Work, ideology, and science: The case of medicine

This chapter explains how bourgeois ideology reproduces the dominant/dominated relations in the sphere of production, in the arena of politics, and in the area of science, including medicine. It discusses how that bourgeois ideological dominance over science appears in the production of knowledge. There is a concern among the centers of power in theWestern capitalist world that something is going wrong with the nature of work in that world. The long struggle which the working class carried out in the 19th and 20th centuries in the United States and many other countries as well to limit the daily working hours to eight already had as its goal a redefining of the meaning of work and health. The history of the working class in the United States, and other countries as well, is punctuated by a continuous struggle to redefine the nature of work and health.