Summary Of Karl Marx Estranged Labor

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Prompt 1:
In Karl Marx Estranged Labor he explains how capitalism divides society into two parts, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. He explains the proletariat are the working class who produce commodities in the society in which they live. This includes things such as working in factories, to producing natural resources. The bourgeoisie are the members of this society who own all the means of production. They own the factories in which the proletariat work, and essentially dictate their lives. Since the bourgeoisie's own all the means of production they ultimately own the product which is produced. Marx explains how this, almost complete control, is what causes there to be three levels of alienation, which the working class may feel from …show more content…

He elaborates on many of Marx teachings regarding commodity and how commodity feticism ultimately leads to the proletariat class of people becoming nothing more than objects in the game that is capitalism. Lukacs says that, “as the commodity becomes universally dominant, this situation changes radically and qualitatively. The fate of the worker becomes the fate of society as a whole” (Lukacs 8). Essentially, Lukacs is arguing much of what Marx explained to the world earlier, that when commodity becomes the driving force in a society, the working class in the society will suffer. This is exactly what they believed would happen in a capitalistic society. This is where Lukacs begins to expand on Marx’s Reification Theory. Lukacs touches on Marx work when he quotes him when regarding factory work, “the individual, himself divided, is transformed into the automatic mechanism of partial labor” and thus “crippled to the point of abnormality” (Lukacs 15). They are arguing that within a society which expresses a great deal of commodity fetischism, or the absolute need for commodity, the worker and the commodity almost change places. For the bourgeoisie, who run capitalistic society the worker is nothing. The working class merely take on the character of an object whereas the object becomes more important in that society than those of the working

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