This is the only talk Simone Weil (Paris, 1909 - Ashford, 1943) gave in life, on 23 February 1937 to a public made up of workers. With her typical sensitivity, the thinker discussed the vicissitudes of a rationalisation process in which while the worker’s body is reduced to the status of tool, the products obtained in the process are fuel for a machine that continues to expand its dissatisfaction across the face of the earth.
Weil refuses to conceive the oppression exerted on workers only in economic terms and states in her text: “The worker suffers not only from inadequate pay. He suffers because he is overshadowed by today’s society to a lower rank, because he is reduced to a form of servitude.”
Documentation
Esteban Zamora will stage the only talk Simone Weil gave in life, on 23 February 1937 to a public made up of workers.