalent of his wage, is also 10 hours of work, then no surplus value would result. This is only a special case of the more general rule: when the sum total of labour product is equal to the product required to feed and maintain the producer, there is no social surplus product.But in the capitalist system, the degree of labour productivity is such that the living costs of the worker are always less than the quantity of newly created value. This means that a worker who labours for 10 hours does not need the equivalent of 10 hours of labour in order to support himself in accordance with the average needs of the times. His equivalent wage is always only a fraction of his day’s labour; everything beyond this fraction is surplus value, free labour supplied by the worker and appropriated by the capitalist without an equivalent offset.If this difference did not exist, of course, then no employer would hire 20 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory any worker, since such a purchase of labour-power would bring no profit to the buyer. thE VAlIdIty of thE lAbour thEory of VAluE To conclude, we present three traditional proofs of the labour theory of value. The first of these is the analytical proof, which proceeds by breaking down the price of a commodity into its constituent elements and demonstrating that if the process is extended far enough, only labour will be found.The price of every commodity can be reduced to a certain number of components: the amortisation of machinery and buildings, which we call the renewal of fixed capital; the price of raw materials and accessory products; wages; and finally, everything which is surplus value, such as profit, rent, taxes, etc. So far as the last two components are concerned, wages and surplus value, it has already been shown that they are labour pure and simple. With regard to raw materials, most of their price is largely reducible to labour; for example, more than 60% of the mining cost of coal consists of wages.If we start by breaking down the average manufacturing cost of commodities into 40% for wages, 20% surplus value, 30% for raw materials and 10% in fixed capital; and if we assume that 60% of the cost of raw materials can be reduced to labour, then we already have 78% of the total cost reduced to labour. The rest of the cost of raw materials breaks down into the cost of other raw materials — reducible in turn to 60% labour — plus the cost of amortising machinery. The price of machinery consists to a large degree of labour (for example, 40%) and raw materials (for example, 40% also).The share of labour in the average cost of all commodities thus passes suc cessively to 83%, 87%, 89. 5%, etc. It is obvious that the further this breakdown is carried, the more the entire cost tends to be reduced to labour, and to labour alone. The second proof is the logical proof, and is the one presented in the beginning of Marx’s Capital. It has perplexed quite a few readers, for it is certainly not the simplest pedagogical approach to the question. Marx poses the question in the following way. The number of commodities is very great.They are interchangeable, which means that they must have a common quality, because everything which is interchangeable is comparable and everything which is comparable must have at least one quality in common. Things which have no quality in common are, by definition, not comparable with each other. Let us inspect each of these commodities. What qualities do they possess? The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 21 First of all, they have an infinite set of natural qualities: weight, length, density, colour, size, mo lecular nature; in short, all their natural physical, chemical and other qualities.Is there any one of the physical qualities which can be the basis for comparing them as commodities, for serving as the common measure of their exchange value? Could it be weight? Obviously not, since a pound of butter does not have the same value as a pound of gold. Is it volume or length? Examples will immediately show that it is none of these. In short, all those things which make up the natural quality of a commodity, everything which is a physical or chemical quality of this commodity, certainly determines its use value, its relative usefulness, but not its exchange value.Exchange value must consequently be abstracted from everything that consists of a natural physical quality in the commodity. A common quality must be found in all of these commodities which is not physical. Marx’s conclusion is that the only common quality in these commodities which is not physical is their quality of bei ng the products of human labour, of abstract human labour. Human labour can be thought of in two different ways. It can be considered as specific concrete labour, such as the labour of the baker, butcher, shoemaker, weaver, blacksmith, etc.But so long as it is thought of as specific concrete work, it is being viewed in its aspect of labour which produces only use values. Under these conditions we are concerning ourselves only with the physical qualities of commodities and these are precisely the qualities which are not comparable. The only thing which commodities have in common from the viewpoint of exchanging them is that they are all produced by abstract human labour, that is to say, by producers who are related to each other on a basis of equivalence as a result of the fact that they are all producing goods for exchange.The common quality of commodities, consequently, resides in the fact that they are the products of abstract human labour and it is this which supplies the measure of their exchange value, of their exchangeability. It is, consequently, the quality of socially necessary labour in the production of commodities which determines their exchange value. Let us immediately add that Marx’s reasoning here is both abstract and difficult and is at least subject to questioning, a point which many opponents of Marxism have seized upon and sought to use, without any marked success, however.Is the fact that all commodities are produced by abstract human labour really the only quality which they have in common, apart from their natural qualities? There are not a few writers who thought they had discovered others. In general, 22 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory however, these have always been reducible either to physical qualities or to the fact that they are products of abstract labour. A third and final proof of the correctness of the labour theory of value is the proof by reduction to the absurd. It is, moreover, the most elegant and most à ¢â‚¬Å"modern† of the proofs.Imagine for a moment a society in which living human labour has completely disappeared, that is to say, a society in which all production has been 100% automated. Of course, so long as we remain in the current intermediate stage, in which some labour is already completely automated, that is to say, a stage in which plants employing no workers exist alongside others in which human labour is still utilised, there is no special theoretical problem, since it is merely a question of the transfer of surplus value from one enterprise to another.It is an illustration of the law of equalisation of the profit rate, which will be explored later on. But let us imagine that this development has been pushed to its extreme and human labour has been completely eliminated from all forms of production and services. Can value continue to exist under these conditions? Can there be a society where nobody has an income but commodities continue to have a value and to be s old? Obviously such a situation would be absurd. A huge mass of products would be produced without this production creating any income, since no human being would be involved in this production.But someone would want to â€Å"sell† these products for which there were no longer any buyers! It is obvious that the distribution of products in such a society would no longer be effected in the form of a sale of commodities and as a matter of fact selling would become all the more absurd because of the abundance produced by general automation. Expressed another way, a society in which human labour would be totally eliminated from production, in the most general sense of the term, with services included, would be a society in which exchange value had also been eliminated.This proves the validity of the theory, for at the moment human labour disappears from production, value, too, disappears with it. II. cApItAl And cApItAlIsM cApItAl In prEcApItAlIst socIEty Between primitive society founded on a natural economy in which production is limited to use values destined for self-consumption by their producers, and capitalist society, there stretches a long period in human history, embracing essentially all human civilisations, which came to a halt before reaching the frontiers of capitalism.Marxism defines them as societies in which small-scale commodity production prevailed. A society of this kind is already familiar with the production of commodities, of goods designed for exchange on the market and not for direct consumption by the producers, but such commodity production has not yet become generalised, as is the case in capitalist society. In a society founded on small-scale commodity production, two kinds of economic operations are carried out.The peasants and artisans who bring their products to market wish to sell goods whose use value they themselves cannot use in order to obtain money, means of exchange, for the acquisition of other goods, whose use value i s either necessary to them or deemed more important than the use value of the goods they own. The peasant brings wheat to the marketplace which he sells for money; with this money he buys, let us say, cloth. The artisan brings his cloth to the market, which he sells for money; with this money he buys, let us say, wheat.What we have here, then, is the operation: selling in order to buy . C ommodity—Money—Commodity, C —M—C w hich has this essential character: the value of the two extremes in this formula is, by definition, exactly the same. But within small-scale commodity production there appears, alongside the artisan and small peasant, another personage, who executes a different kind of economic operation. Instead of selling in order to buy, he buys in order to sell. This type of person goes to market without any commodities; he is an owner of money.Money cannot be sold; but it can be used to buy, and that is what he does: buys in order to sell, in order to resell: M—C—M’. There is a fundamental difference between the two types of operation. The 24 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory second operation makes no sense if upon its completion we are confronted by exactly the same value as we had at the beginning. No one buys a commodity in order to sell it for exactly the same price he paid for it. The operation â€Å"buy in order to sell† makes sense only if the sale brings a supplementary value, a surplus value.That is why we state here, by way of definition. M’ is greater than M and is made up of M+m; m being the surplus value, the amount of increase in the value of M. We now define capital as a value which is increased by a surplus value, whether this occurs in the course of commodity circulation, as in the example just given, or in production, as is the case in the capitalist system. Capital, therefore, is every value which is augmented by a surplus value; it therefore exists not only in ca pitalist society but in any society founded on small-scale commodity production as well.For this reason it is necessary to distinguish very clearly between the life of capital and that of the capitalist mode of production, of capitalist society. Capital is far older than the capitalist mode of production. The former probably goes back some 3000 years, whereas the latter is barely 200 years old. What form does capital take in precapitalist society? It is basically usury capital and merchant or commercial capital. The passage from precapitalist society into capitalist society is characterised by the penetration of capital into the sphere of production.The capitalist mode of production is the first mode of production, the first form of social organisation, in which capital is not limited to the sole role of an intermediary and exploiter of non-capitalist forms of production, of small-scale commodity production. In the capitalist mode of production, capital takes over the means of produ ction and penetrates directly into production itself. orIgIns of thE cApItAlIst ModE of productIon What are the origins of the capitalist mode of production?What are the origins of capitalist society as it has developed over the past 200 years? They lie first of all in the separation of the producers from their means of production. Subsequently, it is the establishment of these means of production as a monopoly in the hands of a single social class, the bourgeoisie. And finally, it is the appearance of another social class which has been separated from its means of production and therefore has no other resources for its subsistence than the sale of its labour-power to the class which has monopolised the means of production.Let us consider each of these origins of the capitalist mode of production, which are at the same time the fundamental characteristics of the capitalist Capital and Capitalism 25 system as well. First characteristic: separation of the producer from his means of pr oduction. This is the fundamental condition for existence of the capitalist system but it is also the one which is generally the most poorly understood. Let us use an example which may seem paradoxical since it is taken from the early Middle Ages, which was characterised by serfdom.We know that the mass of peasant-producers were serfs bound to the soil. But when we say that the serf was bound to the soil, we imply that the soil was also â€Å"bound† to the serf, that is, he belonged to a social class which always had a base for supplying its needs, enough land to work so that the individual serf could meet the needs of a household even though he worked with the most primitive implements. We are not viewing people condemned to death by starvation if they do not sell their labour-power.In such a society, there is no economic compulsion to hire out one’s arms, to sell one’s labour-power to a capitalist. We can express this another way by stating that the capitalist system cannot develop in a society of this kind. This general truth also has a modern application in the way colonialists introduced capitalism into the African countries during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Let us look at the livin

