Karl Marx's theory of alienation describes the estrangement (German: ''Entfremdung'') of people from aspects of their human nature (''Gattungswesen'', 'species-essence') as a consequence of the

division of labor The division of labour is the separation of the tasks in any economic system or organisation so that participants may specialise (specialisation). Individuals, organizations, and nations are endowed with, or acquire specialised capabilities, and ...

and living in a society of stratified social classes. The alienation from the self is a consequence of being a mechanistic part of a social class, the condition of which estranges a person from their humanity. The theoretical basis of alienation is that the worker invariably loses the ability to determine life and destiny when deprived of the right to think (conceive) of themselves as the director of their own actions; to determine the character of said actions; to define relationships with other people; and to own those items of value from goods and services, produced by their own labour. Although the worker is an autonomous, self-realized human being, as an economic entity this worker is directed to goals and diverted to activities that are dictated by the bourgeoisie—who own the

means of production The means of production is a term which describes land, Work (human activity), labor and capital (economics), capital that can be used to produce products (such as goods or Service (economics), services); however, the term can also refer to anyth ...

—in order to extract from the worker the maximum amount of

surplus value In Marxian economics, surplus value is the difference between the amount raised through a sale of a product and the amount it cost to the owner of that product to manufacture it: i.e. the amount raised through sale of the product minus the cos ...

in the course of business competition among industrialists. In the '' Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844'' (1932),

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

expressed the ''Entfremdung'' theory—of estrangement from the self. Philosophically, the theory of ''Entfremdung'' relies upon '' The Essence of Christianity'' (1841) by

Ludwig Feuerbach Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (; 28 July 1804 – 13 September 1872) was a German anthropologist and philosopher, best known for his book '' The Essence of Christianity'', which provided a critique of Christianity that strongly influenced gen ...

, which states that the idea of a supernatural god has alienated the natural characteristics of the

human being Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, an ...

. Moreover,

Max Stirner Johann Kaspar Schmidt (25 October 1806 – 26 June 1856), known professionally as Max Stirner, was a German post-Hegelian philosopher, dealing mainly with the Hegelian notion of social alienation and self-consciousness. Stirner is often seen a ...

extended Feuerbach's analysis in ''

The Ego and its Own ''The Ego and Its Own'' (german: Der Einzige und sein Eigentum), also translated as ''The Unique and its Property'', is an 1844 work by German philosopher Max Stirner. It presents a post-Hegelian critique of Christianity and traditional morali ...

'' (1845) that even the idea of 'humanity' is an alienating concept for individuals to intellectually consider in its full philosophic implication. Marx and

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ,"Engels"
'' The German Ideology'' (1845).

Types of alienation

In a capitalist society, the worker's alienation from their humanity occurs because the worker can express labour—a fundamental social aspect of personal individuality—only through a private system of industrial production in which each worker is an instrument: i.e., a thing, not a person. In the "Comment on James Mill" (1844), Marx explained alienation thus:

Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings. Each of us would have, in two ways, affirmed himself, and the other person. (i) In my production I would have objectified my individuality, its specific character, and, therefore, enjoyed not only an individual manifestation of my life during the activity, but also, when looking at the object, I would have the individual pleasure of knowing my personality to be objective, visible to the senses, and, hence, a power beyond all doubt. (ii) In your enjoyment, or use, of my product I would have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied a human need by my work, that is, of having objectified man's essential nature, and of having thus created an object corresponding to the need of another man's essential nature ... Our products would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature.

In the '' Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844'' (1844/1932), Marx identified four types of alienation that occur to the worker labouring under a

capitalist Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, pri ...

system of industrial production. They are alienation of the worker from their product, from the act of production, from their '' Gattungswesen'' ('species-essence') and from other workers.

