Glengarry Glen Ross and Capitalism

The above scene from the movie “Glengarry Glen Ross” reveals the harsh reality of Capitalism. In it we see the different facets of exploitation, class struggle, idolization of commodities, surplus value, and material relationships among people as discussed in the Marxist theory.

In this scene, we see Alec Baldwin who plays the role of a representative of Mitch and Murray motivating a group of salesmen that are supplied with leads (names and phone numbers of potential clients), but the motivation takes the form of verbal abuse. Everything is reduced to commodities, and the salesman’s value is reduced to what he can contribute to expand the surplus value. As Karl Marx has said in "The Communist Manifesto", the bourgeoisie or the capitalists “have resolved personal value into exchange value.” Thus, Baldwin’s speech to the salesmen has created a class difference, just like the difference between the BMW and Hyundai that he emphasized. Baldwin makes it clear when he tells a salesman that the watch he is wearing is worth the salesman’s car. He also tells him,“That’s who I am, and you are nothing”. The salesman himself becomes a commodity whose destiny is determined by maximum labor power. Yet, if he fails to do so, he is threatened to lose his job. Therefore, the most important thing is bringing in money while nothing else matters.
We also notice that Baldwin ridicules family values by advising one of his salesmen that if he prefers to be a family man, he would rather stay home and play with his children because there is no place for such people in the company. This brings to mind Marx’s saying: “The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.” Baldwin has reduced the work ethics into four words: Attention, Interest, Decision, and Action. Hence, AIDA is directed towards the commodity, that is, getting the client “to sign on the dotted line”. Moreover, Baldwin’s capitalist speech takes a different direction as he associates the failure to produce profit to lack of masculinity and weakness. The “brass balls” that Baldwin refers to are symbolic of materialistic masculinity. It can also be noted that a there’s a displacement of use value from the commodity,that is: the alienation of the workers from their own labor. The salesmen derive no personal satisfaction from the work they are doing since it takes place in an atmosphere of terror and threat where they have only two options: to take it or leave it.

Finally, there’s no humane relationship between Baldwin and the salesmen as he does not even refer to them by their names. All he cares about is profit no matter how much time and energy it consumes from the salesman’s life. As Marx said, "It is self evident that the labourer is nothing else, his whole life through, than labour power, that all his disposable time is by nature and law labour, to be devoted to the self-expasion of capital."



Works Cited:


-The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.New York: W.W. Norton&Company, Inc.,2010
- Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)