Confidence Intervals Statistics Project Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Confidence Intervals - Statistics Project Example In addition, this paper will also compare male and female BMI values with the national averages and with the International Classification of adult underweight, overweight and obesity according to BMI. The average mean body index for men is about 27.62 (SD = 10.88). The margin of error (half width) for a 99% confidence is about 4.66 (See Appendix B for calculation). The 99% lower and upper confidence limits of BMI for men are Therefore, the 99% confidence interval for the mean body mass index for men is between 22.96 and 32.28. Thus, there is 99% chance that the mean body mass index for men falls in the interval (22.96, 32.28). The average mean body index for women is about (26.70 SD = 6.93). The margin of error for a 99% confidence is about 2.97 (See Appendix B for calculation). The 99% lower and upper confidence limits of BMI for women are Therefore, the 99% confidence interval for the mean body mass index for women is between 23.73 and 29.67. Thus, there is 99% chance that the mean body mass index for women falls in the interval (23.73, 29.67). It is known that men have a mean weight that is greater than the mean weight for women, and the mean height of men is greater than the mean height of women. The results suggest that men (M = 27.62, SD = 10.88) also have a mean body mass index that is greater than the mean body mass index of women (M = 26.70, SD = 6.93). However, the 99% confidence interval for the mean body mass index for women (23.73, 29.67) is narrower as compared to the 99% confidence interval for the mean body mass index for men (22.96, 32.28). Thus, the mean body mass index for women is less variable as compared to the mean body mass index for men. The U.S.  National Institutes of Health  and the  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  uses World Health Organization  guidelines for classification of adult underweight, overweight and obesity according to BMI.

