Marx's theory of alienation

[Saullos]

I was interested if someone could help me with understanding Marx's concept of alienation. I believe I understand how it occurs (I've read his Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844), but I'm not exactly sure I understand why it's such a bad thing.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

I think this should be in Learning.

[KC]

Saullos, you should check out Ollman's book Alienation: Marx's Conception of Man in Capitalist Society (http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/books/a.php). He addresses this exact question, and goes into great detail. It's a really damned good book.

[F9]

I think this should be in Learning.

I think so too. Moved

[ZeroNowhere]

Try this (http://libcom.org/library/reproduction-everyday-life-fredy-perlman).There are some differences between Marx's treatment of it in his early and later works, but it generally comes down to the fact that humans produce something that dominates them. That is, humans create their own social relations, yet those very same social relations dominate them.
Also note that in 'commodity fetishism', the word fetish is used in the anthropological/religious sense of something coming to stand over its creator, rather than the current sexual meaning. I've heard so many 'Marxists' conflate commodity fetishism with the whole 'consumerism' crap that I find it necessary to mention this, sadly enough.

[KC]

There are some differences between Marx's treatment of it in his early and later works

Which differences are those?

[ZeroNowhere]

Which differences are those?
Generally in the former it was more philosophical, while in the later works it was mainly commodity fetishism and such.

[KC]

Generally in the former it was more philosophical, while in the later works it was mainly commodity fetishism and such.I don't think this is true. Commodity fetishism is a result of alienation; it is not something distinct from it, nor is it a different application of his earlier expositions.

[mikelepore]

Which differences are those?

As of 1844 when Marx began writing about alienation, he didn't yet have any economic theory or any historical theory. The comments were mainly moral ones about money turning everything upside down.

[Hit The North]

The comments were mainly moral ones about money turning everything upside down.

Which remained central to his critique of Capitalism throughout his life.

[el_chavista]

I was interested if someone could help me with understanding Marx's concept of alienation. I believe I understand how it occurs (I've read his Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844), but I'm not exactly sure I understand why it's such a bad thing.
You got to see it with proletarian eyes:


The worker is the subjective manifestation of the fact that capital is man wholly lost to himself, just as capital is the objective manifestation of the fact that labour is man lost to himself. But the worker has the misfortune to be a living capital, and therefore an indigent capital, one which loses its interest, and hence its livelihood, every moment it is not working. The value of the worker as capital rises according to demand and supply, and physically too his existence, his life, was and is looked upon as a supply of a commodity like any other. The worker produces capital, capital produces him — hence he produces himself, and man as worker, as a commodity, is the product of this entire cycle. To the man who is nothing more than a worker — and to him as a worker — his human qualities only exist insofar as they exist for capital alien to him. Because man and capital are alien, foreign to each other...As soon, therefore, as it occurs to capital (whether from necessity or caprice) no longer to be for the worker, he himself is no longer for himself: he has no work, hence no wages, and since he has no existence as a human being but only as a worker, he can go and bury himself, starve to death, etc. The worker exists as a worker only when he exists for himself as capital; and he exists as capital only when some capital exists for him. The existence of capital is his existence, his life; as it determines the tenor of his life in a manner indifferent to him.

Political economy, therefore, does not recognise the unemployed worker, the workingman, insofar as he happens to be outside this labour relationship. The rascal, swindler, beggar, the unemployed, the starving, wretched and criminal workingman — these are figures who do not exist for political economy but only for other eyes, those of the doctor, the judge, the grave-digger, and bum-bailiff, etc.; such figures are spectres outside its domain. For it, therefore, the worker's needs are but the one need — to maintain him whilst he is working and insofar as may be necessary to prevent the race of labourers from [dying] out.

What constitutes the alienation of labour?

Firstly, the fact that labour is external to the worker – i.e., does not belong to his essential being; that he, therefore, does not confirm himself in his work, but denies himself, feels miserable and not happy, does not develop free mental and physical energy, but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind. Hence, the worker feels himself only when he is not working; when he is working, he does not feel himself. He is at home when he is not working, and not at home when he is working. His labour is, therefore, not voluntary but forced, it is forced labour. It is, therefore, not the satisfaction of a need but a mere means to satisfy needs outside itself. Its alien character is clearly demonstrated by the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, it is shunned like the plague. External labour, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Finally, the external character of labour for the worker is demonstrated by the fact that it belongs not to him but to another, and that in it he belongs not to himself but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, the human brain, and the human heart, detaches itself from the individual and reappears as the alien activity of a god or of a devil, so the activity of the worker is not his own spontaneous activity. It belongs to another, it is a loss of his self.

[KC]

As of 1844 when Marx began writing about alienation, he didn't yet have any economic theory or any historical theory. The comments were mainly moral ones about money turning everything upside down.As he developed his thought he applied his theory of alienation to his research and his conclusions. What we see in his works following the 1844 manuscripts is an application of his theory of alienation and not a revision of it.

Commodity fetishism is thus a result of the application of his theory of alienation to his study of political economy. There are other examples as well, as Marx's theory of alienation permeates every sphere of life, and is fully realized under capitalist society.


You got to see it with proletarian eyes:

You don't have to "see it with proletarian eyes." In capitalism everyone is alienated, including the bourgeoisie.

[blackstone]

Capitalist production is marked by the exploitation of labor by capital; it denies worker's the fruit of their own labor. Kropkotin said that when a worker "sells his labour to an employee . . . some part of the value of his produce will be unjustly taken by the employer".The product of the worker's labor is surplus value. Surplus value is the difference between the value produced by the workers and the wages they receive and it is appropriated and absorbed by the non-producing classes as profits, interest, rent, etc. Since wage workers sell their labor power to earn a living and the capitalist owns the production process, the product of the workers’ labour is in a very real sense alien to the worker. It is not their product but the product of the capitalist.

Why is it a bad thing?

From the Anarchist FAQ


labour faces social inequality when it passes from the market to production. In the workplace, capitalists exercise social power over how labour is used and this allows them to produce more value from the productive efforts of workers than they pay for in wages. This social power is rooted in social dependence, namely the fact that workers have little choice but to sell their liberty to those who own the means of life. To ensure the creation and appropriation of surplus-value, capitalists must not only own the production process and the product of the workers' labour, they must own the labour of the workers itself. In other words, they must control the workers. Hence capitalist production must be, to use Proudhon's term, "despotism." How much surplus-value can be produced depends on the relative economic power between bosses and workers as this determines the duration of work and the intensity of labour, however its roots are the same -- the hierarchical and class nature of capitalist society.