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Karl Marx And Alienation ( 2000 )

Decent Essays

Karl Marx and Alienation (1,800 – 2,000 words)

Introduction about Marx (1818 – 1883): mention the materials that are going to be used to back up your points (minimum of 5 scholarly materials)

Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) was a German theorist who had taken the theory of alienation into consideration. He was also involved in communist party in Germany, trying to overthrow the class system. Marx had been banished from Germany for his critical thinking, and moved to England where he had become a communist. Marx had taken interest in the rational calculation

Introduction/define alienation
Marx had considered that work allows workers a sense of flourish and creativeness. He thought that work was something that made us all human.
Marx had found …show more content…

Giddens argues how Marx’s theory was like a prediction of what the effects of capitalism would be like in leading countries. However, in Marx’s judgment there was a slight difference to what actually happened (Giddens 1971, 10). Derek Sayer in his book Capitalism and Modernity: An Excursus on Marx and Weber explains how Marx’s theory is what he had predicted about the position of capitalism is in modern day. He mentions that capitalism is violent and still around in the contemporary day. Sayer explains how both Max Weber and Karl Marx see capitalism in sort of different ways, “it is capitalism which is ‘the most fateful force’ (Weber) shaping the modern world, the ‘general light’ (Marx) in which it is bathed” (Sayer 1991, 1). Sayer also explains that capitalism is not what economy causes modernity to be. But mentions that both Max and Marx see capitalism as a “colonization of global economic life is a crucial agency of ‘modernization’” Sayer 1991, 1).

Alienation
During the 19th Century in Europe, workers were drowned by their employers with too much work. This treatment was especially to those who had nothing give but their labour. A worker was not seen upon as anything important for the owners of the big factories. Owners knew that workers only needed wages just to feed their stomach and could not care less. Workers would have no choice but to labour away hard with long hours of exhaustion, just to try and earn enough money only

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