What Is Marx Theory Of Alienation In Bartleby

The following paragraphs will explain Marx’s theory of alienation and analyze how Melville’s “Bartleby” related the theory. In the chapter “Estranged Labour” in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx describes the estrangement of people in capitalist society, and estrangement means making strange. Marx considers that workers in capitalism are alienated from five different aspects: their labor, the product of their labor, other human beings, themselves, and their human potential in general. Each point will be analyzed as follows. First, Marx considers that workers are alienated from their labor. Workers sell their labor to capitalist, and they are working without thinking. The behavior makes them alienated from their labor. In the text of Melville’s “Bartleby”, “extraordinary quantity of writing […] But he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically”. Although Bartleby is copying repetitively, he actually separates from his behavior of writing that he is reproducing without any thinking. As the text mentions, Bartleby just acts like a machine, because he does not have any think when he is typing.
Human beings have strong potentials. By selling labors, workers lose their opportunities to reach their full potential. In the text of Melville’s “Bartleby”, “I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet Byron […] in a crimpy hand”. Byron is considered as an ideal romantic genius, and he is talent in expressing and promoting himself. Compared with Byron, Bartleby is an opposite extreme that he is not creative at all. However, to be human means to be creative. Without innovation, Bartleby fails to express himself and cannot define who he is. Hence, Bartleby not only lose himself, but also fails to realize his self-worth. The five aspects of Marx’s theory of alienation all reflected in Melville’s “Bartleby”, and Marx’s ideas can help the ideal reader to have a better command of the