Karl Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...

's theory of alienation describes the separation and estrangement of people from their work, their wider world, their

human nature Human nature comprises the fundamental dispositions and characteristics—including ways of Thought, thinking, feeling, and agency (philosophy), acting—that humans are said to have nature (philosophy), naturally. The term is often used to denote ...

, and their selves. Alienation is a consequence of the

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

in a

capitalist Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by ...

society, wherein a human being's life is lived as a mechanistic part of a

social class A social class or social stratum is a grouping of people into a set of Dominance hierarchy, hierarchical social categories, the most common being the working class and the Bourgeoisie, capitalist class. Membership of a social class can for exam ...

. The theoretical basis of alienation is that a 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 these 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-realised human being, as an economic entity this worker is directed to goals and diverted to activities that are dictated by the

bourgeoisie The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and aristocracy. They are traditionally contrasted wi ...

—who own the

means of production In political philosophy, the means of production refers to the generally necessary assets and resources that enable a society to engage in production. While the exact resources encompassed in the term may vary, it is widely agreed to include the ...

—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 manufacture it: i.e. the amount raised through sale of the product minus the cost of the materials, plant and ...

in the course of business competition among industrialists. The theory, while found throughout Marx's writings, is explored most extensively in his early works, particularly the '' Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844'', and in his later working notes for '' Capital'', the '' Grundrisse''. Marx's theory draws heavily from

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a 19th-century German idealist. His influence extends across a wide range of topics from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political philosophy and t ...

, and from '' The Essence of Christianity'' (1841) by Ludwig Feuerbach. Max Stirner extended Feuerbach's analysis in '' The Ego and its Own'' (1845), claiming that even the idea of 'humanity' is itself an alienating concept. Marx and

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ;"Engels"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.The German Ideology'' (1845).

Two forms of alienation

In his writings from the early 1840s,

uses the German words ''Entfremdung'' ("alienation" or "estrangement", derived from 'fremd', which means "alien") and ''Entäusserung'' ("externalisation" or "alienation", which alludes to the idea of relinquishment or surrender) to suggest an unharmonious or hostile separation between entities that naturally belong together. The concept of alienation has two forms: "subjective" and "objective". Alienation is "subjective" when human individuals feel "estranged" or do not feel at home in the modern social world. By this account, alienation consists in an individuals' experience of his or her life as meaningless, or his/herself as worthless. "Objective" alienation, by contrast, makes no reference to the beliefs or feelings of human beings. Rather, human beings are objectively alienated when they are hindered from developing their essential human capacities. For Marx, objective alienation is the cause of subjective alienation: individuals experience their lives as lacking meaning or fulfilment because modern society does not promote the deployment of their human capacities. Marx derives this concept from

, whom he credits with significant insight into the basic structure of the modern social world, and how it is disfigured by alienation. Hegel's view is that, in the modern social world, objective alienation has already been vanquished, as the institutions of the rational or modern state enable individuals to fulfill themselves. Hegel believes that the

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

civil society Civil society can be understood as the "third sector" of society, distinct from government and business, and including the family and the private sphere.political state facilitate people's actualization, both as individuals and members of a community. Nonetheless, there still exists widespread subjective alienation, where people feel estranged from the modern social world, or do not recognize modern society as a home. Hegel's project is not to reform or change the institutions of the modern social world, but to change the way in which society is understood by its members. Marx shares Hegel's belief that subjective alienation is widespread, but denies that the modern state enables individuals to actualize themselves. Marx instead takes widespread subjective alienation to indicate that objective alienation has not yet been overcome.

Dimensions of alienated labour

Marx stated that in a capitalist society, workers are alienated from their labour - they cannot decide on their own productive activities, nor can they use or own the value of what they produce. In the " Notes on James Mill" (1844), Marx explained alienation thus:

Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings . . . 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''. ... Our products would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature.

In the first manuscript of the '' Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,'' Marx identifies four interrelated dimensions of alienated labour: alienated labour alienates the worker, first, from the product of his labour; second, from his own activity; third, from what Marx, following Feuerbach, calls species-being; and fourth, from other human beings.

From a worker's product

Marx begins with an account of man's alienation from the products of his labour. In work, a worker ''objectifies'' his labour in the object that he produces. The objectification of a worker's labour is simultaneously its alienation. The worker loses control of the product to the owner of the

, the

. The product's sale by the capitalist further reinforces the capitalist's power of wealth over the worker. The worker thus relates to the product as an alien object, which dominates and enslaves him. The products of his labour constitute a separate world of objects, which is alien to him. The worker creates an object, which appears to be his property. However, he now becomes its property. Where in earlier historical epochs, one person ruled over another, now the thing rules over the person, the product over the producer. 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 Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...

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. Taste is the perception stimulated when a substance in the mouth biochemistry, reacts chemically with taste receptor cells l ...

of the consumer to buy the goods and services at a price that yields a maximal

profit Profit may refer to: Business and law * Profit (accounting), the difference between the purchase price and the costs of bringing to market * Profit (economics), normal profit and economic profit * Profit (real property), a nonpossessory inter ...

. 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 Use value () or value in use is a concept in classical political economy and Marxist economics. It refers to the tangible features of a commodity (a tradeable object) which can satisfy some human requirement, want or need, or which serves a usef ...

