In the concepts most prominent use, it refers to the economic and social alienation aspect in which workers are disconnected from what they produce and why they produce. Marx believed that alienation is a systematic result of capitalism. Essentially, there is an “exploitation of men by men” where the division of labor creates an economic hierarchy (Axelos, 1976: 58). His theory of alienation was based upon his observation that in emerging industrial production under capitalism, workers inevitably lose control of their lives and selves by not having any control of their work. Workers never become autonomous, self-realized human beings in any significant sense, except in the way the bourgeoisie wants the worker to be realized. His theory relies on Feuerbachs The Essence of Christianity (1841), which argues that the idea of God has alienated the characteristics of the human being. Stirner would take the analysis further in The Ego and Its Own (1844), declaring that even humanity is an alienating ideal for the individual, to which Marx and Engels responded in The German Ideology (1845). Alienation in capitalist societies occurs because in work each contributes to the common wealth but they can only express this fundamentally social aspect of individuality through a production system that is not publicly social but privately owned, for which each individual functions as an instrument, not as a social being. Kostas Axelos summarizes that for Marx, in capitalism work renders man an alien to himself and to his own products. Marx also wrote, in a curtailed manner, that capitalist owners also experience alienation, through benefiting from the economic machine by endlessly competing, exploiting others and maintaining mass alienation in society.[ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_alienation#Marx
Posted on: Sun, 06 Jul 2014 22:31:48 +0000
Trending Topics
© 2015