Uni module

I’m pretty bothered by a module I m taking at uni (in England), because the second lecture is literally just Marxist theory.

The module is about identity in work, and I don’t want to do it honestly because I’m doing a business degree, but there are ZERO modules available to me that offer skills for the degree I’m paying for (pretty frustrating).

I don’t have anything against learning about Marxism, because it exists and I feel like we should be taught anything useful to a subject that exists, even just for context sakes.

BUT here’s the problem: we are ONLY being taught Marxism. This series of three lectures is just Marxist theory, no free market alternative to viewing labour relations (which we are taught in business modules tbf), and no institutionalise perspectives (like we also get taught in biz).

It seems that we aren’t being taught everything that would be useful to us in this discussion, which is a problem because I feel like we don’t get any context from different perspectives on the subject.

Something specific that bothers me is assuming that ‘the capitalist’ makes their profit by exploiting surplus labour. And that is presented as the only way to profit. Not investing in marketing, market research, negotiations with suppliers for better deals, or even automating processes to cut costs. That seems like a misrepresentation, bearing in mind my biz courses literally teach us different ways to turn a profit using management skills, few of which have anything to do with getting workers to work longer hours than their contract say.

It is early in this course and there might be a whole series of lectures offering different perspectives; in which case I’ll post a retraction to this post and take this back. But so far we are being taught that Marxism is the only way to look at labour relations.