...Marx describes a fascinating way of conceptualizing the dual nature of human labor and its value that manifests in commodities, which according to him, was actually first pointed out by him (Capital 29). The concept of human labor itself is the center of multiple discussions that Marx has throughout his works, from the physical ownership each person should ideally have over their own labor as it is done with their body and time (and furthermore, how a person can be alienated from their own labor), to the labor that is manifested in the values of commodities, to the criticisms of processes like division of labor within each workplace. All of these conversations on labor and its values are interconnected, but the one that is especially pertinent today is the notion of alienation from labor and the side effects of this process. The things that Marx was describing as they were arising in his time are things have come to fruition in our time, now that we are nearly two centuries into living under capitalism. With the concept of labor being what truly gives value to a commodity, labor is a source of value that should belong to each person. However, many workers from his time onwards...
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...Marx’s Theories of Alienation Prior to diving into the deep waters of Marx’s theory on the alienation of labor, it may be prudent to capture a general overview of his dynamic philosophy of alienation on a larger scale. Karl Marx observed and recorded the functions of society and how particular actions influenced and impacted individuals, groups and communities. Through his studies an emergence of social science was spawn. In relation to the term alienation, his manuscripts have depicted a framework of the effects stratification and economics, moreover, industrial capitalism bears upon people. That stated, Marx, segregated his theory into four levels, if you will. The alienation of labor being the second level, according to Marx (Hodson, 58). Consequently, the alienation of labor simply estranges the working force from the process of production. This process includes...
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...Abdulkadir Öncel Suleyman Sah University Sociology ALIENATION AND ANOMIE Throughout the history many sociologists tried to analyze society and societal relations, also sociologists have still continued to study society and its problems. In the some problems, sociologists studied in minority individuals’ issue with small groups then they generalized the solution or analyzes for the majority who lives in same conditions. Because even you study society, you would need individualistic framework to understanding disharmony and problems of folk in daily life. Also it is impossible to study with all people in society. Because of that you should understand that what disturbs person? You could not understand whether being harmony or happiness between people with continuity of production or maintaining work of daily life. Therefore, sociologists anatomize into social action and relationship between all people. But primarily you should know the human nature and its structures and its needing. Each analyzes would be lacking without involving human factors whereupon also Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim first of all examined people, their structures, their desires and their connections with the nature. Then they tried to understand society with this way and put in the picture at the back of events. Not only relationship people and nature but also relationship between people is important for Marx and Durkheim who interested in people’s station in society and they searched answer for some questions...
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...In Marx’s Alienated Labor, he explains how Capitalism alienates people and turns them into objects as opposed to subjects or people. He goes over, in this, the effects the division between capital and labor, private property, and greed on the “have nots” of society. In the workplace, the working class, the labourers, undergo a process to which the title of Marx’s manuscript is named. To be separated from one’s work, to be seen as a replaceable, to then be seen as an object, and finally to view others as such, This is the is the process of Alienation Marx depicts in his manuscript. This process that we have so readily accepted as a part of society. As Marx says, “We have accepted its language and its laws” (pg 58). Is this process actually forced...
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...influenced to establish his theory on alienation by his observations of the social, economic and political developments of the industrial revolution during the middle to late nineteenth century. His assertion was that newly founded industrial processes’, which were much different from imperial and feudal societies, isolated workers from their labor under the confines of the capitalism system. Because of the industrial revolution, many workers had to endure low wages, long hours and a substandard working environment under the exacting observation of profit driven owners. Alienation from Marx can be summarized into four different aspects: 1) the alienation of the worker from the product of his labor; 2) the alienation of the worker in the process of production; 3) the alienation of the worker from his creative self; and 4) the alienation of the worker from society (Hodsen & Sullivan, 2007). The worker no longer carries any connection to the product that they produce. Work is carried out in a monotonous and routine process where the worker is focused on a specialization of labor and they have little to no control over the disposition of the product. When a product is produced, he does not own it and only provides tangible goods for the capitalist to sell and make a profit. Products are not a conceived out of desire but rather as a means to an existence and consequently becomes a slave to the object. For Marx, the monotonous redundancy of this labor is highly detrimental because...
