Essay on Labor and Alienation

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

The notion of man as a ‘species-being’ for Marx meant the recognition of man’s human essence as a member of a species. A species which takes part in a process of conscious production whereby we produce as human beings for one another; Marx perceived this to be the process of mans ‘active species life’ (Bottomore; 1963 ). Marx specifically used the term ‘species being’ as a method to distinguish human life from animal life; where production is more a consequence of ‘blind instinct’ rather than conscious productive labour. The recognition of man as a ‘species’ becomes eminent to the theory of Alienation, which is central to Marx’s work and vital in reiterating the human essence of man.

One of the greatest economic theorist Karl Marx whose ideas were once used in the Soviet Union and other countries that failed to success makes human beings think of the type of economy that they are living in. Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, Germany. He witnessed the rise of the industrial revolution and the beginning of capitalism. Marx was the strongest capitalist critic who analyzed the ills of the capitalism. Marx wrote lots of books and they were mostly about the capitalism. And Capitalism is one type of economy. The United States is a capitalist country. One of his writings that this paper will focus on is “Alienated Labor” and it talks about different types of Alienation that the workers of capitalism experienced. Alienation

labor when it is apparent he cannot attain what he appropriates. As a result of

Marx on page 327 of his essay estranged labor is describing what to him were

his religion. Marx writes, "The more man puts into God the less he retains in

In his discussions of capitalism in The German Ideology he frequently accuses existing social structures for alienating man from his production. “Each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape” (Marx, Page 160) as a result of the division of labour in capitalist societies. This division of labour exists because there is higher priority placed in communal interest than individual interest. As such, there is an inequality here – communal interest is taken to be of greater importance than individual

He says that “in taking from man the object of his production, alienated labor takes from his species-life, his actual and objective existence as a species” (Marx 5). Marx believes that the reason for a loss of “existence as a species” is disconnect between the worker and product. Rather than labor being only a “means to satisfy a need,” it becomes “his life activity, his essence, only a means for his existence” (Marx 4). The worker loses his identity as a “species-being” and only exists for the creation of his product, which is abruptly taken away from

The German philosopher, Karl Marx, is credited for his critiques on political economy and its destructiveness to society. A critique that Marx declares in his text “Estranged Labor” is how the invention of private property, within a capitalistic mode of production, leads to the estrangement of one’s labor. Marx believes that with establishment of private property the worker’s labor value becomes extracted from them, and is placed into the hands of the Bourgeoisie (the owners to the means of production). When labor value is extracted from the worker the result is estranged labor, which then leads to different modes of alienation of the worker. According to Marx these different modes of alienation produce several problems to society, and are

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.

In regards to the labour-capital relation within a traditional capitalist corporation Marx & Engels (2007) refer to the dialectic between the capitalists (or bourgeoisie) who own the property and the means of production and the laborers (or proletariat) who own no property and are obligated to sell their labour to the bourgeoisie to gain substance. For Marx & Engels, this labour market is inherently fraught with tension, since the interests of the capitalist and labourers are diametrically opposed, and the balance of power between capitalists and labourers tips further in the favour of the capitalists. Because workers have nothing to sell but their labour, the bourgeoisie are able to exploit them by paying them less than the true value created by their labour. Furthermore, because of the unequal positions of capitalist and labourer, labourers must work for someone else- they must do work imposed on them as a means of satisfying the needs of others. As a result, labourers inevitably experience alienation which Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844) summarizes as the separation of individuals from the objects they create, which in turn results in one’s separation from other people, from oneself, and ultimately from one’s human nature.

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

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,

In this essay I will be discussing how Marx refers to capitalism as alienating and exploitive by depriving workers the sense of self-worth and identity. Marx describes how the worker sees labour as a means of survival and gets no satisfaction from doing it because the produce does not belong to him. Instead they are sold for profit by the capitalist.

Marx’s theory of alienated labour is structured around a class-based system. It is vital to acknowledge that Marx’s evaluation of the capitalist system is based focused the Industrial Revolution a century and a half ago, and therefore must be kept somewhat in that context. Within Marx’s simplified capitalist society model, one class of people own and control the raw materials and their means of production. They are referred to as capital, bourgeoisie, or the owning class. The capitalist does not just own the means of production, but also all the items produced. By virtue of their ownership of production property they receive an income and earn a living from the operations of their factories and shops. The owning class owns the productive resources, though they do not usually operate the production means themselves.