Estranged Labor (for Nikhil)

Estranged Labor

Marx develops his critique of capitalism by connecting the philosophical notion of species essence to political-economic theories of surplus value and labor. Gattungswesen translates to species being or species essence, and refers to a universally human realization of self through productive, self-motivated activity. This activity or work gives purpose to the worker’s life, offering something called species character. Underlying this general discussion is the idea that humans gain value primarily from labor that fulfills them, and any institution that estranges the individual from this sort of meaningful activity is exploiting their most intrinsic being.

Across this translation from philosophy to political economy, alienation or estrangement represents a human state wherein workers do not own, and are thus spiritually removed from, the product of their labor, the activity of production, and from other laborers with whom they compete for wages. Marx proposed, “political economy conceals the estrangement inherent in the nature of labor by not considering the direct relationship between the worker (labor) and production” (73). Production that a worker achieves through labor that is external to her essential being – which should not be translated to mean survival but rather to mean the “free development of physical and mental energy” – is therefore estranged labor, or forced labor (74). 

However, understanding alienation through the philosophy of species essence alone fails to explain how it supports a larger, exploitative capitalist structure. Marx made clear, “the fact that the production of use-values or goods is carried under the control of a capitalist and on his behalf does not alter the general character of that production” (344). Labor only becomes an economic commodity when it is employed toward the end of the capitalist’s greater surplus value production. That is, the capitalist wishes not to produce goods and employ labor only toward the end of creating the goods for their use value, but rather for the goods to have exchange values that make them commodities and allow the capitalist to add value greater than the sum of the values of their means of production and their labor-power. Keeping in mind these two objects of surplus value production, we see that the capitalist pursues any means of transforming money into commodity with higher exchange value through labor (359). Using the example of turning cotton into yarn, Marx demonstrated how labor transforms from a qualitative into a quantitative process, defined by hours of labor added to an activity and the average material output of this labor. In this transformation, labor-time represents a commodity that the capitalist can purchase through wages. The greater the addition of wages, the greater the capitalist’s surplus value. But just as well, the more the laborer produces, the less she has to consume for herself and the more she is estranged from her labor. The higher the surplus value addition, the greater the alienation of the laborer from her species essence and simultaneously, the greater the capitalist’s income. This paradox therefore bridges Marx’s philosophical theories about species-being to a broader critique of capitalist value production through the notion of estranged or alienated labor. 

One can note in this discussion the similarity between Hegel and Marx in that both ground their arguments in the premise of a species essence and view history as teleological, moving toward human emancipation or freedom. But whereas Hegel suggests that history develops through conflicts in ideas, Marx argues that history is defined by the development of labor division and through the conflicts between economic classes. Marx’s materialism thus clashes with Hegel’s idealism, although both tend toward fulfillment of the species being through collective emancipation.

(Finally, I think this discussion starter is incomplete without this meme: https://pics.onsizzle.com/when-your-students-complain-that-your-class-is-a-struggle-4034610.png)