marx, karl and alienation
alienation is a concept developed by Marx to situate and understand more deeply the relationship between the worker and work under capitalism. alienation, according to Marx, occurs as a separation: a fractured, improper, distanced or estranged relationship (Woodfin and Zarate 2009).
1. Why does work within a capitalist economy produce alienation?
The worker is a commodity. Differences in age, sex, racial status, etc. have no meaning except as cost and/or profit to an employer. Workers become an appendage of the machine.
The the cost of production (wages) is restricted almost entirely to the means of subsistence that the worker requires for their maintenance. What a worker earns goes immediately back to capitalists in order for the worker to sustain themself.
“No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie: the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.”
As the devaluation of a human goes up, as they become more machine like, the profits go up. The more repulsive the work, the lower the wage. The more goods someone produces the less value they have…the worker puts their life into the objects. The more wealth he produces the more wealth the owners have, then in relation to the owners the worker is poorer, the worker does not receive anything from working more.
The devaluation of the human world increases in direct relation with the increase in value of the world of things.
2. In what ways does labor within capitalism alienate the worker?
The work is external to the worker and not of their nature, it is forced upon them, work is a means to an end, it is work for someone else. The worker feels at home in leisure, yet at work the worker is homeless. The worker is alienated from: nature, themself and fellow humans/their species. Makes species-life into a means of individual life, a need to maintain existence. Life appears as a means of life. The worker is free in only animal functions: eating, drinking and procreating; while in their human functions (working) they are reduced to animal. The conditions of proletariats become more equalized, machinery obliterates all distinctions of labor and wages are reduced to same low level.
3. Under what conditions do you think Marx would argue that labor is not alienating?
If the worker freely wants to do the work, if the worker receives benefits and the rewards from the work and if the worker takes joy in the process.
In review, according to Marx, in a capitalist economy, work produces alienation because:
- Life begins when work ends
- Labor is external to the worker
- In work, the worker denies themself
For Marx, "naked self-interest=cash" is the primary relationship between humans. This self-interest in money has converted the priest, the lawyer, the doctor, and the poet into wage-laborers. Further, he argues that the family relation is at its core a monetary relation.
how has our society alienated you?
Credits:
Created with images by IraEm - "danbo nyangbo figures" • Computerizer - "alien female woman" • Bru-nO - "marx karl communism"