Do EU trade policies help or hurt developing countries Essay

Do EU trade policies help or hurt developing countries - Essay Example By 2002, EC was already in more than 50 out of about 172 such arrangements around the globe thus maintain economic and trade relations with a myriad of economies in the developed, developing and even less developed economies. The EU has been keen as a positive force to generate economic prosperity for its member states. To the developing economies, EC has maintained preferential trade arrangements under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) while to most less developed countries, trade arrangements have largely been guided by the Cotonou Agreement, which succeeded the Lome’ Convention (Bhagwati, Greenaway, & Panagariya, 1998, p.1128-1148). EU’s trade arrangement within the Euro zone encompasses a common currency, common external tariff, common agricultural and competition policies as well as common rules on freedom of goods and services, capital and people. EU has entered into other trade agreements with countries and regions in other continents of the world. Among these is the European Economic Area (EEA) that extends the EU market to three countries, which are members of the EFTA . Another arrangement is the Customs Unions with countries such as Malta, Cyprus and Turkey. EU has also got several Free Trade Area (FTA) arrangements with a number of countries and regions around the world, but these are at different implementation levels. These include countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, and Morocco under the Euro-Mediterranean Association, while Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Mexico and Chile are under the FTA arrangement among others. There is also the Mediterranean partnership where EU relates with several associates in the southern and Eastern Mediterranean. This particular trade arrangement aims to achieve FTA in line with provisions of the WTO through entering into various bilateral agreements starting with a series of association agreements. It also aimed at the expansion of the EU financial assistance to USD 4.7 billion over a period of 5 years from 1995 within EU-Mediterranean partnership. The ACP (Africa, Caribbean and Pacific) preference is another set of trade arrangements by the EU where it provides one way trade preferences for more than seventy countries in Africa, Caribbean and Pacific. These preferences are, however, not available to all developed countries in these regions and do not also apply to only least developed economies, for example. Thus, contravene the provision of the WTO regarding discriminatory practices, equity and fairness (Devisscher, 2011, p. 60). As per the United Nations rankings, 39 of the ACP economies are under the least developed category. Finally, GSP preferences by EU to a number of least developed countries exist as stipulated under the GSP provisions of the WTO. The EU’s GSP arrangement contains the ‘Everything but Arms’ (EBA) initiative for the least developed economies as well as general arrangements that are available to all developing countries and apply to non-sensitive products that come duty free. There are also the special arrangements under the Environmental and Social clauses, which apply to sensitive products only. Special incentives under the environmental clause apply to developing countr

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Income inequality, how the gap is getting bigger - Term Paper Example that the gap between the rich and the poor is the most important economic issue facing the world today and this poses a great danger to social stability as well as democracy. Income inequality is caused by different levels of education, the social status that an individual or group occupy as well as their race and gender. The inequality can lead to severe consequences such as increase in crime, low life expectancy and affects the social bonding. The widening income inequality impacts on social relation creating mistrust, anxiety and competition for status. In the United States, income inequality is measure by the standard method referred to as Gini coefficient. The gap has tremendously increased as seen in the recent past and is said to be highest since the 1920s, the income of the rich one percent rose with a twenty percent whereas that of the remaining ninety nine percent went up by just one percent( Ryscavage, 1999) . Research studies on national wealth showed that the top one percent of the wealth Americans controlled about forty percent of the nation’s wealth (Ryscavage, 1999). Their income increased by about two hundred and seventy five comparing that to just under forty percent increase for the sixty percent middle class earners (Ryscavage, 1999). Unlike in the past when the rich had their income from wealth accumulated from past generation today the rich Americans belong to the working class who are employees paid highly or are entrepreneurs. They have the central believe that you should work tirelessly to make your mon ey, their culture is capitalistic in nature for instance they acknowledge that you might be poor but work and get money. Americans have the widest gap between the rich and the poor than any other advanced economy in the world what is of much more concern is that it does not bother most people, the poor struggle to join the higher class rather than work towards achieving equality. The main goal is to achieve economic growth this is the

