Alienation: Does It Benefit To The Human Brain?

In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Karl Marx identifies a dichotomy that is created and bolstered by the capitalist mode of production. In this mode of production, the dichotomy presents itself in a division of labor that forms of two kinds of people: capitalists, the owners of the means of production, and laborers, those who work under the domain of the capitalist. Marx harshly criticizes this mode of production, arguing that it exploits the laborer and estranges him from himself and his fellow man. According to Marx, this large-scale estrangement is achieved through a causal chain of effects that results in multiple types of alienation, each contingent upon the other. First, Marx asserts that under capitalism, the laborer is alienated from his product of labor. Second, because of this alienation from his product, man is also alienated then from the act of production. Third, man, in being alienated both from his product and act of production, is alienated from his species essence, which Marx believes to be the ability to create and build up an objective world. Finally, after this series of alienations, Marx arrives at his grand conclusion that capitalist labor causes man to be alienated from his fellow man. In this paper, I will argue in support of Marx’s chain of alienations, arriving at the conclusion that laborers, under the capitalist mode of production, cannot retain their species essence and thus cannot connect with one another, and exist in a world

Making products in a capitalist system puts many people in a position that are repetitive and laborers end up going through the motions. They have one specialized job in producing the whole product. The labor does not give input into the purpose of design, distribution, and marketing of the product. According to his essay “ Alienated Labor,” Marx tells us the things we go through in a work under the capitalist society:

Karl Marx witnessed first hand the rise of the industrial revolution and the beginning of capitalism. He also became one of capitalisms biggest critics. Marx believed that society needed a better way of distrusting wealth but also a better way a finding people’s full human potential or what he called “species-essence”. Marx believed that what we do connects to who we are, for example, work is what makes us human. It fulfills our species essence, as he puts it. Work allows us to be creative and flourish. However, in the 19th century Europe work did the quit opposite, it destroyed workers, particularly those who had nothing to sell but their labor. To the mill and factory owners a worker was simply an abstract idea with a stomach that needed to be filled. The workers had no choice but to work for long hours for a pathetic wage. Even worse, their labor alienated them. Alienation is a disorienting sense of exclusion and separation. Factory labor, under capitalism, alienated the workers from the product of their labor. They made stuff they couldn’t afford to buy themselves. The products they made were shipped out to other places far way to make money

The United States has been historically known as a country of innovation, business, and a land of opportunity. Recent history has led to the questioning of the validity of the amount of opportunity that is truly still available within the United States. The consistent questioning of the way that labor works in the United States has led individuals to begin analyzing the works of Karl Marx. Marx has written a plethora of information regarding his view on how capitalism encourages alienated labor. The United States is still predominantly a capitalism and there is an increase of education being forced due to inability to find lower level employment. The amount of individuals being educated has increased dramatically due to necessity, but it has not necessarily encouraged the death of alienated labor. Alienated labor is still prevalent in the modern day United States, but it should not necessarily be

According to Marx’s view of capitalism, every company works to make a profit, because without profit there is no reason to exist. He said that labor is a commodity that carries an exchange value to be traded for something else, but questioned how profit is made if commodities exchange in equilibrium. His answer was that profit is made when workers are exploited, or work part of the time without pay. Marx believed that if there were no workers there would be no profit and ultimately no capitalism. The issue is that human suffering, however, is good for business according to Marx. People are born into a preexisting system, because the economy forces people into social relations and roles, and because of this, workers truly felt that they would never become free from the capitalist class unless they had the ability to produce a living. Marx found this to be unjust and felt there should be a redistribution of wealth. Marx’s attack on capitalism, however, angered the bourgeois ruling class greatly, and his ideologies caused uproar. Marx was accused of overthrowing private property and capitalism, and leading the proletariat to rebel. He is noted to have caused working class upheavals and political revolution. Karl Marx’s work was a disturbance to society, which is why he

Marx only saw commercialized society as a self-interested and competitive he only saw that this selfishness and competition would only cause separation, phenomena Marx referred to as “estrangement of labor” in other words, an ostracism of people their work, their relationship to other people and the alienation of mankind from itself. Marx did not merely critique the infrastructure of capitalism but also looked at its effects, specifically to the workers who he believed suffered the most at the hands of capitalism. Marx examined how workers were producing things that they could not easily afford for themselves; Marx thought of this as the worker losing connection to their art. To Marx a worker who could not afford something that they create makes the worker feel like they are not part of the production of what they are producing, taking away any joy, a worker might have had when they produce their goods. Furthermore, Marx saw a

As alienation has been illustrated thus far, we have come to know it as the mechanism which thwarts the worker’s efforts to express himself. Alienation robs the worker of his common humanity. Marx felt the effects of alienation were specifically nefarious, and linked its origin to a unique aspect of capitalist society: the commoditization of forced labour.

