Friday, October 25, 2019
Norma Rae and A Respectable Trade :: Films Movies
Norma Rae and A Respectable Trade In this essay I shall compare the two economic systems of capitalism and slavery within the context of films, Norma Rae and A Respectable Trade. In the film Norma Rae, workers in a textile mill attempt to form a union with the leadership of a disgruntled employee named Norma Rae. In a Respectable Trade, a woman of the aristocracy marries a slave trader named Josiah when she comes to realize that her time spent in her uncle's estate must come to an end due to the social aspirations of her aunt and that because she has no talent as a governess she has very few options left. This series, from the book of the same name, is about the relationship between her (Frances) and her slave, Mehuru from Oyo in addition to being about the several other interpersonal and economic relationships occurring within the system of slavery in 18th century Bristol. In Norma Rae, the equipment and other resources necessary for textile production in the town were owned by the textile company. The majority of the population did not have any control over the productive resources necessary for the development of enterprises. This is consistent with capitalism where there is a concentration of control over productive resources by a small subset of society, in this case the textile mill. In a Respectable Trade, the aristocracy had majority control over the means for production. It was only through them that the merchants could for example get the monetary means to expand business or start out if they were not fortunate enough to have inherited some means of trade as Josiah and Sara did. The common folk of Bristol, England did not control the means by which they could have started their own businesses. Here too, the control over productive resources is concentrated in the hands of the few. So we see that slavery shares this quality with capitali sm and as yet I have not cited any unique properties of these two class processes. One important and defining difference between the two though is that in slavery, human beings also constitute a productive resource that can be bought and sold and done with as one would a piece of furniture. Capitalist and Slave Economic Systems have singular ways of resolving the question of how to get workers to labor.
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