Finance analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Finance analysis - Essay Example The ratios will provide variants that will reflect any changes during the year covered. Variants are problems that need the attention of management. Ratios are also meaningful when compared with the closest competition to see relative position of the company Limitation of the study is that 2009 annual report of Easy jet is not yet available. a. Government regulations. Falle, della Gonzrague, et al (2004) said in their report that the airline industry in UK has always been filled with restrictions to protect their own airlines. For instance, the airline industry in UK is protected by regulations of the European Union and that of bilateral agreements entered into by the British government with other countries. Bilateral agreements put tariff protection on their products and are barriers for foreign entry. The globalization and liberalization have invited competition to the airline industry in UK. In UK, the airline industry players are the flag carriers, independent airiness, franchises and charters. Flag carriers are either state-owned or designated carriers and enjoy privileges from the government. Independent airlines are Ryan Air, Easy Jet, Aer Lingus and British Airways. Each of these airline companies has a market share of airline passengers in UK . Even in economic crisis, air travel remains to be an important factor in everyday life of everyone. Air travel spurs the economy by bringing in international investment trade and tourism, and is therefore very important in the globalization movement of industries The Airline Industry report stated air travel in the past decade grew by 7% per year wherein travel for business and leisure grew strongly worldwide. Airline travel is dependent on the growth of economy, as in the years of recession; the industry is not spared... Several analysts agree that the airline operations have experienced hard times during the past years of 2007 an 2008 As a result of the slow travel

Topics in Cultural Studies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Topics in Cultural Studies - Essay Example Globally, cultures have faced colonization, which facilitated the confrontation of the non-western and western cultures (Oberg, 2010). This led to the realization that non-western cultures occurred as outposts in the colonial empires developed by Europeans. This loss of centeredness of the Native American culture led to the weakening of their traditions, political and social systems, as well as practices. This means that the European culture had immense impact on the culture of Native Americans. Native Americans occupied the vast American land before their interaction with Europeans. The natives can be considered as the indigenous or original occupants of North America. They comprised of people from distinct American ethnic and tribal groups. Despite their interactions with the Europeans and the subsequent loss of centeredness, some of the tribes and ethnic groupings survived as intact political communities (Schwab, 2010). The first contact of Europeans with Native Americans came aft er the exploration of Christopher Columbus (Oberg, 2010). Thereafter, the 15th century saw an influx of Europeans into the American continent and they brought Africans as their slaves. This led to widespread confrontations, adjustments and conflicts between the two societies. The lives of Native Americans were uncomplicated because they followed traditional practices in society and political set-ups. For instance, they lived as hunters and gatherers within well-set communities. In addition, the societies told their histories on oral traditions. In most of the groupings, women performed sophisticated cultivation of staple foods such as squash, maize and beans (Schwab, 2010). The cultures of the indigenous people were extremely dissimilar from the cultures of agrarian, proto-industrial and Christian cultures. The native cultures were matrilineal meaning that they occupied land for communal use, which included activities such as agriculture and hunting (Oberg, 2010). This differed from European cultures, which followed patriarchal trends. The European society had concepts for developing individual property rights on land. This differed from the rights and approaches of Native Americans on land. These cultural differences between the immigrant Europeans and Native Americans, and the shifting alliances between the nations led to extreme political tensions, social disruption and ethnic violence (Schwab, 2010). The natives did not only suffer a loss of centeredness in social and political activities, but they also contacted the infectious Eurasian disease, which they had not developed or acquired immunity. This epidemic led to immense loss of life for the indigenous population (Oberg, 2010). The cultural conflicts between the Europeans and the natives resulted from their differences in approaches such as religion, social practices, land and political rule. The Europeans wanted to impose a religious system on the natives. This was met with resistance from the natives because they only wanted to commit to their religious system. However, the Europeans relentlessly forced Christianity on the natives. The first European missions to encounter the natives were trappers and fur traders. The missionaries and colonists then followed them. Miner migrants and settlers began arriving later, and they heightened the

