Marx - Alienation

Origin of the term 'alienation' for Marx

'Alienation' is one of the standard translation of both Entremdung and EntauBerung in Marx' writings. The translation of 'estrangement' for the former and 'externalisation' for the latter are also common, but 'alienation' is more familiar to most English speakers. 'Alienation' is one of the most familiar terms of Marxist philosophy. It is one of the few theoretical terms from Marxism that has entered into ordinary language. Alienation is a concept that Marx inherits from Hegel and the young Hegelians and it figures most prominently in Marx's early writings where the influences of these writers are most evident.

Karl Marx Life

- Born 1818 in Germany - Died 1883 in London - Studied Law and Philosophy in Berlin - Too radical for academia so moved to journalism instead - Married Jenny von Westphalen 1843 - Moves to Paris, meets Friedrich Engels

4 - Alienation from 'Man'

- By being alienated from its species-being, individuals become alienated from each other - If we cannot produce our own objects in a true, communist way, then we cannot empathise and engage with other members of the community - Proof of this alienation is the way in which capitalists treat their workers: as mere means to production, as soul-less objects

3 - Alienation from species-being

- CAPITALISM disconnects man from its true essence: its capacity to create practically, and its universal capacity to acknowledge and reflect on the creation of others - DIVISION OF LABOUR means that human beings are not able to (a) create for themselves (b) engage in this creation in a communitarian way - 'Man reproduces himself not only intellectually, in his consciousness, but actively, and actually, and he can therefore contemplate himself in a world he himself has created. In tearing away the object of his production form man, estranged labour therefore tears away from his species life, his true species objectivity' (Manuscripts 140)

Karl Marx main works

- Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844) - The German Ideology (1846) (With Engels) - The Manifesto of the Communist Part (1848) (with Engels) - Grundrisse AKA Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (1857) - Capital (1867)

Alienation

- The 'Species-being' of individuals: what characterises us is our ability to create physical items as part of a specific community - Bourgeois economics have it wrong: 'Political Economy proceeds from the fact of private property. It does not explain it...' (Manuscripts 322) - CAPITALISM as a form of RELIGION: CAPITALISM creates ALIENATION: 1. capital is stored-up labour ('command over labour') 2. labour extracted as profit by capitalists 3. profit reinvested in generating more capital. Consequence: the capital is never really enjoyed - like living for heaven DISCONNECT FROM OUR LABOUR

2 - Alienation from the activity of labour

- Work is not free, creative expression - but compulsory means to 'animal life': all workers have time to do after work is eat, sleep, sex - We work to live, instead of living to work

1 - Alienation from the product

- Workers do not own what they produce - Profit goes towards capital investment - more power for the capitalist - Capitalist growth - more industrialisation - Workers compete with machines (and they have to build them, too!) - The more one works, the less control over one's production - The more capitalism advances, the more nature is industrialised (legal framework reflects this too i.e. lack of common land)

Two reasons why Marx's thought is still significant today?

1) While central command socialism, such as reigned in the Soviet Union, is discredited - indeed, it was never a plausible doctrine - the same is not true of liberal socialism. This illuminating and worthwhile view has four elements A constitutional democratic political regime, with the fair value of the political liberties A system of free competitive markets, ensured by law as necessary A scheme of worker-owned business, or, in part, also public-owned through stock shares, and managed by elected or firm-chosen managaers A property system establishing a widespread and a more or less even distribution of the means of production and natural resources 2) The other reason why Marx's socialist thought is significant is that laissez-faire capitalism has grave drawbacks, and these would be noted and reformed in fundamental ways. Liberal socialism, as well as other views, can help clear our minds as to how these changes are best done.

What is Marx's understanding of man's 'species-being'?

Man is a species-being, not only because in practice and in theory he adopts the species (his own as well as those other things) as his object, but - and this is only another way of expressing it - also because he treats himself as the actual, living species; because he treats himself as a universal and therefore a free being.

Define 'alienation'

Marx's account of alienation draws explicitly and directly on Hegel's work. He uses the term to refer to a situation in which our own activities and products take on an independent existence and become hostile powers working against us. Marx's main use of the concept is in reference to the form of labour in capitalist society, but he also talks of 'alienation' in the spheres of social and economic relations (division of labour, 'fetishism of commodities'), the state and religion (Marx, 1975e; Marx and Engels, 1978b; Marx, 1961a).

What is alienation? (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts 1844)

The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity - and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities in general. This fact expresses merely that the object which labor produces - labor's product - confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labor is labor embodied in an object, which has become material: it is the objectification of labor. Labor's realisation is its objectification. Under these economic conditions this realization of labor appears as loss of realization for the workers, estrangement, as alienation.

Explain the process of alienation from 1844 Econ and Philo Manuscripts

The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity - and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities in general. This fact expresses merely that the object which labor produces - labor's product - confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labor is labor which has been embodied in an object, which has become material: it is the objectification of labor. Labor's realization is its objectification. Under these economic conditions this realization of labor appears as loss of realization for the workers; objectification as loss of the object and bondage to it; appropriation as estrangement, as alienation.