Overachievers of the student-body unite! As most students would tell you, academic life can be filled with strife, stress and the cosmic fear of assuming your future is at stake with every passing grade. Students who find themselves engulfed by this existential dread would tell you, the bane of their existence is the dreaded group project. An archaic assignment that is paradoxically anti-collectivist by virtue of highlighting the worst humanity has to offer. This is done through groups of students micro-dosing class struggle in a micro-capitalistic environment. The reason many students hate group projects is because they understand that the division of labor will almost always be unequal, and by delving deeper into the phenomena of unequal divisions of labor in the context of a group project we can begin to draw parallels to Marxist theories, presented in the communist manifesto and expanded upon by other scholars. In order to understand how group projects reinforce capitalistic ideologies we must see how the elements of a group project mirror the components of class struggle as described by Marx, such as capital, the bourgeois, and the proletariat.
In terms of capital, the comparison is easily made. The bourgeois seek to gain material wealth and profit off of the labor of the proletariat. Marx defines class struggle as a history of exploitation throughout various socio-economic systems. Under capitalism, exploitation comes in the form of surplus value and ownership over the means of production. The proletariat are forced to sell their labour-power for a wage. In this sense, capitalism operates as an evolved form of feudalism, where those who own the means of production, as opposed to property, assume responsibility over those who work for them. Surplus value is the profit the bourgeois (the owners of the means of production) extract from the product’s earning and subsequently dock it from the worker’s paycheck. This exploitation acts as the basis and key defining feature of what Marx calls class struggle. In the context of a group project, profit equals grade. The “bourgeois” students profit off of the “proletariat” students for the sake of profit, not in terms of material wealth, but for the sake of the grade. Admittedly, in a Marxist analysis of group projects, the argument cannot be made that the “proletariat” students are getting “paid less” than the “bourgeois” students because, in a lot of cases, all members of the group receive the same grade. One could even argue that the unequal labor distribution of group projects is mitigated in cases where students are graded individually in correlation to their work output, often supported by evidence or proof of work throughout the duration of the project. In this respect, profit is the unequal distribution of labour. However, such cases are, arguably, not the standard, and there are ways in which the “bourgeois” are capable of taking credit for work they have not done. The argument can still be made that, in cases where all members of a group are graded equally, the “bourgeois” students are still profiting off of the work done by the “proletariat”, in a similar fashion as how Marx had described class struggle.
In understanding class struggle in the context of group project dynamics, the “proletariat” students can be best understood as the students who are, more often than not, experienced laborers, which in this case, is to their detriment. These students are saddled with the responsibility of carrying the workload of the group project for the sake of the grade, though not always the case, these students are often the ones who accept this burden because they cannot afford a lower grade. Students who depend on scholarships, or intend to achieve higher levels of education, must maintain a certain GPA in order to be eligible for financial aid. These “experienced laborers” and guild artisans of the academic world, in cases where they also depend on financial aid, acquired this status because they had no choice but to work harder than others. Although these roles are not necessarily set in stone, there is nuance in how these roles could shift and alter between students, irrespective of their material conditions. Outside of the comical analogy between capitalist class struggles in the context of group projects, capitalism is a real problem in the education system, and in the world in which these students reside. Capitalism is a lottery ticket, and most people don’t win. However, due to laws, social structure, racism, sexism, inheritance, etc. capitalism operates on a structure more rigged than the lottery. The rich stay rich by dictating how laws like inheritance keep certain people in positions of power over others. These laws are then weaponized against anyone who isn’t a part of the dominant socio-economic ethnic group of a given nation that works in conjunction with the global superpower of that time. Coupled with the fact that education under capitalism isn’t made free and equal, those with more money are given access to private education, and access to resources that make acquiring a good education easier to achieve. In the communist manifesto, Marx advocates for the abolishment of inheritance, as he identified that it operated as a mechanism for the wealthy to accrue intergenerational wealth. Marx also goes on to advocate for a universalized free education system that would be mandatory for all children to attend. These changes in the system, if practiced, would undoubtedly resolve some of the inequalities that have pervaded under capitalism. In many countries, public schools offer free education but are often at risk of being underfunded or under-equipped to provide lower class students with valuable resources. This, more often than not, leaves these students in a position where they willingly accept taking the bulk of the workload out of necessity, in order to maintain their GPA.
When it comes to the students who represent the “bourgeoise”, a surface-level analysis would determine that they are merely using their group members as a means to an end, in order to acquire capital, either because they themselves lack the skill, or confidence in their ability, or because they would rather relinquish themselves from the work altogether. In understanding why, and how, these “bourgeois” students come to view their group members as a means to an end we can analyze this phenomena through the lens of Alienation from Karl Marx, and expanded upon by Georg Lukács, in Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat. When discussing alienation, there are typically four dimensions to alienation, these include: worker alienated from the means of production, worker alienated from the product itself, worker alienated from other workers. The dimension we will be focusing on is the workers’ alienation from other workers.
According to Georg Lukács, in Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat, reification is the process of commodifying human/social relations. This is an expansion of Marx’s notion of alienation and commodity fetishism, which is when commodities are mystified and believed to have an exponentially greater value than the value of the laborer and labor process. Reification manifests in economic life because labor power, and therefore laborers, are commodified. This leads to the belief that labor power can easily be bought and sold.
Commodity fetishism is a concept first introduced by Marx. Commodity fetishism refers to the process by which social relations between people take the form of relationships between commodities, and commodities themselves seem to have powers independent of the people who produce them. This leads to the mystification of commodities, which then obscures the real underlying harmful conditions behind labor production. Lukács expands on both the concepts of alienation and commodity fetishism in his critique of capitalism by showing that people become unable to see the exploitative nature of capitalism because they view its structures as natural. Workers are not just alienated from the products they create but also from the very social forces that govern their lives, making these forces seem unchangeable.
Lukács embraces Marx’s analysis and critique of the exploitative and alienating nature of capitalism’s structure. Lukács expands on Marx’s ideas by applying them holistically. For example, Marx’s concept of alienation is centered on the worker and is discussed only in terms of labor and economic status/conditions. Lukács expands on that with his concept of reification and states that all social relations have become commodified and shows how alienation is not just central to working conditions but to all aspects of life (social, legal, cultural).
In the context of group projects we can apply concepts like alienation, reification, and commodity fetishism to explain how the “bourgeois” students arrive at viewing their group members as a means to an end. These “bourgeois” students become alienated from their group members because they begin to commodify the social relations within the group dynamic. Through commodity fetishism, the labor of work is downplayed, along with the value of the work and knowledge that accompanies it, the nature of burdening a select few with the entirety of the workload isn’t recognized as exploitative.
In conclusion, through the lens of a Marxist analysis, we can determine that the nature of group projects, within the grading criteria with which they exist, are inherently susceptible to abuse and exploitation at the cost of a select few students being burdened with the bulk of the coursework. The exploitation accompanied by group projects can be amended through reformation. Holding students accountable by providing them with individual grades, supported by sufficient evidence, and proof of work, offers a fairer and more equal version of a group project assignment. This mitigates the possibility of coasting off of another student’s work. However, one could also argue in favor of the abolition of group projects in its entirety.
Edited by Nisreen Yassine and Judie Chakass