Assess the potential financial benefits of an environmentally friendly Essay

Assess the potential financial benefits of an environmentally friendly hotel organisation - Essay Example Simultaneously, they allow their guests to carry on their high-quality and beneficial things for the environment. Several tourists are fascinated with the green hotel because it is taking steps to preserve the environment from destructive influences. Environmentally friendly hotels contribute a positively towards the conservation of water and energy resources, reduced the consumption of natural resources through mass facilities and newspaper program, etc. The natural environment refers to the different places of the earth where all non living and living things exist. A natural environment can consist of the jungles, deserts, swamps, forests, mountains, and sea water where different species of animals and plants exist. This term is used to deal with the relations and contacts of human beings with the natural environment. Environmental management is concerned about the affect of human societies towards the environment (Robbins 59, 2001). It seeks to ensure that negative influences are removed in order to protect the environment from harm. It seeks to promote eco friendly and sustainable policies which allow the interaction of human society with nature in harmony and agreement. Sustainable policies involve the correct use of resources and policies which would be beneficial for humanity in its interaction with the environment. This particular field of environmental management is concerned that the hospitality industry should promote policies and procedures which ensure that the environment is conserved. This includes numerous issues like water and energy conservation (Robbins 60, 2001). It can also include the use of biodegradable substances for washing and detergents. It seeks to minimize the use of harmful chemicals in paints, soaps, furniture, and carpets which can negatively affect the health of people. These types of hotels pursue eco friendly and sustainable policies which

I enjoy running Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

I enjoy running - Essay Example This is because running has had such a tremendous effect on my life in all spheres, it has, in a nutshell completed me wholly. Running has provided me with many precious opportunities, sticking to many different paths always took me to different places, that translated to many different faces. I would jog until i find a dead end, and so I would humbly scan for any person around for directions, often times a simple enquiry for directions would result in a twenty minutes talk as we’d discuss various issues as pertained the occasion, also, through running I have been able to develop my social skills with other joggers and also acquired great communication and interpersonal skills which are needful in one way or another in organizing jogging events or even sharing our personal opinions on our hobbies. Nowadays I find that am a lot talkative than I was earlier since there is always a fire within me that seeks to express myself to others with hope that I shall get to hear what drives them as well. I have also realized that it has become so easy for me to create rapport with other people as compared to my e arlier years. In consequence, running has had such a wonderful effect on me, it has enabled me to appreciate people as they are and respect them for who they are, jogging alongside people of all ages early in the morning before rushing to class has taught me how to appreciate company, do it with a team. Another effect that running has had on me is the development of perseverance and commitment, since I have always set imaginary goals on all my jogging activities, I have always tried so hard to reach my targets, though I have failed severally in the past, I have come to know that nothing is impossible for a dedicated person who is committed to achieving his/her goal. I have smashed my jogging record severally in a bid to astonish myself. I

The programme for the harmonisation of Company Law in the European Essay

The programme for the harmonisation of Company Law in the European Union - Essay Example The first Commission Proposal for a Publicity Directive can be traced back to the year 1964, and the beginning of the EC harmonisation in Company Law is marked by the issuance of this First Directive in the year 1968. The first directive aimed at harmonising publicity prerequisites applying to companies, the conditions under which company transactions will be considered valid and the rules relating of the nullity of companies. The Second Directive, issued eight years later, deals with the establishment of public limited liability companies and the maintenance and adjustment of their capital. Also, it had an approach different from the first directive— many of the provisions lay down elaborate procedures rather than simply directing the Member States to make legislations to a certain end. Thus, for this reason, it has been the object of criticism in some circles. However, undeniably, this directive is of immense importance, represents a significant step towards company law harmonization in the European Community. Soon after the Second Directive, the Third and Fourth directives were issued. The Third company law directive presented a new framework for conducting cross-border commercial activities. It had provisions for co-ordination of the procedures applying to internal mergers within Member States. The Fourth directive was concerned with disclosure of financial information and the contents of a company’s annual accounts. It acts complementarily with the First Directive and is supplemented by the Seventh Directive, which deals with group accounts.

