HACETTEPE UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ECONOMIC AND ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

ECO 228 ECONOMIC HISTORY

HOMEWORK; MODERN TIMES Submitted to: Prof.Dr. HAKAN MIHI

Prepared by STUDENTs NAME KBRA KARAKI ID 20811544

ANKARA APRIL 2013

Charlie Chaplin starts the movie of Modern Times quite striking a sheep-human metaphor . Here the main highlighted the capitalist mode of production and industrial activities make people like sheep herd. In a new daily in life shaped by the capital relations, a labor wake up very early every day and work ten hours per day for the average level of living. A small portion of the value produced by the capitalist class factories are paid to him for his own life as a wage. The great value will be the owners of capital on behalf of "accumulation" and "profitability". Mode of production in the factory which are subject to the story in the film is production of commodities on the basis of a floating band when there is workers with a fixed position in front of them and fordist production style emerged in the early 1920s. Workers make the same movements when they tighten the screw which passes in front of them, and these movements are based on a very limited capability. Task of all the workers is clear in front of the band and consists of a single movement of production. Worker (Chaplin),which works ten hours per day,makes the same "screw-tightening" movement during the study period. When the worker releases work,he passes the screwdriver all swrews and swrews-like around him. Working conditions of the factory finds a wide place in workers mind. When the workers go out from factory, they carry on traces of working condition on both their private and social life. When human, which is as a single subject of own life, is included in the field of capitalist mode of production,they lose their subjectiveness. Thus,they become state of an object in the capital production process. Chaplin focused on the uniformity and non-creative situation because of mode of production. Although the capitalist system make poor the society, workers are considered as elements of the system, must realize that the production of capital. Thus, workers both maintain their own poor life and can be the systems sheep. Otherwise, psychology of the new modern world renames his mismatch as a madness and closes him the clinic. Capitalist class buy whole labor of workers with a small amount of fee and put workers in a production network. Psychiatrist recommends not to take this situation seriously and keep calm. Chaplin emphasizes this absurdity. There was communism in the 1930s and capitalist systems tried to avoid it themselves. So every worker as communist was arrested by law. Chaplin loved life in prison. Because he does not have to work to provide two basic needs such as food and shelter. According to capitalist morality, human must sell their labor to capital and dedicate their whole life process of capitalist production. Thus, people have the right to maintain their own lives. Charlie Chaplin's characters denied the exploitation of their labor, all their lives to be controlled by a power and a life that will be provided a happiness that is a fake and meta in the end of movie.