From their product

The design of the product and how it is produced are determined, not by the producers who make it (the workers), nor by the consumers of the product (the buyers), but by the capitalist class who besides accommodating the worker's manual labour also accommodate the intellectual labour of the

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

and the industrial designer who create the product in order to shape the

taste The gustatory system or sense of taste is the sensory system that is partially responsible for the perception of taste (flavor). Taste is the perception produced or stimulated when a substance in the mouth reacts chemically with taste recepto ...

of the consumer to buy the goods and services at a price that yields a maximal profit. Aside from the workers having no control over the design-and-production protocol, alienation (''Entfremdung'') broadly describes the conversion of labour (work as an activity), which is performed to generate a use value (the product), into a commodity, which—like products—can be assigned an exchange value. That is, the capitalist gains control of the manual and intellectual workers and the benefits of their labour, with a system of industrial production that converts said labour into concrete products (goods and services) that benefit the consumer. Moreover, the capitalist production system also reifies labour into the "concrete" concept of "work" (a job), for which the worker is paid wages—at the lowest-possible rate—that maintain a maximum rate of return on the capitalist's investment capital; this is an aspect of exploitation. Furthermore, with such a reified system of industrial production, the profit (exchange value) generated by the sale of the goods and services (products) that could be paid to the workers is instead paid to the capitalist classes: the functional capitalist, who manages the means of production; and the rentier capitalist, who owns the means of production.

From the act of production

In the capitalist mode of production, the generation of products (goods and services) is accomplished with an endless sequence of discrete, repetitive motions that offer the worker little psychological satisfaction for "a job well done." By means of

commodification Within a capitalist economic system, commodification is the transformation of things such as goods, services, ideas, nature, personal information, people or animals into objects of trade or commodities.For animals"United Nations Commodity ...

, the labor power of the worker is reduced to wages (an exchange value); the psychological estrangement (''Entfremdung'') of the worker results from the unmediated relation between his productive labor and the wages paid to him for the labor. The worker is alienated from the means of production via two forms: wage compulsion and the imposed production content. The worker is bound to unwanted labour as a means of survival, labour is not "voluntary but coerced" (forced labor). The worker is only able to reject wage compulsion at the expense of their life and that of their family. The distribution of private property in the hands of wealth owners, combined with government enforced taxes compel workers to labor. In a capitalist world, our means of survival is based on monetary exchange, therefore we have no other choice than to sell our labour power and consequently be bound to the demands of the capitalist. The worker " es not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself;" " bor is external to the worker,"Marx, Karl. 8441932. '' Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844''. it is not a part of their essential being. During work, the worker is miserable, unhappy and drained of their energy, work "mortifies his body and ruins his mind." The production content, direction and form are imposed by the capitalist. The worker is being controlled and told what to do since they do not own the means of production they have no say in production, "labor is external to the worker, i.e. it does not belong to his essential being. A person's mind should be free and conscious, instead it is controlled and directed by the capitalist, "the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own but someone else's, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another." This means he cannot freely and spontaneously create according to his own directive as labor's form and direction belong to someone else.

From their ''Gattungswesen'' (species-essence)

The '' Gattungswesen'' ('species-essence' or 'human nature'), of individuals is not discrete (separate and apart) from their activity as a worker and as such species-essence also comprises all of innate human potential as a person. Conceptually, in the term ''species-essence'', the word ''species'' describes the intrinsic human mental essence that is characterized by a "plurality of interests" and "psychological dynamism," whereby every individual has the desire and the tendency to engage in the many activities that promote mutual human survival and psychological well-being, by means of emotional connections with other people, with society. The psychic value of a human consists in being able to conceive (think) of the ends of their actions as purposeful ideas, which are distinct from the actions required to realize a given idea. That is, humans are able to objectify their intentions by means of an idea of themselves as "the subject" and an idea of the thing that they produce, "the object." Conversely, unlike a human being an animal does not objectify itself as "the subject" nor its products as ideas, "the object," because an animal engages in directly self-sustaining actions that have neither a future intention, nor a

conscious Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

intention. Whereas a person's ''Gattungswesen'' does not exist independently of specific, historically conditioned activities, the essential nature of a human being is actualized when an individual—within their given historical circumstance—is free to subordinate their will to the internal demands they have imposed upon themselves by their imagination and not the external demands imposed upon individuals by other people.

