Marx is known for his work on economic inequality.
Marx notes that this is a byproduct of the capitalist system. Marx notes that
capitalists steal the product of labor away from workers and workers are left
with “labor does not appear as an end in itself but as the servant of the wage.”
(79). Workers are left performing jobs out of their pay rather than out of
desire or passion. Marx notes that the amount the capitalist steals continues
to decrease. “The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities
he creates.” As the laborer produces more goods the share enjoyed by the
laborer does not increase. “Thus the more the worker by his labor appropriates the
external world, sensous nature, the more he deprives himself of means of life…”
Marx uses this lack of liberty to explain religion in a rather derogatory
manner. Marx explains “Socialism is man’s positive self-consciousness no longer
mediated through the annulment of religion, just as real life is man’s positive
reality, no longer mediate through the annulment of private property, through
communism” (93). Marx uses religion as a consequence to explain most of society
lacking hope and passion for what they produce.
I agree with David on the material alienation of workers in the sense that they are producing commodities for the capitalist and not for themselves. They are thus in the process of value-creation that they do not benefit from but it rather goes into the pockets of the capitalists. To this, Marx proposes the solution by attacking private properties and capital. However, there are also other aspects of this alienation.
ReplyDelete1- Workers are alienated when work is not a free physical and intellectual activity. This is particularly dangerous when the repartition of labor reaches an extreme where each worker repeatedly performs the same simple and boring task.
2- Workers are also alienated when work itself does not immediately result in satisfying their needs but is rather a way to have the means to satisfy those needs outside work. So, work is no longer a utilitarian activity per se.
These ideas can be found in the following excerpt: (page74)
“First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his essetial being; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does 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. He is at home when he is not working, and when he is working he is not at home. His labour is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labour. It is therefore not the satisfac tion of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labour is shunned like the plague. External labour, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of self-sacri ce, of morti cation. Lastly, the external charac ter 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. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates independently of the individ ual-that is, operates on him as an alien, divine or diabolical activ ity-in the same way the worker's activity is not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self. “