2. What is the significance of this concept, for Marx? What does Marx believe the concept of alienation explains or illuminates?
In the United States the minimum work age is 14. This means that anyone in the country who is 14 years old or older is eligible to work. Many of the jobs people have when they first join the working class include customer, retail or food services. In these fields, one works for a larger corporation and is given incentives to improve sales. The more goods or services produce usually means more money and more profit to the company. But, when one makes more money for a company he or she is not better off. That person only becomes more driven to continue the cycle. The reality is that the majority of the population and working class will continue this process for 51 more years until the age of 65 and then retire. After all those years, a worker would have made exponential profit for his/her bosses only to receive a fraction of that as compensation for services rendered. Also, over the course of time one alienates oneself as a result. This is an idea that Karl Marx introduced in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. That theory of a laborers working to make a fortune for the industries heads only to receive little return. At the same time, the laborers do not have the ability to freely control their actions. They are submitted to the will of their industry.
Marxs first point is that workers are alienated from the product of their labor. As a laborer one is removed from the product of his or her labor. Time and energy are invested into the creation of a product that is beyond the reach of the laborer who created it. Laborers cannot reap the benefit of the product they produce because they are only workers for a larger industry. Though the same product produced contributes to the capital, it is not the workers capital as
they are disposable tools to the business owner. Workers contribute to the organizations of private ownership through their labor and the world of ownership is restricted to laborers as they are the ones who are employed. They are not the employers. Thus, alienating employees from their product and from the industry that the product thrives in. Marxs second point is that laborers are alienated from their own labor. In other words, they are alienated from their own work. It is not in our natural instincts as human beings to work or to be employed by another. Yet, why do humans work? Human beings work because work provides a means to meet ones natural instincts of food, shelter and security. All of which cost money which is earned through labor. Therefore, the activities one preforms at work are not his or her own actions. They are actions that are forced on to a worker to receive compensation which is used to meet his or her needs. From this we can infer that in submitting oneself to work the subject loses himself or herself at the workplace, only to feel restored outside of the workplace when ones actions once again become free, rather than the compelled actions that occur in the workplace. Marx third point explains how man is alienated from his species being because he has the ability to choose how to define himself or herself. In Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Karl Marx says, [A species] is immediately one with its life activity it does not distinguish itself from it. It is its life activity (Marx, 6). However, this is different from humans who join the workforce to meet their basic needs. As a result, they may not identify with their work activities, but rather identify with their activities outside of the work place, like sleeping and eating. The activities one preforms at work is forced and limit freedom and choice. Freedom and choice make up individuality. Therefore, if ones individuality is removed from ones labor, then how can a human beings be defined by their labor? Even in the slight chance that laborers
do identify with their product even with their free thought removed from the production process. Laborers are isolated from their product, because they have no control over what becomes of the product, even if they put their individualities into it. This strengthens the idea that humans are isolated from their labor. In being isolated from ones labor, the laborer has no control over the product and they are forced to disconnect with the product which goes against the species- being which is to identify with ones activity. The final form of alienation is the alienation from other humans. In the system of employee (laborers) and employer, the laborer is alienated from the employer (who is another human). The Laborer is alienated from his/her product, labor and species-being all of which contribute to the overall alienation a laborer has towards labor and to employer who is responsible for the alienation. In Capitalism, as long as they are the laborers, human beings will be alienated from the capital of the private property owned by other people. A result, forced labors breeds alienation towards the other humans outside of the workforce who orchestrate the forced labor of laborers. Marx believes alienated labor results in private property. Private property is the “Necessary consequence [of alienated labor] (Marx, 9). Marx went on to say that private property results from the Alienated labor [of the]… estranged man (Marx, 9). The significance of the relationship between private property and mankinds alienation is to expose that economy is the result of workers. But rather than reward the workers those who amass private property reap the rewards. The significance of this concept is to analyze the workers situation and question the enslavement of capitalism (private property). Marx goes on to elaborate that Wages are a direct consequence of estranged labor (Marx, 10). Wages are a result of the labor of workers, therefore enslaving workers to their wage. Marx is observes workers who are alienated
and taken advantage of by non-laborers who own private property. One can infer that the conclusion drawn from the observations and inferences of private property is that humans who do not own property become enslaved to their wages and to those who own property. The workers are coerced into an alienated labor in which the individual forfeits his or her free- thought becoming enslaved to the system of private property to accept that system and to continue the cycle.
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