Relations of production

Whatever the character of a person's consciousness ( will and

imagination Imagination is the production or simulation of novel objects, sensations, and ideas in the mind without any immediate input of the senses. Stefan Szczelkun characterises it as the forming of experiences in one's mind, which can be re-creations o ...

), societal existence is conditioned by their relationships with the people and things that facilitate survival, which is fundamentally dependent upon cooperation with others, thus, a person's consciousness is determined inter-subjectively (collectively), not subjectively (individually), because humans are a social animal. In the course of history, to ensure individual survival societies have organized themselves into groups who have different, basic relationships to the

. One societal group (class) owned and controlled the means of production while another societal class worked the means of production and in the

relations of production Relations of production (german: Produktionsverhältnisse, links=no) is a concept frequently used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their theory of historical materialism and in '' Das Kapital''. It is first explicitly used in Marx's publi ...

of that ''status quo'' the goal of the owner-class was to economically benefit as much as possible from the labour of the working class. In the course of economic development when a new type of economy displaced an old type of economy— agrarian

feudalism Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structu ...

superseded by mercantilism, in turn superseded by the

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

—the rearranged economic order of the social classes favored the social class who controlled the

technologies Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

(the means of production) that made possible the change in the relations of production. Likewise, there occurred a corresponding rearrangement of the human nature (''Gattungswesen'') and the system of values of the owner-class and of the working-class, which allowed each group of people to accept and to function in the rearranged ''status quo'' of production-relations. Despite the ideological promise of industrialization—that the mechanization of industrial production would raise the mass of the workers from a brutish life of subsistence existence to honorable work—the division of labour inherent to the capitalist mode of production thwarted the human nature ('' Gattungswesen'') of the worker and so rendered each individual into a mechanistic part of an industrialized system of production, from being a person capable of defining their value through direct, purposeful activity. Moreover, the near-total mechanization and automation of the industrial production system would allow the (newly) dominant

bourgeois The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. Th ...

capitalist social class to exploit the working class to the degree that the value obtained from their labour would diminish the ability of the worker to materially survive. Hence when the proletarian working-class become a sufficiently developed political force, they will effect a revolution and re-orient the

to the

—from a capitalist mode of production to a communist mode of production. In the resultant

communist society In Marxist thought, a communist society or the communist system is the type of society and economic system postulated to emerge from technological advances in the productive forces, representing the ultimate goal of the political ideology of ...

, the fundamental relation of the workers to the means of production would be equal and non-conflictual because there would be no artificial distinctions about the value of a worker's labour; the worker's humanity (''Gattungswesen'') thus respected, men and women would not become alienated. In the communist socio-economic organization, the relations of production would operate the

mode of production In the Marxist theory of historical materialism, a mode of production (German: ''Produktionsweise'', "the way of producing") is a specific combination of the: * Productive forces: these include human labour power and means of production (tool ...

and employ each worker according to their abilities and benefit each worker according to their needs. Hence, each worker could direct their labour to productive work suitable to their own innate abilities, rather than be forced into a narrowly defined, minimum-wage "job" meant to extract maximal profit from individual labour as determined by and dictated under the capitalist mode of production. In the classless, collectively-managed communist society, the exchange of value between the objectified productive labour of one worker and the consumption benefit derived from that production will not be determined by or directed to the narrow interests of a bourgeois capitalist class, but instead will be directed to meet the needs of each producer and consumer. Although production will be differentiated by the degree of each worker's abilities, the purpose of the communist system of industrial production will be determined by the collective requirements of society, not by the profit-oriented demands of a capitalist social class who live at the expense of the greater society. Under the

collective ownership Collective ownership is the ownership of property by all members of a group. The breadth or narrowness of the group can range from a whole society to a set of coworkers in a particular enterprise (such as one collective farm). In the latter (nar ...

of the means of production, the relation of each worker to the mode of production will be identical and will assume the character that corresponds to the universal interests of the communist society. The direct distribution of the fruits of the labour of each worker to fulfill the interests of the working class—and thus to an individuals own interest and benefit—will constitute an un-alienated state of labour conditions, which restores to the worker the fullest exercise and determination of their human nature.

