The material and ideological conditions of our society is important to understand our social situation. This essay outlines the material and ideological conditions and how it signifies our social situation. Material condition means production, exchange and the organization of society. Ideological condition means ideas that are common in society. This essay will focus on the following reading: “The End of Work” by Jeremy Rifkin, “Where the Wasteland Ends” by Theodore Roszak, “The Making of Economic Society” by Robert Heilbroner and “The Tyranny of Work” by James W. Rinehart.
The material conditions in our society are very important. The introduction of machines reduced the number workers in the workforce. The commodity was produced mainly by machines with a little help of humans. The technology has developed which lead workplaces look into new ways in reducing cost and efficient products.
In the “Where the Wasteland Ends” by Theodore Roszak it stated that knowledge grows and how tomorrow’s knowledge is enormous. Today’s knowledge would always be the base for tommow’s knowledge. (Roszak,149) Today’s people know more than people in the past. This relates to the “The End of Work” by Jeremy Rifkin article which states that the people in the past had their own knowledge of producing their own things for their own needs and than these workers had to make the products for other people which than lead to inventing machines to get rid of the workers. This demonstrates the fact that “the workers” were the old knowledge and the “machines” are the new knowledge. As technology, in other words “science” grows new knowledge would develop and this would lead today’s young generation to become smarter than the previous generation. The jobs that are present today in our society is related to technology and therefore the work people do shows what they are worth. If you have more knowledge on the recent technology you would have a higher value. (Rifkin, 17)
In the “The Making...