Some questions

[Juno]

Hi there nice to be here, I had a few questions and couldn't really get any information on the internet about it.

How important is alienation in the theories of Marx?

I know it's pretty big in his earlier writings against Hegel, am I right in thinking people are alienated from nature and their own productive power under capitalism, where we are coerced to trade ourselves as a commodity in the jobs market.

Does Marx posit commodities are used to mediate this alienation, to embody the sublimated powers or abilities in a similar way as the idols of religious fetishism.

I have also got a question on Nietzsche and Marx, I've read both intermittently but not conducted any in depth study of this question, I have noticed there are potentially ways in which Nietzsche can be read as a continuation of some of Marx's theories on alienation and religious mysticism in particular.

He also seems to apply the dialectical theories of Marx Engels to the inner world of mind, and highlights to me how perspectives are internalized from external sources.

Is there any substance to this, has anybody with more in depth knowledge of both philosophers a better awareness of where their criticisms are similar?

[Q]

Moved from /intro to /learning.

[Axiomasher]

As I see it, as soon as societies emerge in which humans are removed from direct access or power over their self-reproducing needs there is alienation. So this would more or less mean all forms of society, or 'modes of production', following hunter-gathering society, i.e. 'primitive communism'. Capitalism just happens to be the mode of production which is highly effective in alienating us.

Maybe it could be argued that socialism, at least some kind of technological socialism, in which there is still a division of labour and such that some of us cannot work the land or make our own clothes, etc, is also 'alienating' but the defence is, I think, that provided arrangements are such that our needs are satisfied equitably through such socialism, any alienation is reduced to a technicality. After all, power, direct or otherwise, over our reproductive needs is mostly a means to an end - the satisfaction of those needs.