Estranged Labour Karl Marx Summary

The Ideals of Estranged Labor According to Karl Marx’s The German philosopher, Karl Marx, has made many contributions to the ideas of capitalism and is credited for his critiques of political economy. Marx was interested in the issue of the class struggle between the proletarian, the majority of the population who own nothing but their labor power which they sell to the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie, the minority of the population who own the means of production in society. One of Marx’s critiques on political economy is the invention of private property in society, as well as the estrangement that labor within the capitalistic mode of production produces. Other philosophers such as Rousseau and Adam Smith have established a concept of
The first mode of alienation that Marx illustrates is the alienation of the worker from his or her product. Marx demonstrates that the product that the labour produces, labour’s product, becomes something alien as a power independent of the producer (440). This demonstrates that the products that the worker produces no longer belong to him or her, and are therefore regarded as something foreign and hostile to him or her. The workers do not get a say in the product they make, and therefore there is no sort of connection or sentimental value between the worker and the product he or she produces. The worker therefore has a loss of the object and object bondage, for the labor value that they put into the object gets extracted from them and into the hands of the owners of the means of production. The labor value of the product that he or she produces becomes something external to the worker, it no longer has any value or meaning to the worker. Marx further states, “The more the worker spends himself, the more powerful the alien objective world becomes which he creates over himself, the poorer he himself- his inner world becomes, the less belongs to him as his own” (440). Furthermore, the greater the amount of objects the worker produces the more capital and products you produce for the owner that is alien to you. Marx is illustrating that the more the worker puts into his object the
Marx describes that through capitalistic means of production, the worker sinks to the level of a commodity, and is objectified as an object that can be bought or sold. Marx illustrates that on the basis of political economy the worker is viewed as a commodity that can be bought and sold for wages; in addition, that the worker becomes wretched spiritually, of health, and of intelligence (438). The workers are seen as simply replaceable with no sort of individual identity, they are dehumanized and become alienated from their true selves. When an individual becomes objectified they are no longer viewed as themselves, but as an object that lacks all the personal characteristics that he or she truly possess. Instead of judging individuals based off of their personal traits and characteristics, they are only judged on the sole fact of how much labor value and products that they are able to produce to the owner of production. Through a political economy, the workers are robbed of their health and individualism making them alienated to their true essence. When an individual is not able to live a healthy or fulfilling life in which they are able to participate in the activities that he or she enjoys, they become alienated from their