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...The chapter on alienated labor clarifies the moral case against capitalism, at least as Marx saw it at this time. This has been touched on in a couple of earlier posts here but I wanted to highlight one piece of the argument. Marx's point here is that alienation is prior to private property and to such quantitative expressions of private property as exploitation, wage inequality, etc. “The alienation of the product of labour merely summarizes the alienation in the work activity itself.” In other words, how much of the product of alienated labor is available to the worker to consume is a secondary, and ultimately unimportant, issue compared with the fact of alienation itself. A couple pages later he makes this point even more emphatically: “An enforced increase in wages … would be nothing more than a better remuneration of slaves, and would not restore, either to the worker or to the work, their human significance and worth.” The claim that the level of wages is politically and morally irrelevant is very different from mainstream and even many Marxist approaches that see questions of wellbeing in terms of consumption and justice in terms of distribution of income, and don't consider the qualitative character of work at all. Marx characterizes alienation of labor in various ways: - “the work is external to the worker”; - “he does no fulfill himself in his work”; - the worker “has a feeling of misery rather than wellbeing”; - the worker “does not develop freely his...
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...This paper will be about the main elements of Karl Marx’s work, which includes the Paris Manuscripts, which will focus on alienation. The Communist Manifesto, which will focus on Marx’s political and economic theories and Capital Vol. 1., Marx’s final work about how profits are made by the capitalist. Karl Marx was a liberal reformist who believed that capitalism could be reformed and inequality and exploitation of the working classes could be addressed and abolished. (Stones, p.22) . In 1844 Karl Marx wrote and published “The economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844”, better known as “The Paris Manuscripts.” This was Karl Marx’s first work, where he writes a study about alienation of workers. (Hughes p.27) What does one mean by alienation? Karl Marx states that the alienated person feels a lack of meaning in his life, or a lack of self-realization. (Hughes p.27) “One must understand, he argues, that there are three types of alienation. The first type of alienation is alienation from oneself. The second type of alienation is alienation from his fellow human beings. The third type of alienation is alienation from the world as a whole. These three forms of alienation are interconnected, and Karl Marx describes the connections between them. This is the core of his approach to the problem of alienation (Monthly Review, 2000, p.36-53). An example of alienation does not have to stem from the workplace, however. For example, I know many persons who attend the same church as I do...
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...“What is a Precis” In his article, Karl Marx who is well known as a German philosopher, criticizes the position of alienation from the article “ Estranged Labor.” In a capitalist nation, Karl Marx discusses that when doing labor, alienation is a basic component which is required to control a physical presence. Evidently, Marx is different from other philosophers as he embraces to view man as a human being, as well as individual which is demonstrated in his article. Throughout Karl Marx’s text, the idea of alienation is consistently used and in his article, Karl introduces the four distinctive types of alienation. In his article, Karl Marx characterizes private property in which the capitalist society owns all resulting products, that are done by the laborers. When laborers are alienated from the products of their employment, this is known to be the first type of alienation, signifying that more the laborer yields, the fewer the laborer will have. The second type of alienation is when the workers are forced to do work and these workers are not satisfied. This means the workers are technically slaves to their owner. The third type of alienation that occurs in a capitalist society is when laborers are forced to work and are alienated from their bodies and human ability. Lastly, the fourth type of alienation is when the workers are alienated from having social contact with other workers in their work field. The importance of this article written by Karl Marx was to the show the basic...
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...worker doesn’t accept being alienated, or B. The worker accepts alienation due to the fact they are content on meeting their living standards outside of the work place, so they suck it up and deal with the alienation. However, it is in human nature for...
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...economy. We have accepted its language and its laws. We presupposed private property, the separation of labor, capital and land, and of wages, profit of capital and rent of land – likewise division of labor, competition, the concept of exchange value, etc. On the basis of political economy itself, in its own words, we have shown that the worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities; that the wretchedness of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production; that the necessary result of competition is the accumulation of capital in a few hands, and thus the restoration of monopoly in a more terrible form; and that finally the distinction between capitalist and land rentier, like that between the tiller of the soil and the factory worker, disappears and that the whole of society must fall apart into the two classes – property owners and propertyless workers. Political economy starts with the fact of private property; it does not explain it to us. It expresses in general, abstract formulas the material process through which private property actually passes, and these formulas it then takes for laws. It does not comprehend these laws – i.e., it does not demonstrate how they arise from the very nature of private property. Political economy throws no light on the cause of the division between labor and capital, and between capital and land. When, for example, it defines the relationship of wages to profit...
