Post by Stallit 2 de Halfo on Jun 10, 2008 23:20:54 GMT
Marx and Estranged Labor
Marx believed that is was natural for humans to want to be productive and create things. Creation was a part of the self-objectification process for humans, as humans see a part of themselves, their own essence, in their creations. To Marx, the product was just an aspect of the worker who created it. Marx went on to say that laziness in work is not a natural tendency for humans, but is a consequence of an alienating environment. In fact, the very nature of a system creates alienation. Marx outlined four ways in which the worker becomes alienated during labor in capitalist society.
The first type of alienation that the worker faces is alienation from the product itself that he is producing. This alienation is caused by the fact that the worker becomes just a commodity and the more wealth that the worker creates, the cheaper a commodity he becomes. Marx pointed out that as the value of material things increases, the value of human life decreases. The product is the objectification of labor and this objectification appears as a loss of reality for the worker.
This loss of reality is compounded by the fact that in reality the worker needs the material objects for survival. So the more the worker produces the less he is able to procure the means of subsistence for himself. The worker becomes a slave of his object because he receives work to produce an object and also because he receives a means of subsistence. This is a form of bondage because it is then only as a worker that he is able to survive, to receive the means of his subsistence. There is no way out of this entrapment for the worker.
Also, the worker puts his life into the product, the object, and then the object actually owns the life of the worker because without it the worker does not survive. Since this is true, the object is not a part of the essence of the worker anymore, so there is no true self-objectification, only an alienated objectification.
Now just as the product becomes alien to the worker, so does the product producing activity itself. The worker's labor becomes something alien to him. To begin, labor is something external to the worker and is not a part of him. In his work he denies himself and comes to not like work at all which, to Marx, is not natural since humans are naturally productive. The worker hates work and only feels like himself when he is not working. This means that his labor is not voluntary, it is forced labor. Anything that is forced onto a person is alien to the person. The last aspect of work itself as alienation is the fact that the worker does not own his labor, someone else does. The capitalist owns the worker's labor and can exploit this reality to serve his own interests.
The third alienation experienced by the worker is an alienation from human nature itself. Estranged labor turns the life of the species into individual human life because man sees labor as a means that satisfies the need of physical existence instead of labor as the life of the species. The animal is its life activity, it makes no distinction between itself and what it does, but man has conscious life activity. Man's life is an object for him, but alienated labor reverses this and makes an object man's life. Furthermore, man is different from the animal because an animal only produces for itself to fulfill its immediate needs. Man produces beyond his immediate needs. That is why he is free.
Estranged labor reduces man to produce for others and to produce his immediate needs for himself only indirectly. This detaches man from his very nature has a species being.
The fourth way that the worker becomes alienated lies in his estrangement from other humans, individually. The worker realizes that neither the object he produces or his labor belongs to him so it must belong to someone else. They can only belong to another man or other men. The worker comes to realize that there is a master over him, the capitalist, who gains as the worker loses by owning the object and the labor. As the object and labor are alien to the worker, so is the capitalist who owns that alien product and that alien labor also alien to the worker.
The worker is also alienated from fellow workers because he becomes aware that there are others competing with him for his labor. This aids that capitalist even more so because with the competition, he has to give less to his workers. The worker comes to realizing this and his alienation from the capitalist grows.
With regards to the causes of alienation, Marx is a little vague. Marx pointed out that while it appears that movable private property is the cause of alienation, it is really just an effect of the alienation and the way in which alienation comes to recognize itself.
With movable private property eliminated as a cause then, it appears as though the alienation came about from the very nature of the system itself. It is the capitalist system that forces the bourgeoisie to exploit the proletariat because capitalism needs exploitation of people to maintain itself and flourish. Competition is a very crucial factor in this. Capitalism means competition between people for an object and for labor activity which, as discussed earlier, means an alienated environment.
Marx believed that to overcome this alienation private property needed to be transcended. This transcendence of private property could only come about with the development of communism. According to Marx, communism would allow all humans to return to their humanness and get away from things like religion and the state, which are not essentially a part of them. Communism would get rid of the inhuman power that exists over the workers now. No longer would an object be more important than a person.