From other workers

Capitalism reduces the labour of the worker to a commercial

commodity In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. The price of a co ...

that can be traded in the competitive labour-market, rather than as a constructive socio-economic activity that is part of the collective common effort performed for personal survival and the betterment of society. In a capitalist economy, the businesses who own the

establish a competitive labour-market meant to extract from the worker as much labour (value) as possible in the form of capital. The capitalist economy's arrangement of the

provokes social conflict by pitting worker against worker in a competition for "higher wages", thereby alienating them from their mutual economic interests; the effect is a

false consciousness In Marxist theory, false consciousness is a term describing the ways in which material, ideological, and institutional processes are said to mislead members of the proletariat and other class actors within capitalist societies, concealing the ...

, which is a form of ideological control exercised by the capitalist bourgeoisie through its

cultural hegemony In Marxist philosophy, cultural hegemony is the dominance of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class who manipulate the culture of that society—the beliefs and explanations, perceptions, values, and mores—so that the worldv ...

. Furthermore, in the capitalist mode of production the philosophic collusion of

religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural ...

in justifying the

facilitates the realization and then worsens the alienation (''Entfremdung'') of the worker from their humanity; it is a socio-economic role independent of religion being " the opiate of the masses".

Philosophical significance and influences

Marxist theory Marxist philosophy or Marxist theory are works in philosophy that are strongly influenced by Karl Marx's materialist approach to theory, or works written by Marxists. Marxist philosophy may be broadly divided into Western Marxism, which drew ...

, ''Entfremdung'' ('

alienation Alienation may refer to: * Alienation (property law), the legal transfer of title of ownership to another party * ''Alienation'' (video game), a 2016 PlayStation 4 video game * "Alienation" (speech), an inaugural address by Jimmy Reid as Rector ...

') is a foundational proposition about man's progress towards self-actualisation. In the '' Oxford Companion to Philosophy'' (2005), Ted Honderich described the influences of

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends ...

and

upon Karl Marx:

For Hegel, the unhappy consciousness is divided against itself, separated from its "essence", which it has placed in a "beyond".

As used by philosophers Hegel and Marx, the reflexive German verbs ''entäussern'' ('to divest one's self of') and ''entfremden'' ('to become estranged') indicate that the term ''alienation'' denotes self-alienation: to be estranged from one's essential nature. Therefore, alienation is a lack of self-worth, the absence of meaning in one's life, consequent to being coerced to lead a life without opportunity for self-fulfillment, without the opportunity to become actualized, to become one's

self The self is an individual as the object of that individual’s own reflective consciousness. Since the ''self'' is a reference by a subject to the same subject, this reference is necessarily subjective. The sense of having a self—or ''selfhood ...

.Honderich, Ted. 2005. '' Oxford Companion to Philosophy''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. See for a discussion of Hegel's theory of "actualization." Charles Edward Andrew Lincoln IV, ''Hegelian Dialectical Analysis of U.S. Voting Laws'', 42 U. Dayton L. Rev. 87 (2017). See Lincoln, Charle
The Dialectical Path of Law
2021 Rowman & Littlefield. In ''

The Phenomenology of Spirit ''The Phenomenology of Spirit'' (german: Phänomenologie des Geistes) is the most widely-discussed philosophical work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; its German title can be translated as either ''The Phenomenology of Spirit'' or ''The Phenomen ...

'' (1807), Hegel described the stages in the development of the human ''

Geist ''Geist'' () is a German noun with a significant degree of importance in German philosophy. Its semantic field corresponds to English ghost, spirit, mind, intellect. Some English translators resort to using "spirit/mind" or "spirit (mind)" to he ...

