Marx and Alienation
Marx and Alienation
The essence of human beings relations to each other is formulated through the process of labor. In modern society, labor has taken on a form of production that is not necessarily production of one’s own desires; rather, what Marx refers to as estranged labor, the idea that this form of production makes man alien to the product of his labor. Alienation according to Marx is the objectification of human powers used for production that does not represent your own essence. Once the worker puts their life into the object they produce through their labor, it’s gone forever. To this effect your labor is what enables your existence, rather than your existence being displayed through your labor. When means of existence are displayed through labor, we approach a problem which for Marx is that of why alienation in a capitalist society is bad for individuals. The inherent relationship between capitalist to labor was for Marx the downfall of capitalism. The negative relationship forms when the capitalist’s only offer is an exchange for the most amount of labor for the least amount of compensation; this allows alienation to consume every form of human relations existing in a Capitalist economy. “Each man views the other with the standard and the position in which he finds himself as a worker.”(Marx 1844 pg.77) At the point where we allow an economic practice to consume every bit of potential we have to relate to ourselves and alienate us from ourselves is the point where alienation becomes a problem in a capitalist society. In a society that is not capitalist, social relations flourish as the human relationship to the labor process is restored by working as an expression of our nature rather than to receive a wage. Human activity as a result of this receives a similar restoration in which it regains the ability of the individual to again impose its own subjective image of existence. An indication for what an un-alienated society would look like
The essence of human beings relations to each other is formulated through the process of labor. In modern society, labor has taken on a form of production that is not necessarily production of one’s own desires; rather, what Marx refers to as estranged labor, the idea that this form of production makes man alien to the product of his labor. Alienation according to Marx is the objectification of human powers used for production that does not represent your own essence. Once the worker puts their life into the object they produce through their labor, it’s gone forever. To this effect your labor is what enables your existence, rather than your existence being displayed through your labor. When means of existence are displayed through labor, we approach a problem which for Marx is that of why alienation in a capitalist society is bad for individuals. The inherent relationship between capitalist to labor was for Marx the downfall of capitalism. The negative relationship forms when the capitalist’s only offer is an exchange for the most amount of labor for the least amount of compensation; this allows alienation to consume every form of human relations existing in a Capitalist economy. “Each man views the other with the standard and the position in which he finds himself as a worker.”(Marx 1844 pg.77) At the point where we allow an economic practice to consume every bit of potential we have to relate to ourselves and alienate us from ourselves is the point where alienation becomes a problem in a capitalist society. In a society that is not capitalist, social relations flourish as the human relationship to the labor process is restored by working as an expression of our nature rather than to receive a wage. Human activity as a result of this receives a similar restoration in which it regains the ability of the individual to again impose its own subjective image of existence. An indication for what an un-alienated society would look like
Cited: Marx, K. (1844). Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. New York NY: W.W. Norton and Company ltd. Castle House.