Marx described in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, the four aspects of alienated labor: alienation from the product, producing activity, human nature, and other humans. These four aspects are interrelated and lead humans away from themselves because of the importance of private property. Marx suggested that communism really was the only way that private property could be abolished because it allowed for humans to rid themselves of inhuman activities. These inhuman activities are the defining feature of the capitalist system.
www.froyd.net/philosophy/philo8.htm
Marx believed that is was natural for humans to want to be productive and create things. Creation was a part of the self-objectification process for humans, as humans see a part of themselves, their own essence, in their creations. To Marx, the product was just an aspect of the worker who created it. Marx went on to say that laziness in work is not a natural tendency for humans, but is a consequence of an alienating environment. In fact, the very nature of a system creates alienation. Marx outlined four ways in which the worker becomes alienated during labor in capitalist society.
The first type of alienation that the worker faces is alienation from the product itself that he is producing. This alienation is caused by the fact that the worker becomes just a commodity and the more wealth that the worker creates, the cheaper a commodity he becomes. Marx pointed out that as the value of material things increases, the value of human life decreases. The product is the objectification of labor and this objectification appears as a loss of reality for the worker.
This loss of reality is compounded by the fact that in reality the worker needs the material objects for survival. So the more the worker produces the less he is able to procure the means of subsistence for himself. The worker becomes a slave of his object because he receives work to produce an object and also because he receives a means of subsistence. This is a form of bondage because it is then only as a worker that he is able to survive, to receive the means of his subsistence. There is no way out of this entrapment for the worker.
Also, the worker puts his life into the product, the object, and then the object actually owns the life of the worker because without it the worker does not survive. Since this is true, the object is not a part of the essence of the worker anymore, so there is no true self-objectification, only an alienated objectification.
Now just as the product becomes alien to the worker, so does the product producing activity itself. The worker's labor becomes something alien to him. To begin, labor is something external to the worker and is not a part of him. In his work he denies himself and comes to not like work at all which, to Marx, is not natural since humans are naturally productive. The worker hates work and only feels like himself when he is not working. This means that his labor is not voluntary, it is forced labor. Anything that is forced onto a person is alien to the person. The last aspect of work itself as alienation is the fact that the worker does not own his labor, someone else does. The capitalist owns the worker's labor and can exploit this reality to serve his own interests.
The third alienation experienced by the worker is an alienation from human nature itself. Estranged labor turns the life of the species into individual human life because man sees labor as a means that satisfies the need of physical existence instead of labor as the life of the species. The animal is its life activity, it makes no distinction between itself and what it does, but man has conscious life activity. Man's life is an object for him, but alienated labor reverses this and makes an object man's life. Furthermore, man is different from the animal because an animal only produces for itself to fulfill its immediate needs. Man produces beyond his immediate needs. That is why he is free.
Estranged labor reduces man to produce for others and to produce his immediate needs for himself only indirectly. This detaches man from his very nature has a species being.
The fourth way that the worker becomes alienated lies in his estrangement from other humans, individually. The worker realizes that neither the object he produces or his labor belongs to him so it must belong to someone else. They can only belong to another man or other men. The worker comes to realize that there is a master over him, the capitalist, who gains as the worker loses by owning the object and the labor. As the object and labor are alien to the worker, so is the capitalist who owns that alien product and that alien labor also alien to the worker.
The worker is also alienated from fellow workers because he becomes aware that there are others competing with him for his labor. This aids that capitalist even more so because with the competition, he has to give less to his workers. The worker comes to realizing this and his alienation from the capitalist grows.
With regards to the causes of alienation, Marx is a little vague. Marx pointed out that while it appears that movable private property is the cause of alienation, it is really just an effect of the alienation and the way in which alienation comes to recognize itself.
With movable private property eliminated as a cause then, it appears as though the alienation came about from the very nature of the system itself. It is the capitalist system that forces the bourgeoisie to exploit the proletariat because capitalism needs exploitation of people to maintain itself and flourish. Competition is a very crucial factor in this. Capitalism means competition between people for an object and for labor activity which, as discussed earlier, means an alienated environment.
Marx believed that to overcome this alienation private property needed to be transcended. This transcendence of private property could only come about with the development of communism. According to Marx, communism would allow all humans to return to their humanness and get away from things like religion and the state, which are not essentially a part of them. Communism would get rid of the inhuman power that exists over the workers now. No longer would an object be more important than a person.
Marx described in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, the four aspects of alienated labor: alienation from the product, producing activity, human nature, and other humans. These four aspects are interrelated and lead humans away from themselves because of the importance of private property. Marx suggested that communism really was the only way that private property could be abolished because it allowed for humans to rid themselves of inhuman activities. These inhuman activities are the defining feature of the capitalist system.
www.froyd.net/philosophy/philo8.htm