(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 this 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 a worker's productive activity

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, 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 labour and the wages paid to him for the labour. 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 labour). 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 Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental Capacity (law), legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which is owned by a state entity, and from Collective ownership ...

in the hands of wealth owners, combined with government enforced taxes compel workers to labour. 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, "labour 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 labour 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 labour's form and direction belong to someone else.

From a worker's ''Gattungswesen'' (species-being)

The '' Gattungswesen'' ('species-being' 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 characterised 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 realise 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 awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, a ...

intention. Whereas a person's ''Gattungswesen'' does not exist independently of specific, historically conditioned activities, the essential nature of a human being is actualised 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 Will may refer to: Common meanings * Will and testament, instructions for the disposition of one's property after death * Will (philosophy), or willpower * Will (sociology) * Will, volition (psychology) * Will, a modal verb - see Shall and will ...

and

imagination Imagination is the production of sensations, feelings and thoughts informing oneself. These experiences can be re-creations of past experiences, such as vivid memories with imagined changes, or completely invented and possibly fantastic scenes ...

), 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 organised 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 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 a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in Middle Ages, medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of struc ...

superseded by

mercantilism Mercantilism is a economic nationalism, nationalist economic policy that is designed to maximize the exports and minimize the imports of an economy. It seeks to maximize the accumulation of resources within the country and use those resources ...

, in turn superseded by the

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succee ...

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

technologies Technology is the application of Conceptual model, conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible too ...

(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 industrialisation—that the mechanisation of industrial production would raise the mass of the workers from a brutish life of subsistence existence to honourable 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 industrialised system of production, from being a person capable of defining their value through direct, purposeful activity. Moreover, the near-total mechanisation and automation of the industrial production system would allow the (newly) dominant

bourgeois The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and Aristocracy (class), aristocracy. They are tradition ...

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. As a result of this exploitation, when the proletarian working-class become a sufficiently developed political force, they will effect a revolution and re-orient the relations of production to the

—from a capitalist mode of production to a communist mode of production. In the resultant communist society, 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 organisation, the relations of production would operate the mode of production 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 private 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 la ...

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 fulfil the interests of the working class—and thus to an individual's 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 goods, good, usually a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the Market (economics), market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to w ...

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 relations of production 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, which is a form of ideological control exercised by the capitalist

through its cultural hegemony. Furthermore, in the capitalist mode of production the philosophic collusion of

religion Religion is a range of social system, social-cultural systems, including designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics in religion, ethics, or ...

in justifying the relations of production facilitates the realisation 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

The concept of alienation does not originate with Marx. Marx's two main influences in his use of the term are

and Ludwig Feuerbach.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

For Hegel, alienation consists in an "unhappy consciousness". By this term, Hegel means a misunderstood form of

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...

, or a Christianity that hasn't been interpreted according to Hegel's own pantheism. In ''

The Phenomenology of Spirit ''The Phenomenology of Spirit'' (or ''The Phenomenology of Mind''; ) is the most consequential philosophical work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel described the 1807 work, a ladder to the greater philosophica ...

'' (1807), Hegel described the stages in the development of the human '' Geist'' ('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 Idealism in philosophy, also known as philosophical realism or metaphysical idealism, is the set of metaphysics, metaphysical perspectives asserting that, most fundamentally, reality is equivalent to mind, Spirit (vital essence), spirit, or ...

— "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).

Ludwig Feuerbach

The middle-period writings of Ludwig Feuerbach, where he critiques

and

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

, are pre-occupied with the problem of alienation. In these works, Feuerbach argues that an inappropriate separation of individuals from their essential human nature is at the heart of Christianity. Feuerbach believes the alienation of modern individuals consists in their holding false beliefs about God. God is not an objective being, but is instead a projection of man's own essential predicates. Christian belief entails the sacrifice, the practical denial or repression, of essential human characteristics. Feuerbach characterises his own work as having a therapeutic goal – healing the painful separation at the heart of alienation.

''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 and impoverish the proletariat until compelling them to social revolution for survival. Yet, social alienation remains a practical concern, especially among the contemporary philosophers of Marxist humanism. In ''The Marxist-Humanist Theory of State-Capitalism'' (1992), Raya Dunayevskaya 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

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 recognises 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 who studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. Althusser was a long-time member an ...

criticised a

teleological Teleology (from , and )Partridge, Eric. 1977''Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English'' London: Routledge, p. 4187. or finalityDubray, Charles. 2020 912Teleology. In ''The Catholic Encyclopedia'' 14. New York: Robert Applet ...

(goal-oriented) interpretation of Marx's theory of alienation because it rendered the proletariat as the subject of history; an interpretation tainted with the absolute idealism of the "philosophy of the subject," which he criticised as the "bourgeois ideology of philosophy".Bullock, Allan, and Stephen Trombley, eds. 1999. "Alienation." Pp. 22 in ''The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought''.

Footnotes

References

* * * * * * * * * * *

External links

* Warburton, Nigel. 19 January 2015.
Karl Marx on Alienation
" narrated by Gillian Anderson. ''A History of Ideas''. UK:

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

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