Volume > Issue > Bodies for Sale: The Inhuman Face of Industrialism

Bodies for Sale: The Inhuman Face of Industrialism

GUEST COLUMN

By Juli Loesch | June 1988
Juli Loesch is a writer, lecturer, and agitator in Washington, D.C. She lives in a mixed lay/religious community with the Religious of Jesus and Mary.

You are worth about $5.50,” gloats the sta­tistic-monger. “If you were cremated, the chemi­cals in your body wouldn’t be worth as much as a ticket to a first-class concert.”

“Four dollars an hour,” says my boss, equally pleased.

I do just enough unskilled factory work (for Manpower) to cover my room and board. The money itself doesn’t affront me, as if I had gotten a low bid at the auction block. But what does af­front me is the suggestion that the money could in any way compensate me for my body, my life, my time, myself.

Raw materials went into the factory and came out ennobled and man went in and came out de­graded (Pope Pius XI).

Enjoyed reading this?

READ MORE! REGISTER TODAY

SUBSCRIBE

You May Also Enjoy

Heinrich Pesch & the Economics of Solidarism

Pesch is probably the greatest-ever economist. He designed an economic system based on Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical premises.

The Evolution of Liberation Theology

The savage killing of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador last November underscored once again…

Economics Is Not Chemistry

Economists have tried to emulate the natural sciences and to present economics as a science that is able to predict human behavior, not simply describe it.