Karl Marx believed that a capitalist society was to blame for alienation of the workers (Sociology, 2013). Alienation involves workers feeling isolated and away from the end product. Which dehumanizes them making workers feel unsatisfied and feel as though they are unable to improve their lifestyle. He found particular ways to which capitalism alienates those who work. Those ways were split in to four different categories, which are: Being alienated from the act of working which is being alienated from their own choice as they are not given a right to decide what product to make and how they are going to make it.

Marx said that in the product of labor the worker is alienated from the object he produces because it is bought, owned and disposed of by someone else, the capitalist. In all societies people use their creative abilities to produce items which they use to exchange or sell. Marx believes that under capitalism this becomes an alienated activity because the worker can't use the things that he produces to engage in further productive activity. Marx argued that the

Socialist and economist Karl Marx had a big impact on socialism and communism in the time when the Industrial Revolution was shifting individual and overall economy. These changes in turn affected the welfare of individual workers, causing Marx to make up theories of his own. One of his theories was that of “alienated labor.” In the eyes of Marx, the concept of alienated labor suggested that industrialized capitalism plays a role in shifting one’s individual labor from being something of their own creation to something exploited and not their own.

In the act of production, the workers are coerced into a monotonous, labor intensive activity where they cannot decide when to work, under what conditions to work, in what manner to work, and what the produce. Furthermore, the fruits of the worker’s labor are for the profit of someone else. Because of this, his work does not emerge from within himself but rather exists outside of himself and demonstrates a loss of self. The laborer cannot affirm themselves and are prompted to deny their own essence, but instead adopt animalistic behavior, in which Marx claims “As a result, therefore, man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing up, etc.; and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal.” This dehumanization is evident when Levi writes “he (a camp member) will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself.”

He believed that the society was too economically driven which resulted in men becoming “an appendage of the machine … losing all individual character and all charm for the workman”(Lecture Marx 1/25/17 slide #14). This had led to an alienation of labor and commodification of labor. Individuals started making products and working only for the economic purposes rather than for the emotional joy of creativity and innovation. The technological uses were advanced to reach the maximum efficiency of mass production and Proletariats were used as tools or as hands to keep the production going.

As human beings, one of the most fundamental aspects of our existence, according to philosopher Karl Marx, is the act of work. More specifically, it is the idea that work fulfills human being’s essence. Work, for Marx, is a great source of joy, but only when the worker can see themselves in the work they do, and when said worker wants to partake in the work they are performing. In the capitalist identity, workers are “a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital” (Marx and Engel, 1946, pg. 116). Labourers were simply described as “a commodity” (Marx and Engel, 1946, pg. 117) by the ruling class; they are but pieces of a large, intricate gear system, all for the profit of those above them. In this, the worker loses touch with their essence. This concept is referred to, more or less, as alienation. Alienation is a form of separation of how one sees themselves, and how one sees themselves in what they do. Alienation, in many ways, relates to the idea of false consciousness. False consciousness, for Marx, revolves around the idea of misleading society; It is an ideological way of thinking in which no true perception of the world can be achieved. Both alienation and false consciousness delve into the notion of what constitutes true reality. Alienation describes how those that are controlled by the ruling class are subject to a form of disconnect, and false consciousness is a hierarchal idea in

There is deep substance and many common themes that arose throughout Marx’s career as a philosopher and political thinker. A common expressed notion throughout his and Fredrick Engels work consists of contempt for the industrial capitalist society that was growing around him during the industrial revolution. Capitalism according to Marx is a “social system with inherent exploitation and injustice”. (Pappenheim, p. 81) It is a social system, which intrinsically hinders all of its participants and specifically debilitates the working class. Though some within the capitalist system may benefit with greater monetary gain and general acquisition of wealth, the structure of the system is bound to alienate all its

Not only is the worker alienated from his labour, but he is also separated from the result of his labour - the product. This is the most obvious manifestation of the alienation of the worker; he has no power over what he produces. The wage contract ensures that the products of labour are surrendered to the capitalist, who then sells them on the market, and pays the worker a wage. Marx points out that the alienation of the product is double - not only is the worker separate from his own product, but that product, as increasing the power of capital, actually weakens the worker's position. (4) Marx refers to the product of labour as 'the objectification of labour'. The worker's labour objectified is used against him in a capitalist