Dear Mr. Hamilton,
There is no class struggle within your place of work; there is a hierarchy of business management. Asking management and the government for a raise is not proletarian revolution…in fact, to say “the only way to change anything is to ask for it” fundamentally rejects the idea of revolution. You want more money for your work? Tell you what: vote.
Vote, and then give your local governmental representatives a call, arrange a meeting, and talk it out. But don’t pretend you’re enacting some kind of social overthrow by doing so, because all you are is another schmuck grovelling before Capitalism asking for a better share in the system. To lament your alienation from product is absurd, as you are stocking shelves with goods likely not fabricated in this country. You aren’t producing anything. If you’re that bent out of shape about it, open a booth at the Farmer’s Market. Marx was writing in a recently post-Industrial Revolution era, seeing systems of production mechanized as the role of the craftsman in society waned; you have never known a society where workers by and large were not alienated from the product of their labour, and you likely never will. You are a university student in a wealthy town in a first-class country in the western world; you are the Bourgeoisie. To continue playacting otherwise does the ideas proposed by Marx, ideas you profess to admire and respect, a great disservice.
If you want your BA to be worth something, acknowledge your position in society and recognize that the knowledge you are cultivating gives you the power to enact societal change.