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...What is alienation? When Karl Marx published “The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844,” he set out to outline the process by which the capitalist mode of production exploits workers. He called this phenomenon alienation, meaning that working people put everything into their jobs but get little in return. Marx explained that, under capitalism, workers are alienated in the following three ways: within the production process itself; from the objects produced by their labor; and from nature and the rest of humanity. Alienation from the production process For most of the working class, labor is nothing more than a means for physical survival. The labor process—working a job—is not educational or enriching in any way. Marx refers to this process as “the sacrifice of vitality.” This means workers most often hate their jobs, but have to do them anyway. Few blue-collar or white-collar workers could make the argument that they greatly benefit or prosper from their 9-to-5 jobs. Each worker’s time, energy and intellect is focused solely on profit-making for the capitalist owners. As Marx noted, under capitalism, “He who does not produce (that is, the owner) has dominion over production and over the product.” For example, the wait staff at a restaurant—plus cooks, busboys, cleaners, hosts, bouncers—give much of their energy so that the business will continue to operate. Typically, they dedicate 40 to 60 hours per week to the restaurant, which they could otherwise spend with...
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...In Karl Marx’s work the Estranged Labour he explains his theory of an estranged or alienated labour. A basic definition of estranged labour would be the state or feeling of isolation or alienated from work. Marx’s asks “What, then constitutes the alienation of labour?” (Marx 74). His theory explains how Labours are forced to do work they are unfamiliar to, causing the alienation of labour. Karl Marx’s text Estranged Labour encompasses the main cause of the alienation of labour. In Marx’s text Estranged Labour he explains four key aspects of an alienated labour. The main one I will discuss is “(2) The relation of labor to the act of production within the labor process” (Marx 74). The process of alienation of labour itself is explained as an...
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...Karl Marx states capitalism distorts human’s relationships with the environment. Over two centuries later, such a situation is apparent in the Green Revolution in Amazon. In fact, capitalism distorts human nature and welfare (Rizer 2011). Marx theory on capitalism effects on the environment explains the environmental crisis of the Green Revolution. Aristotle is a materialist (Rist 1996). Aristotle theory on science separates into two categories which are functional developmental essentialism and property essentialist (Rist 1997). The two parts of the essentialism is known as the Natural Slate Model. For essentialism, diversity is unimportant only the ideal is important (McLaughlin 2015). Aristotle theory of progress states an interfering force cause deviation from the linear view of time. Christians explanation for deviation was effect of God and interbreeding (Greenwood 1984). The Enlightenment cause people to believe the ideology of progress was not definite and based on God or any super nature force. The enlightenment produced a great thinker Hegel, and most importantly Hegel heavily influence Marx’s view on history. Hegel believe that history is composed of clash of ideas called called the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The thesis and antithesis leads to a synthesis. Marx views the whole of history as class struggle. Marx theory of human nature was based on critique of Hegel, which states changes in human life are beyond human control and humans are abstract individuals...
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...fact that some Domestic workers will not be able to obtain a higher level of work and an example is a janitor in his 60’s. The position will easily be replaced for a cheaper labor and it will be harder to obtain a higher level position as they are not experienced in the field and younger workers will be more preferred. The articles summarizes that both the American workers and the American economy has profited from the poor immigrant workers. If immigrants were not there to fill the work that most people will not want to do, then the domestic workers will have to do those jobs and there wouldn’t be enough employees available to new job opportunities. Having immigrant workers mean that more job positions with a higher wage will be available and therefore providing individuals and the economy with more money. After looking at both Smith's and Marx theories, I personally believe that smith's ideas work better in this situation even though Marx is also right about some of the things in the...
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...mere political reform. His future friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels introduced him to socialist and communist ideas, i. e., to ideas which progressed from mere political to social and economic reforms. For the rest of his life Marx dedicated himself to the project of radically restructuring modern industrial society along socialist and communist lines. In time he became the single most important theoretician and prominent leader of a growing international labor movement. Since Marx participated in the Revolution of 1848 as an influential newspaper editor (in a revolution that was defeated by the monarchists, and the defeat of which led scores of liberal Europeans to emigrate to the United States and elsewhere), he found it preferable to leave the stifling and backward conditions of his fatherland and to go into exile. He spent the rest of his life in London, the powerful center of advanced capitalism and modern industry. As one of the organizers of the international working class movement he found that most labor radicals had all sorts of moral misgivings about capitalism, and a number of utopian ideas of an ideal society of the future, but no solid...
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