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Marx’s views on the alienation of labor
Marx’s views on the alienation of labor
Marx’s views on the alienation of labor
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Karl Marx on Estranged Labor In Karl Marx's early writing on "estranged labour" there is a clear and prevailing focus on the plight of the labourer. Marx's writing on estranged labour is and attempt to draw a stark distinction between property owners and workers. In the writing Marx argues that the worker becomes estranged from his labour because he is not the recipient of the product he creates. As a result labour is objectified, that is labour becomes the object of mans existence. As labour is objectified man becomes disillusioned and enslaved. Marx argues that man becomes to be viewed as a commodity worth only the labour he creates and man is further reduced to a subsisting animal void of any capacity of freedom except the will to labour. For Marx this all leads to the emergence of private property, the enemy of the proletariat. In fact Marx's writing on estranged labour is a repudiation of private property- a warning of how private property enslaves the worker. This writing on estranged labour is an obvious point of basis for Marx's Communist Manifesto. The purpose of this paper is to view Marx's concept of alienation (estranged labour) and how it limits freedom. For Marx man's freedom is relinquished or in fact wrested from his true nature once he becomes a labourer. This process is thoroughly explained throughout Estranged Labour. This study will reveal this process and argue it's validity. Appendant to this study on alienation there will be a micro-study which will attempt to ascertain Marx's view of freedom (i.e. positive or negative). The study on alienation in conjunction with the micro-study on Marx's view of freedom will help not only reveal why Marx feels labour limits mans freedom, but it will also identify exactly what kind of freedom is being limited. Estranged Labour Karl Marx identifies estranged labour as labour alien to man. Marx explains the condition of estranged labour as the result of man participating in an institution alien to his nature. It is my interpretation that man is alienated from his labour because he is not the reaper of what he sows. Because he is never the recipient of his efforts the labourer lacks identity with what he creates. For Marx then labour is "alien to the worker...[and]...does not belong to his essential being." Marx identifies two explanations of why mans lack of identity with labour leads him to be estranged from labour. (1) "[The labourer] does not develop freely his physical and mental energy, but instead mortifies his mind." In other words labour fails to nurture mans physical and mental capacities and instead drains
Marx’s idea of the estrangement of man from the product of his labor described the suffering of countless hours or work by the laborer, contributing to the production of a product that he could not afford with the wages he made. He helped to produce a product that only those wealthier than he could afford. As the society around him became more object-oriented, he became increasingly more alienated. In the lager, one factor that distanced the laborer from his product was that he no longer worked for a wage, but for survival. In a description of his fellow worker, Levi wrote, “He seems to think that his present situation is like outside, where it is honest and logical to work, as well as being of advantage, because according to what everyone says, the more one works the more one earns and eats.” Levi pitied his fellow worker for his naivety, as the Lager was not a place of labor for prosperity, but strictly a place of labor by force. One worked in order to live, focusing more on the uncertainty of their next meal, day, or even breath than the product of their l...
Marx states that the bourgeoisie not only took advantage of the proletariat through a horrible ratio of wages to labor, but also through other atrocities; he claims that it was common pract...
With the emergence of an industrial working class that arrived from the farms and countryside new theories and ideologies about the political economy began to appear. Karl Marx, a political philosopher during this time, introduced the idea of "alienation of labor". His theory proposed that labor has the ability to create a loss of reality in the laborer because the laborer himself becomes a commodity or object due to the nature of work. In terms of the roles of women it can be argued that the effect is even greater due to the limited choices of work available. This theme is expressed in literature through the writings of Gilman and Alcott.
Marx believed that society was beginning to break away from nature as a source of economical support. In the past, humans had relied heavily on agriculture to support themselves but with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, new technology began to replace old farming techniques and created new factory jobs in cities. Marx had rather extreme views on the extent to which nature in his time had become humanized as a result of human labor.[1] He commented that, “ Even the objects of the simplest “ sensuous certainty” are only given him through social development, industry and commercial intercourse.”[2] "Throughout their labor, humans shape their own material environment, thereby transforming the very nature of human existence in the process.”[3]
Karl Marx is one of the most influential socialists, economists, and philosophers to emerge in the 19th century. His work was largely ignored by the scholars of his lifetime, yet has gained rapid acceptance since his death in 1883. One of his greatest works includes the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 which introduces his central concepts of alienation labor. In this essay I will provide an interpretation of what I understand Marx’s account of alienated labor to be well as a critical evaluation of the material he provides.
