Karl Marx: Alienation
Karl Marx (1818-1883) utilizes the rhetorical strategy of explicit word usage to convey his message dealing with alienation. In his early writing on "Alienated Labour," there is a clear and prevailing focus on the predicament of the labourer. In my eyes it is an attempt to draw a stark distinction between property owners and workers. The purpose of this paper is to view Marx's concept of alienation and how it affects a particular individual. To do so we will look at what Marx means by alienation, the different sorts of alienation that he uncovered, and the relationship between the capitalistic, class society and alienation itself. According to Oxford's English Dictionary, alienation is defined as "estranged or to make hostile"(19). This is only the beginning of what "alienation" means to Karl Marx. "Marx's philosophy, like much of existential thinking, represents a protest against man's alienation, his loss of himself and his transformation into a thing; it is a movement against the dehumanization and automatization of man inherent in the development of Western industrialism"(Fromm, V). Marx was a believer in an inevitable revolution between capitalists, and the workers employed in their industries. He believed that the actual
Bailey, Gordon, Noga Gayle. Sociology: An Introduction. From the Classics to Contemporary Feminists. Toronto: Oxford, 1993. cost of any product is simply the price of material and most importantly, the labour employed to create it. However, the owner of the industry does no labour in creating the product, but rather buys a labourer and sells the results of that man's work. Marx therefore considered any profit made in the sale of the product to be stolen from the worker. With this in mind, we turn to Ma! Melchert, Norman. The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy. 3rd Edition. Toronto: Mayfield, 1999. rx's actual concept of alienation according to author Erich Fromm. "Alienation (or "estrangement") means, for Marx, that man does not experience himself as the acting agent in his grasp of the world, but that the world (nature, others, and he himself) remain alien to him. They stand above and against him as objects, even though they may be objects of his own creation. Alienation is essentially experiencing the world and oneself passively, receptively, as the subject separated from the object"(44). We see that this statement holds true when we read Marx's first manuscript of 'Alienated Labour.' "[W]e have shown that the worker sinks to the level of a commodity, and to a most miserable commodity, that the misery of the worker increases with the power and volume of his production..."(Bailey Gayle, 31). More specifically, alienation is a state of consciousness resulting from a specific method of relationship between men and objects. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ rivate property, acquisitiveness, the separation of labour, capital, and land, exchange and competition, value and the devaluation of man, monopoly and competition and the system of money" (Baily Gayle, 32). As we see here, Marx is defining all the characteristics of a capitalistic society in relation to alienation. With this in mind, it can only be true that the cause of alienation originates in a capitalistic, class society. Also flowing from the previous forms of alienation we can derive a view as to why the worker is alienated from the capitalist. In general, the two are separated because their goals are different. Each capitalist searches for employees that he can degrade to the cheapest commodity. It is the goal of the capitalist to profit from the objectified labour of the worker. Paying the labourer the least amount of money possible accomplishes this. However, this view is alien to that of the labourer's. The worker's view compels him to strive for the highest paying job available. This is best described when author Norman Melchert writes, "the capitalists pay the workers no more than is necessary to keep the workers alive, working, and reproducing. This is possible in part because there are typically more workers than jobs. So the worker takes on the characteristic of a commodity in the system; like all commodities, the capitalist tries to buy it as cheaply as possible. As a commodity, of !
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Approximate Word count = 2328
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)
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