Legal Compliance Paper Essay Example for Free

Legal Compliance Paper Essay In order for a business to succeed, management needs to identify and comply with the laws and regulations in their area. Management needs to keep in mind that laws vary from state to state. Additionally, as laws are constantly changing, management needs to regularly update their company standards in order to comply with these ever changing laws. In the case of Baderman Island, the company first began its renovations in 1988 (Virtual Organizations Portal, 2012) the lighthouse was purchased in 1932. Since 1988, the company had to modify or change their business procedures in order to comply with laws and regulations. Legal compliance challenges that Baderman Island and other companies may have faced include employment laws, tax laws and regulations, property laws, finance laws and environmental laws. If a company does not comply with the laws and regulations in place, a company risks lawsuits, fines and possible company closure. Therefore it is imperative for a company such as Baderman Island to acknowledge the possible compliance challenges and reduce the liability of those compliances challenges. Legal Compliance Challenges Baderman Island Resort, will be expanding its operations and we believe as a team that some of the legal compliance challenges the organization will encounter are linked to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Opportunity Act (Affirmative Action Act). The organization has to ensure the selection process and promotion process, the designing of the training and implementation of the training for the employees are taken into consideration to mitigate risk (Jackson Mathis, 2008, Chapter 9, Training  Human Resources). In addition to the selection, promotion and design of the training; Baderman Island Resort has to ensure that the 80% Rule is followed and that an environment of disparate impact and treatment is not created to reduce risk (Moran, 2008, Chapter 2, Selection). Baderman has also advised its employees and the public, that they will be hiring and training employees to speak Spanish and French to develop a better relationship with their international clientele (University of Phoenix, 2014). A blog is being used as customer relationship management tool to identify areas of concerns and opportunities. The HR department and executive management team need to review what a bona fide occupational qualification means, in the areas that they are planning to expand and mitigate risk. The organization operates in the hotel and resort industry environment in order to have sustained growth; legal compliance challenges have to be understood, researched and communicated. The legal compliance challenges can have a direct impact on their cash flow, for example, if Baderman Island Resort was found guilty of race discrimination of Title VII Civil Rights Act of 1964, in 2006, the organization would be liable for paying $27,000 (Moran, 2008, Chapter 2, Selection). Discrimination and other non-compliance issues always present a possibility for legal ramifications, therefore management must constantly be aware of different methods to reduce liability. Options to reduce liability With the expansion of operations that Baderman Island Resort will be making, there will be a few different challenges that will take place and options that will help to reduce the liability of the company. Thorough and accurate training is one of Baderman Island’s primary concerns. Knowledgeable and impartial trainers not only help pave the way for new employees and continuous training, but they also represent the company and its values. Proper training perpetuates good employees with a good grasps of key concepts and knowledge. Improper training could lead to mistakes, production loss, liabilities, and possibly injuries. Hiring and training multi-lingual employees that speak Spanish and French is a great idea, to help broaden the company’s customer base. Management would need to ensure that all shifts maintain an appropriate number of multi-lingual employees, dependent upon business and shift requirements. If the resort finds that additional  languages become a majority including addition multi-lingual employees would be recommended for customer satisfaction and fairness. Customer satisfaction is always the ultimate goal of Baderman Island Resort; therefore feedback plays a critical role in implementing beneficial changes. Allowing employees to provide feedback for management review helps employees feel important and valued. Customer feedback provides an opportunity for management to spot possible weaknesses and areas in need of improvement. With three different methods of feedback and review: management, employee feedback and customer feedback management increase the opportunity for positive changes and increased repeat business and increased revenue. How employment practice compliance systems could assist liability reduction By not only creating equal opportunity employment, but creating an environment in which every guest feels as they are special, Baderman Island Resort, desires to achieve harmony within the resort. We at Baderman Island Resort take great pride in our training system. This system of training allows us to ensure every employee is trained on how to treat others, better yet, how to react when situations arise. Our trainers have all been through rigorous standardized training to ensure every employee is equally proficient with our expectations. This training helps ensure compliance with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Training every employee with the same standardized system will help ensure everyone within the workforce is treated equally, regardless of race, sex, color, or national origin. This also includes the hiring process. By providing continuing training, Baderman Island Resort can help ensure hiring practices are also followed. Each of our employees that are fluent in another language receives a bonus due to the additional assistance they can provide our guests. Those who currently employed or in the process of being hired are offered free language classes, which will result in Baderman Island Resort keeping a multi-cultural workforce. These employees will also receive the bonus once they have become fluent in the chosen language. Continuing to educate our employees and hire the most qualified individuals will in a more responsible and caring workforce. A vast portion of Baderman Island’s success and lifespan is a direct result from complying with the laws and regulations in their area. The fact that Baderman Island has expanded since first opening its doors in 1988 and it has plans to continue to expand, reflects the constant attention to the  changing laws and regulations. Baderman Island will continue to be successful if management continues to analyze and reduce compliance challenges. References Jackson, J.H., Mathis, R.L. (2008). Home Resource Management (12th ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection. Moran, J.J. (2008). Employment Law. Employment Challenges in the Business Environment (4th ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection. University of Phoenix. (2014). Baderman Island Resort [Multimedia]. Retrieved from University of Phoenix, HRM420 website. Virtual Organizations Portal., Apollo Group, Inc., Baderman Island. (2012). eCampus: Login. Retrieved from https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/secure/aapd/CIST/VOP/Business/BadermanIsland/internet/index.asp