'' ('spirit'), by which men and women progress from ignorance to knowledge, of the self and of the world. Developing Hegel's human-spirit proposition, Marx said that those poles of

idealism In philosophy, the term idealism identifies and describes metaphysics, metaphysical perspectives which assert that reality is indistinguishable and inseparable from perception and understanding; that reality is a mental construct closely con ...

—"spiritual ignorance" and "self-understanding"—are replaced with material categories, whereby "spiritual ignorance" becomes "alienation" and "self-understanding" becomes man's realisation of his ''Gattungswesen'' (species-essence).

''Entfremdung'' and the theory of history

In Part I: "Feuerbach – Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook" of '' The German Ideology'' (1846), Karl Marx said the following:

Things have now come to such a pass that the individuals must appropriate the existing totality of productive forces, not only to achieve self-activity, but also, merely, to safeguard their very existence.

That humans psychologically require the life activities that lead to their self-actualisation as persons remains a consideration of secondary historical relevance because the capitalist mode of production eventually will

exploit Exploit means to take advantage of something (a person, situation, etc.) for one's own end, especially unethically or unjustifiably. Exploit can mean: * Exploitation of natural resources *Exploit (computer security) * Video game exploit *Exploita ...

and impoverish the

proletariat The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philo ...

until compelling them to social revolution for survival. Yet, social alienation remains a practical concern, especially among the contemporary philosophers of

Marxist humanism Marxist humanism is an international body of thought and political action rooted in an interpretation of the works of Karl Marx. It is an investigation into "what human nature consists of and what sort of society would be most conducive to huma ...

. In ''The Marxist-Humanist Theory of State-Capitalism'' (1992),

Raya Dunayevskaya Raya Dunayevskaya (born Raya Shpigel, ; May 1, 1910 - June 9, 1987), later Rae Spiegel, also known by the pseudonym Freddie Forest, was the American founder of the philosophy of Marxist humanism in the United States. At one time Leon Trotsky's s ...

discusses and describes the existence of the desire for self-activity and self-actualisation among wage-labour workers struggling to achieve the elementary goals of material life in a capitalist economy.

''Entfremdung'' and social class

In Chapter 4 of '' The Holy Family'' (1845), Marx said that capitalists and proletarians are equally alienated, but that each social class experiences alienation in a different form:

The propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-estrangement. But the former class feels at ease and strengthened in this self-estrangement, it recognizes estrangement as its own power, and has in it the semblance of a human existence. The class of the proletariat feels annihilated, this means that they cease to exist in estrangement; it sees in it its own powerlessness and in the reality of an inhuman existence. It is, to use an expression of Hegel, in its abasement, the indignation at that abasement, an indignation to which it is necessarily driven by the contradiction between its human nature and its condition of life, which is the outright, resolute and comprehensive negation of that nature. Within this antithesis, the private property-owner is therefore the conservative side, and the proletarian the destructive side. From the former arises the action of preserving the antithesis, from the latter the action of annihilating it.

Criticism

In discussion of "aleatory materialism" (''matérialisme aléatoire'') or "materialism of the encounter," French philosopher

Louis Althusser Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. Althusser w ...

criticized a teleological (goal-oriented) interpretation of Marx's theory of alienation because it rendered the

as the

subject Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to: Philosophy *''Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing **Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective cons ...

of history; an interpretation tainted with the absolute idealism of the "philosophy of the subject," which he criticized as the "bourgeois ideology of philosophy".Bullock, Allan, and Stephen Trombley, eds. 1999. "Alienation." Pp. 22 in ''The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought''.

References

External links

* Warburton, Nigel. 19 January 2015.
Karl Marx on Alienation
" narrated by

Gillian Anderson Gillian Leigh Anderson ( ; born August 9, 1968) is an American actress. Her credits include the roles of FBI Special Agent Dana Scully in the series ''The X-Files'', ill-fated socialite Lily Bart in Terence Davies's film '' The House of Mirt ...

. ''A History of Ideas''. UK:

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of Talk radio, spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history fro ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Marx's theory of alienation Labour economics Marxist theory Social theories