The Boiler Room for Marxist Theory

Karl Marx’s theory is described as “how the normality of our everyday world, with its quiet routines and rituals, its workaday habits and its working day, its monetary stresses and pressures on one end and its leisure and freedom on the other, is riven from within by… class struggle”( Rivkin 231). In this clip from Boiler Room, we see a couple examples of Marxist theory. Not only are the separate class systems showcased, but the driving force behind them: capitalism. In the first portion of the clip, the narrator is describing the values of what we see in society today, how to make the money and live the American dream. It states, “Culture may seem the least important of capitalism’s instruments of social control, but for Marxists, it is quite important, for if everyone is simply trained from birth to think alike and to think alike especially that it is a gift to be free, to seek one’s own rewards in a more or less open economy… they force will not be required” (Rivkin 232). The narrator in the clip goes on to talk about a large corporation (Microsoft) that made its employee’s large amounts of money by giving them stock. He proceeds to say that he saw a picture of a grounds keeper with a Ferrari, now if that’s not living the American dream, then what is? The point though is that this character, like Marx says, thinks his values are his own. However, he has been raised to idealize the aspects of wealth, because that is what society projects; that’s the culture. By pushing this capitalistic view point, a system is locked in place where people will work not only to live, but strive to live well. This is exactly what we see in the first half of the clip. Rivkin also states, “The ideas that prevail in a culture tend by and large to be ones that certify as legitimate the shape of that society and to reinforce the hegemony of the ruling elite” (Rivkin,237). In other words, the people with money are the ones that influence what the rest of us think we want, or need. They shape the values of society.
In the second portion of this clip, the interview, Ben Affleck’s character plays the wealth card to not only entice the men to work hard, but to disguise the inner workings of management and worker relationships. Affleck plays a top recruiter for a brokerage firm. He brings the interviewees in, sits them around a long table and proceeds to tell them how wealthy he is, how he drives a Ferrari, and how he owned a huge home. Not only does this play on the societal values, but it mask’s the fact that one class will always be dominated by another. In this instance, Affleck is higher on the chain than the men at the table; who will more than likely never reach his status. “Marx argues that this appearance conceals the relations of domination and subordination between owner and worker that allow the capitalist owner to extract from the worker more value… that he paid the worker for” (Rivkin, 235). This “value” is the time the laborers put in to the job. Affleck is motivating, to get the men to work harder, therefore making him more money. In the beginning of this clip the narrator says, “honors in the dollar, kid” and that in itself is the basis of Marxist thought.




Rivkin, Julie and Ryan,Michael. Introduction: "Starting With Zero: Basic Marxism. Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 549-566.