Analysis Of Blindness By Jose Saramago English Literature Essay

Analysis Of Blindness By Jose Saramago English Literature Essay Blindness, a novel by Portuguese author Josà © Saramago, depicts the dystopian outcome of a plague of white blindness, (clunky) a mysterious disease that eventually becomes known among the novels characters as the white evil. Saramago quickly introduces the malady, recounting the first infection within the first few pages of the novel. Out of fear of future contamination, the government arranges for a quarantine in an abandoned mental asylum.  Inside the asylum, the reader follows the harrowing account of a small group of internees led by the Doctors Wife, who is the only person to retain her eyesight. The white blindness spreads at a seemingly exponential rate to the point that the whole world has fallen victim to the white evil. Once the number of quarantined individuals accumulates in the asylum, social order crumbles and morality disintegrates, for even the Doctors Wife balances on the cusp of right and wrong. However, there still remains those individuals who make decisions t hat demonstrate altruistic sacrifice for the good of the rest. Josà © Saramago writes a captivating story of not only social decay, but also the emergence of a new morality only present in the most desperate circumstances. An easier way to establish context for Blindness would be to analyze Saramagos life as well as the historical events surrounding it. On November 16, 1992, Josà © Saramago was born in Azinhaga, Portugal in the Ribatejo province to a poor farming family. His father had served in the French military during World War I, and he decided to pursue a career in law enforcement in Lisbon, Portugals capital. Their way of living had greatly improved because of his new job, but they remained poor regardless of a new home. Saramagos parents sent him to grammar school, though, they could not afford the tuition long enough for him to finish his studies. As a result, Saramago attended a technical school to become a mechanic while studying literature during his free time. Before marrying his first wife Ilda Reis in 1944, he began working as an administrative civil servant for the Social Welfare Service. Three years later he published his first book, The Land of Sin, though his initial literary endeav ors were not very successful. He wrote more novels, but he failed to publish his projects. Saramago describes his early attempts at writing in his autobiography, The matter was settled when I abandoned the project[s]: it was becoming quite clear to me that I had nothing worthwhile to say For 19 years, I was absent from the Portuguese literary scene, where few people can have noticed my absence (Saramago, Autobiography). For more than half of Saramagos life, the brutal Portuguese fascist dictator, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, a former professor, was in power (1928 1974). Salazar drew inspiration for his own dictatorial rule from Hitler and Mussolini, just as Saramago modeled his mental asylum in Blindness after Salazars appalling and inhumane prisons that simulated Nazi concentration camps as well as the Japanese internment camps in the United States following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In an interview for a Portuguese newspaper, Saramago calls his mental asylum the final solution, a resemblance of Hitlers plan to exterminate the Jews (quoted in Frier). Not only were the prisoners subjected to horrifying punishments such as being forced to lie under the African sun, the ocean water flowed into the chambers everyday, washing up both garbage and human waste (Frier). The mental asylum, though not against an ocean, also filled with human excrement because the internees had given up locating the restro oms after a few days, resorting to defecating on the floor or on their beds. ( Same as last sentence?) One could be sent to these prisons, the most notorious being Tarrafal on the Cape Verde Islands, for being a dissident and for criticizing the Portuguese government, often without physical evidence. Antà ³nio de Rigueiredo, a Portuguese dissident, recounts his experience in Tarrafal, After 1945, as soon as the regime felt sure of its survival and new alliances, it passed from arbitrary but casual repression to a scientific system of incarcerating individuals (quoted in Frier). Another prisoner recalls that the only doctor in Taraffal neglected prisoners and allowed them to die in the unsanitary conditions of the prison (Frier). Though the victims of the white evil in Blindness were not interned for any political reason, they experienced many of the same abuses by the military; their force was a direct order from the government as well as out of fear of being contaminated. A sergeant on assignment tells his soldiers after he has killed an internee, From now on, we shall leave the con tainers at the halfway point, let the/m come and fetch them, well keep them under surveillance, and at the slightest suspicious movement, we fire (Saramago 84). Although these prisoners try to approach their providers without provoking attack, their blindness prevents them from knowing whether they will be shot for making a wrong move. Acquiring the daily rations most often ends in violence or verbal abuse from the military. Saramago was highly distrusting of the Salazar regime and government, so he joined the Portuguese Communist Party in 1969. To do so was illegal under Salazars dictatorship. Within the last few years of Salazars rule, Saramago worked for two Lisbon newspapers, Dià ¡rio de Lisboa and, later, Dià ¡rio de Nà ³ticias. He lost his job from the latter in 1975 after the new anti-Communist government had come into power. With no hopes of finding another journalistic position, he turned to writing literature and developed his unique writing, consisting of very little punctuation and dialogue within narration. His later novels became much more successful, though he met much opposition from both the Catholic Church and the Portuguese government because of Communistic and anti-religious undertones. Baltazar and Bilmunda (1982) criticized the role of Catholicism in 18th-century Portugal. The Church criticized The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991), claiming that Saramagos depiction of Jesus was too human and offensive to the Church (Saramago, Autobiography). Because the government was very much influenced by the Church, it did not allow this novel to be presented for the European Literary Prize. Many of Saramagos supporters protested the decision. Later on, Saramago moved to the Canary Islands with his second wife, Pilar del Rà ­o, because the support he received inspired him to write even more. There, he wrote his two most famous novels, Blindness (1995) and All the Names (1997). Saramago expresses his distrust for the Church again in Blindness in a scene towards the end of the novel in which the Doctors Wife enters a church that has become a refugee camp for the blind. She observes that all the images in the church had their eyes covered, statues with a white cloth tied around the head, paintings with a thick brushstroke of white paint, there was only one woman who did not have her eyes covered, because she carried her gouged-out eyes on a silver tray (Saramago 317). She tells her husband