Salt of the Earth

Salt of the Earth is a 1954 film the depicts the struggles of Chicano miners and their families in Zinc Town, New Mexico. The film was black listed and banned in the United States because of its unfavorable portrayal of the capitalist system. Although it is a fictional film it does portray a struggle that is similar to those of real Chicano families in places like Silver City, New Mexico, where my family is from. In the film the miners are unhappy about being paid less compared to the Anglo workers and so they go on strike to ensure higher wages.

In the film, the miners are working to procure a commodity, which according to Karl Marx is " an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another" (665). And for their labor in the production of the commodity, they are being paid a wage. But the wages they are being paid is not sufficient. Marx says of the capitalist system that "the worker receives means of subsistence in exchange for his labor power, but the capitalist receives in exchange for his means of subsistence labor, the productive activity of the worker, the creative power whereby the worker not only replaces what he consumes but gives to the accumulated labor a greater value than it previously possessed" (663). The worker, and his labor, has the power to alter the value and production of a commodity, and so when he goes on strike it is the capitalist that is losing more.

Works Cited

Marx, Karl. "Capital." Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: an Anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. 665-71. Print.

Marx, Karl. "Wage Labor and Capital." Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: an Anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. 659-64. Print.