Marxism

Desensitized State

In Glengarry Glan Ross, a hot-shot salesman, Blake, who is supposedly encouraging the three sales men to sell out the leads in the office in this particular scene, is in Marxist terms the “bourgeois” and the others are the “proletarians.” He is the face of the company Mitch and Murray which demeans the workers ruthlessly. Blake savors his privileged and potent state and is able to adamantly exploit the others by degrading their positions in life. He is the one who enjoys the profit by extorting money from the leads. These three men, who are degraded by Blake, are selling their labor in order to earn a living. They do not have free access to the leads because they do not own the products. Therefore, a great gap is created which is obvious between these two different and alienated social groups—Blake and the three sales men.

In Blake’s view, the sales men in this scene are commodities, only there to satisfy his needs. He makes it clear that they are no more than objects, and their worth is insignificant: “You see this watch? It costs more than your car . . . That is who I am, and you are nothing” (Glengarry Glan Ross). Blake’s relation to wealth is lustful as he speaks and acts in terms of money. He sees all the others in the room—“the labourers [but] nothing else” (Marx 671) and “the worker is related to the product of his labor as to an alien object” (Marx 653). Money is penetrated deep beneath Blake’s skin and is adhered onto it. He sees no value in people, except their ability to work: “You got leads, can’t close the leads? You can’t close nothing? You are nothing” (Glengarry Glen Ross). This is the “real” man’s game for Blake. If one cannot handle the “game” then he can “tell his troubles to his wife” or “play with his kids at home” (Glengarry Glan Ross). Blake influences his robot-like attitude which is monotonous and suitable for machines. Family and merits are at no importance, and touch with human nature is lost. Decisions here are made in profit and loss terms.

Why are the salesmen in this scene not leaving? Why are they taking all the humiliation from the man who not only looks down upon them; moreover, sees himself too as an object? The salesmen are made to believe by society that they are “free” to be whoever, and they are “freely” accepting their role in this situation—as nothings. Is Blake here Antonio Gramsci’s “intellectual?” Would Gramsci note here that everyone in this scene is an intellectual, but “not all . . . have the power in society the function of intellectuals” (Gramsci 1004)? They are all intellectuals in a desensitized state, and it is in this state where all are separated and alienated from each other by private leads, sales, and property. They are value-objects in a cruel market.

Works Cited

Glengarry Glen Ross. Dir. James Foley. Perf. Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Alan

Arkin, Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin, and Jonathan Pryce. New Line Cinema,

1992. Film.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “From Capital, Volume 1.” The Norton Anthology of

Theory and Criticism. Ed, Vincent B. Leitch. 2^nd ed. W.W. Norton & Company

Inc.: New York, 2001. 663-674. Print.

Marx Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “From Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of

1844.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed, Vincent B. Leitch. 2^nd

ed. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New York, 2001. 651-655. Print.