and he replies, Perhaps it was the work of someone whose faith was badly shaken when he realised that he would be blind like the others, maybe it was even the local priest (Saramago 317). The strange alteration of the images and the speculation that a priest may be behind them suggests that, just as the world has been struck blind, so too has the Church. God and the saints no longer listen to the pleas of the victims. Naturally, those who in the church are offended from he aring the mere suggestion that their faith could not cure them. However, they flee the church after a few scream at the thought that what the Doctor and his wife say may be true. Shortly after, people slowly begin to regain their sight. In her analysis of the novel, Carole Champagne says that the powers associated with the images in the church have been transferred to humanity, who are empowered to use their own moral and spiritual resources-their own eyes-which are their birthright (Champagne). So long had the refugees in the church depended on their faith for a moral balance until they had regained their sight. They would no longer have to look to a higher power that did not answer their prayers. The presence of morality in a damaged society, and the lack thereof, and the consequences that result from right and wrong are major themes of Josà © Saramagos Blindness. Early in the novel, as the Ministry of Health arrives at the Doctors apartment, his wife attempts to accompany him. The ambulance driver refuses to let her in, but she claims that she has been struck blind. Shortly after, the reader learns that she had faked her blindness though she is sure that she will eventually become blind. After days of experiencing the unsanitary conditions and constant conflict between internees, the Doctors Wife feels the need to help them, though she struggles both with herself and with her husband over the proposition. Her husband tells her, Think of the consequences, they will almost certainly try to turn you into their slave, [Y]ou will be at the beck and call of everyone [D]ont think that blindness has made us better people, It hasnt made us any worse, Were on our way though (Saramag o 133). The Doctor suggests that the peoples morality has left along with their sight, and that once his wife tries to assist them, she will be taken advantage of until she no longer can utilize her sight for herself. What she had thought was the right thing to do had gotten her caught in a downward spiral of disintegrating social order and chaos. Also, early in the novel, the First Blind Man confronts the Car Thief in the asylum. As soon as the First Blind Man discovers that his Samaritan had stolen his car after bringing him home, they immediately resort to hopeless fist fighting. This event signifies the first descent into moral decline, especially with how quickly the event transpires, though the First Blind Mans reaction to the car theft is still a normal reaction a sighted person would have. As the novel progresses, interpersonal conflicts become more prevalent among the internees, especially when dealing with the meager rations the government supplies them. The Doctor says, Fighting has always been, more or less, a form of blindness (Saramago 133). Fighting had existed before the whole world was struck blind, suggesting that people had already been blind, not in the literal sense but blind to each others needs. The conflict over food finally escalates to the point that a group of hoodlums band together to take control of all the food in hopes of taking all the internees valuables. The Doctors Wife organizes a resistance to fight against the gang, though it end in bloodshed on her side. In their confrontation, the head of the gang says to the Doctors Wife, I wont forget your voice, and she responds without thinking, Nor I your face (Saramago 140). Though she can physically see the hoodlums face, her threat suggests that only his face could belong to something so evil that would take food away from the rest of the internees. As if foreshadowing a heightened conflict, the First Blind Man says to the Doctor, Well, Im not entirely convinced that there are limits to misfortune and evil (Saramago 144). After the hoodlums run out of valuables to steal from the other internees, they demand that each ward send in all its women to satisfy their lust. Otherwise, the wards would not get their food. Immediately the men pressure the women to visit the hoodlums and have sex with them for the well-being of the others. The women, fearing for their lives, become enraged and chastise the men for suggesting they appease the hoodlums. While some of the women listened to the mens reasoning, others challenge the men with the same attitude the men had expressed. And what would you do if these rascals instead of asking for women had asked for men, what would you do then[?] (Saramago 168). One man replies, There are no pansies here, while another woman says, And no whores either (Saramago 168). In desperation, the asylum has eru pted into a mess of sexism and moral degradation. The men would be willing to give up their women in exchange for food, thus reducing and objectifying the status of women. A small group of women including the First Blind Mans Wife and the Doctors Wife agree to prostitute themselves despite protests by their husbands, the former especially. The narrator concludes the womens decisions: [D]ignity has no price, that when someone starts making small concessions, in the end life loses all meaning (Saramago 169). At the expense of the men, the group of women experience a brutal gang rape, resulting in the death of one of the women. To restore the dead womans dignity, the Doctors Wife finds water to wash her. This event indicates how much the community within the asylum has degenerated, for the men have put a price on the bodies of the women they know. Perhaps the event that illustrates the most difficult moral decision of the whole novel is the murder of the hoodlums leader. Prior to the event, the Doctors Wife discovers that she had brought a pair of scissors with the intent of helping her husband shave. She never uses them for the original purpose and hangs them on a wall. However, after her rape, she grabs the scissors without hesitation and heads for the hoodlums ward. As the leader rapes one of the women, the Doctors Wife sneaks behind him and stabs him in the throat as he has an orgasm. His cry was barely audible, it might have been the grunting of an animal about to ejaculate, as was happening to some of the other men (Saramago 189). Saramago describes the hoodlums as having degenerated to the point of becoming animals, acting solely upon appeasing natural inclinations and vices. The Doctors Wife runs away with the raped woman and breaks down. She justifies the murder by thinking, And when is it necessary to kill When what is still alive is already dead (Saramago 192-93). Though the first inclination is to think that the Doctors Wife justified the murder because the hoodlum had proven himself to be incapable of being human, she could have meant that it was she who was the inhuman one. She is the only sighted person among the blind. If even she has dropped to this level of moral decay, then the rest of the internees have little hope in restoring their own humanity until they regain their sight.