Karl Marx Alienation Essay

The second form of alienation was alienating the worker from working. The worker was also alienated from himself as the key producer or from his “species being”. The worker is estranged

This intimate relationship between man and nature, his activity and the objects of nature, is the ‘appropriate’ relationship because worker is not capable of creating without nature, that is, without the sensual external world. Hence, the world is the material into which man invests his labor, through which he produces things, and without it he cannot live. However, in a capitalist society, such relationship does not exist and man is alienated from nature, from the products of his activity or work. Under capitalism, workers produce for the market rather than for their own use or enrichment. According to Marx, the object produced by labor in modern society stands as an alien being to the worker. His labor is embodied in the product he created, and this product is an objectification of labor which represents a loss to the worker, as well as servitude to the object. Hence, alienation occurs when worker lacks control over the products of his labor. Additionally, during the process of production, man’s labor are seen as much an object as the physical material being worked upon, since labor is a demand in modern society, which can be bought or sold. The more objects the worker produces, the fewer he can personally possess, and therefore the greater is his loss. For instance, in

Marx perceives society made up as two classes, the powerful and exploitive higher class known as the bourgeoisie and the industrial wage earners that must earn their living by selling their labor known as the proletariat. The bourgeoisie is known as the private property owners and the proletariat works for the bourgeoisie. There is an inequality between these two

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

Marx divided the society into two classes, those that are property owner and those that are property-less workers. This is an analogy that still can be found in this modern era. For example, wealthy people for the most part own a variety of property, while the least wealthy often do not own much property as they are working for the wealthy. These workers suffer estrangement and impoverishment from the world. It occurs because these workers are a mean of production and allows the job to hold them hostile. These workers also invested their life into the labor, but they do not own the fruits of the labor. This make them more estrange as he produces more.

As a material essential’s use-value grows it becomes more desired – Marx believes that it becomes a fetishized commodity. Marx restructured his earlier theory of alienation as fetishism of commodities. Fetishism is similar to alienation; however the premise of consumerism is developed in the way that the consumer loses sight of the labor it takes to create commodities. To the consumer, commodities are magnificent and allow the material item to take control of their lives. This is allowed to happen because the producers of material commodities do not come into contact with one another. Therefore, there is no thought put into how laborious, and time-consuming, it was to create the commodity (Marx in Desfor Edles and Appelrouth 2012:68, 73).

According to Muldoon (2013), increasing levels of specialization also lead to lack of enthusiasm among workers in addition to reduced overall skills in their work. This perspective was refined and extended by Karl Marx who was a popular economic theorist. However, Karl Marx labeled this process as alienation, where workers were turned to be more specific individuals coupled with work repetitious eventually becoming completely alienated (Calhoun 2012). In fact, Marx indicated that such division of labor among workers was physically and emotionally depressing and compared it to a machine’s condition. In this regard, he was guided by the firm belief that the fullness of production was a prerequisite to the process of attaining liberation in human beings and accepted the notion of a strict division of labor as a necessary evil that was only temporary.

“Labour for the worker is something external not belonging to his nature…in his labour he does not affirm himself, but denies himself, feels not happy, but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and spiritual energy but wears out his physical nature and destroys his spiritual force. This is why the worker feels that he is himself only outside of working hours in the process of labour he feels he is estranged from himself. He is himself when he is not working, and when he works he is already not himself.” (Marx)

Marx’s theory of alienation is concerned primarily with social interaction and production; he believes that we are able to overcome our alienation through human emancipation.

Among four types of alienation that Marx provides; alienation from the product, alienation from labour process, alienation from one another, and alienation from species-being, the first one explains that what the workers made does not actually belong to them but capitalists (Marx, 1932, p. 325, 326). Furthermore, the process of activities of workers are also estranged from them because workers externalize their ability to work, labour power, to the object, but that labour power is controlled by capitalist and exists outside of workers (Marx, 1932, p. 324). As we saw in the movie, those are workers that who spend 10 hours a day at the workplace and devote themselves producing productions; however, those productions end up belonging to capitalists. For example, trains cars, clothes, and those other commodities are made by hands but it is head that who actually uses them. Consequently, in the capitalist society,

All these consequences are implied in the statement that the worker is related to the product of labor as to an alien object. For on this premise it is clear that the more the worker spends himself, the more powerful becomes the alien world of objects which he creates over and against himself, the poorer he himself – his inner world – becomes, the less belongs to him as his own. (Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844)

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

Moreover, because the aim of production is profit rather than human need, the products of past labor--the machinery and materials, controlled by the capitalists--completely dominate living labor. Workers are literally slaves to the machine and the work process. It controls them, rather than