...ower by the proletariat.2 Marx then tries to eliminate the power of the Bourgeois by eliminating property. Without private property the Bourgeois cannot control business and create capital.
Because of the conditions that the wage-workers worked in, Marx described it as exploitation. Marx felt that the wage workers were being exploited. The capitalist, also known as the bourgeoisie, were exploiting the wage workers, the proletariats, because of their cheap labor. They were essentially using them to create and increase their own profit. This in turn brought up alienation. Basically, alienation, also known as estrangement, is when a person is separated from their work, what they produce, themselves, and their environment. Marx’s theory of alienation was used to describe workers laboring under the capitalist society. The workers, also known as wage laborers, were commodities—things that are bought, sold, or exchanged in the market. They were selling their labor which means that they were being alienated from what they were doing.
Marx on page 327 of his essay estranged labor is describing what to him were
For example, we work 10 to 12-hour work days (Module 10, Alienation at Work). This is true, truck drivers drive for long hours. They are more likely to be alienated since most of their day is occupied on the road delivering loads. Drivers have less power because they need to work, they need to get the job done since work is essential. Karl Marx notes that work is compulsory, not voluntary (Module 10, Marxist Concept of Alienation). For example, drivers are told what loads to deliver they do not chose to do it, rather they are told what to do. Thus, leading to the idea that we are controlled by someone else. Truck drivers are controlled by dispatch and Marx calls this the workers “essence” (Module 10, Marxist Concept of Alienation). What they produce does not belong to them, thus creating alienation from work and the production. Drivers are creating something not for themselves, but for someone else, in particular their employer. Alienation is about how work is organized, we can see that for truck drivers work can be alienating. Drivers tend to be separated and left alone; told what to do.
Marx, Karl. "The Alienation of Labor." Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Richard Hooker, 1996: 1-9.
Marx’s theory of alienation describes the separation of things that naturally belong together. For Marx, alienation is experienced in four forms. These include alienation from ones self, alienation from the work process, alienation from the product and alienation from other people. Workers are alienated from themselves because they are forced to sell their labor for a wage. Workers are alienated from the process because they don’t own the means of production. Workers are alienated from the product because the product of labor belongs to the capitalists. Workers do not own what they produce. Workers are alienated from other people because in a capitalist economy workers see each other as competition for jobs. Thus for Marx, labor is simply a means to an end.
In definition, private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is different from public property in which public property are assets owned by state or government compared to a private business or individual. Yet, in Marx’s opinion, “private property is thus the product, the result, the necessary consequence of alienated labor, of the external relation of the worker to nature and to himself. Private property thus results by analysis from the concept of alienated labor, of alienated man, of estranged labor, of estranged life, o...
THE TERM "alienation" in normal usage refers to a feeling of separateness, of being alone and apart from others. For Marx, alienation was not a feeling or a mental condition, but an economic and social condition of class society--in particular, capitalist society.
Producing goods or services are dictated not by employees but by their employers. If profits exist, employers are the ones that benefit more so than the regular worker. “Even when working people experience absolute gains in their standard of living, their position, relative to that of capitalists, deteriorates.” (Rinehart, Pg. 14). The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Hard work wears down the employee leaving them frustrated in their spare time. Workers are estranged from the products they produce. At the end of the day, they get paid for a day’s work but they have no control over the final product that was produced or sold. To them, productivity does not equal satisfaction. The products are left behind for the employer to sell and make a profit. In discussions with many relatives and friends that have worked on an assembly line, they knew they would not be ...
This book contains a basic yet earnest truth. This world requires Marx now like never before. This thin volume ought to help to arm another era of socialists with the thoughts important to win the fights ahead. At exactly that point will we all be able to appreciate an all-around progressive