Nietzsche On Alienation Analysis

Nietzsche And Marx Foresee Modern Alienation

Beyond typical philosophers solely focused on acquiring knowledge, Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche were equally dedicated to actualizing their vision of a better society and way of life. Before our present state of modernism, Nietzsche and Marx were already prophesizing our societal flaws based on past wrongs done to humanity. The Spanish Inquisition, the African Slave Trade, and the Holocaust are all clear testaments to the detrimental effect that separatism and alienation have on all humans alike. Marx and Nietzsche voice the changes that need to be made in order for humanity to finally push itself another crucial step closer to equality and freedom.
Marx is a harsh critic towards the
Bourgeois Socialism that still to this day dominates our western concept of government. The class separatism between the proletariat and the bourgeois are still very distinct and continuously more is being done to hold the workers down. Marx's description of the bourgeois methods of entrapment on the workers to generate their own surplus value can be correlated directly to modern figures in the political and economic world like: John Kerry and the major corporations of Nike and General Motors.
Democrats establish themselves as being the modern day heroes of the workingman, but have little exposure to any people belonging to a lower economic class. In the eyes of Marx, political powerhouses like John Kerry are only trying to temporarily make the system acceptable while still keeping the Bourgeois in power. Though Kerry is firmly planted as a bourgeois, rather than falling in and out of the system as Marx describes, he still proposes ideas and policies that appeal to the working class in order to keep them oppressed within rigid social classes. Marx sees the offerings of welfare, social security, minimum wage, and other types of social programs as an attempt to make the working class seem more enjoyable. In this oppression, the pursuit of the American dream is lost, people are alienated in their class, and the forces of power remain the same. Marxism views Kerry as a hypocrite in fear of an undeniable revolution. With Kerry as a prime example, Marx shows the necessity for any member of the proletariat to revolt and destroy the class system. Marx's anticipation of modern economics seems to foresee the development of a new class. The industrial revolution developed big businesses into a major force and technology breakthroughs, much like in Marx's time, have made a demand for white collar workers specialized in software programming, research and development. Nike, GM, and Dell, to name a few, with new additions to the work force, have blurred the line further between boss and laborer. As Marx perceives, the proletariat constantly grows and establishes itself as the majority as a result of increasing positions of power.
Where Marx is very perceptive at addressing humanity from a holistic perspective, Nietzsche's focus is much more on the individual and the moral codes that each human honors.
In the work force the addition of job benefits and new positions seem to aid the worker's quality of life, when in actuality it is only further establishing the bosses reign. Similarly, in Nietzsche's study of right and wrong, he finds that human morality has also become a distraction from the unknown. Nietzsche shows us how we use our morals to make the world around us explainable. The human race, especially philosophers are victims to the idea of "rationally at all costs… a self-deception on the part of philosophers and moralists to think that they can escape from décadence merely by making war against it" (Twilight, 16). In our attempt to make things right, being politically collect has risen to the top of our priority list. Although political correctness isn't a direct solution to freedom and immediate uprising, both Marx and Nietzsche would agree that destroying societal indoctrinated terms and replacing them with accurate language would reduce some alienation that is far too prevalent among common workers. Political correctness calls attention to the same fundamental flaw in out labor force of classification. When we say we're receiving mail from a postMAN and getting arrested by a policeMAN we alienate all female officers and post-women. Although strong upheaval to change such names may be seen as oversensitivity, a female police officer may feel like she is in a different working environment from her peers. Nietzsche collides with Marx over the issue of classification, proving that even decisions of personal morality further separate our
society.
Marx and Nietzsche offer theoretical solutions, but it seems doubtful that classification, whether work related or social, can be avoided. We now categorize ourselves just like animals, objects, and other non-human entities. Marx's ideas of the perpetuation of the slave class is directly associated with issues of political correctness. Using Nietzsche's ideas on linguistics, although we classify ourselves as Americans, being a Chinese-American or an African-American further ostracizes everyone from a universal group, making society more fragmented and class structuralized, rather than united. I believe in accuracy of language but it seems that political correctness takes Nietzsche's ideas a bit too far. It is a valid goal but it causes much more discrimination and subjugation than without it. We can only further discriminate and segregate one another when we continue to give each other more classifications. Marx's economic ideas and criticisms are still very applicable to the world and how the class systems are working in modern society and to truly be a morally good society we would have to correct our speech mistakes, which is why utopia always seems slightly out of reach. Despite our improvements there is still a rich bourgeois trying to keep the class system in place and the ever-growing proletariat is still being disillusioned about their true place in society.