In capitalist society, that which is produced, the objectification of labour, is lost to the producer. The first aspect of alienation is alienation from the product of labour. Marx, however, pays little attention to the capitalist’s experience of alienation, since his experience is not of the sort which is likely to bring into question the institutions that underpin that experience.
Even the capitalist, according to Marx, experiences alienation, but as a “state”, differently from the worker, who experiences it as an “activity”. But no one in capitalist society can escape this condition (without escaping capitalist society). One can undergo it without being aware of it, just as one can undergo alcoholism or schizophrenia without being aware of it. So alienation has both its objective and subjective sides. The only way to get rid of alienation would be to get rid of the basic structure of separation of the producers from the means of production. Capitalist society, in its very essence, requires that people be placed into such a structure and, even better, that they come to believe and accept that it is natural and just. Capitalist society cannot exist without it. Alienation is the objective structure of experience and activity in capitalist society. Although alienation may be felt and even understood, fled from and even resisted, it is not simply as a subjective condition that Marx is interested in it.
So alienation is not meant by Marx to indicate merely an attitude, a subjective feeling of being without control. Most people only have access to the means of production when they are employed by the owners of the means of production to produce under conditions that the producers themselves do not determine. The means of production are, instead owned by a relatively few.
That is, they do not own the means that are necessary to produce and reproduce their lives. Most people do not themselves own the means necessary to produce things. In capitalist society the most important such separation, the one that ultimately underlies many, if not most other forms, is the separation of most of the producers from the means of production. It follows from the idea that all acts of labour involve an activity of some sort that produces an object of some sort, performed by a human being (not a work animal or a machine) in some sort of social context.Īlienation in general, at the most abstract level, can be thought of as a surrender of control through separation from an essential attribute of the self, and, more specifically, separation of an actor or agent from the conditions of meaningful agency. There is nothing mysterious about this fourfold breakdown of alienation. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Marx discusses four aspects of the alienation of labour, as it takes place in capitalist society: one is alienation from the product of labour another is alienation from the activity of labour a third is alienation from one’s own specific humanity and a fourth is alienation from others, from society. It is, on the contrary, a single total reality that can be analyzed from a number of different points of view. The alienation of labour that takes place specifically in capitalist society is sometimes mistakenly described as four distinct types or forms of alienation.
ECONOMIC AND PHILOSOPHIC MANUSCRIPTS OF 1844 SUMMARY PDF PROFESSIONAL
Asher Horowitz | Department of Political Science | Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies | York University
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