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Karl Marx Alienation Analysis

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The founding fathers of sociology, Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim, have played a profound role in influencing the development of sociology. This essay takes a critique stand on the similarities and differences in Marx’s concept of alienation and Durkheim’s theory of anomie. Karl Marx’s works which are still popular to this day, attributes to the adaptability of his concepts in today’s society. For example, Marx’s theory of “alienation” has grown popular in not only political and existentialist philosophy, but also modern literature, psychology, sociology, and psycho analysis. In ‘Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts’ (1844), Marx considers labor as a conscious act, as opposed to just a physical act. Marx identidied four components of alienation: …show more content…

Marx saw capitalism as a tool to remove workers’ rights to exercise control over the produce and value of his labour, ‘robbing’ them of the ability to neither receive the full value of the end product nor consume it directly. Capitalism, rather than a social relationship between people where they are involved in a common goal and effort for survival or betterment, reduces labour to a commercial commodity that is traded on the market. Marx’s concept of alienation is founded upon the belief that man is ‘naturally’ good, but has been corrupted by …show more content…

Alienation, an intrinsic economic fact linked to capitalism differs from Durkheim’s theory states that external constraints upon individuals and classes alike, can cause, instead of distribution and division of labour, a defection against the upper class. Although both Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim believed that human qualities and needs are in large part, the product of social development. However, with the development of advanced economies, technologies, and world markets, social thresholds such as religion are being

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Karl Marx is a classical theorist who focused on the social circumstances and how these circumstances affected society. Specifically, the relationship between the bourgeoisie and proletariat, alienation, capitalism, and the relationship between labor power and capital. When he analyzed the class conflict he acknowledged the misery from the working class being manipulated by the hierarchy that controlled every mean of production. This mistreatment not only affects the proletarians within injustice but it affects them individually based on alienation. These are the consequences of capitalism, therefore, Marx explained the four forms of alienation where the workers become alienated by the product of labor, alienated by the process of labor, alienated humans as a species being and alienated from each other as individuals.

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In their theories both highlight the division of labour and alienation as methods and results of maintaining control within a capitalist society. Durkheim coined the term social facts to describe the external and internal forces that habilitate individuals within a society. “….” . Social facts include values, cultural norms, and social structures comprise those sources that

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For Marx, it's man's dehumanization, his estrangement from alterative fellow beings or maybe from his own labor. This term has its roots in Latin usage in connection with the condition of unconsciousness and loss of one's mental power. From the psychological point of view, it means ‘abandonment' loss, insanity and derangement of mental faculties. According to Marx, the alienation of the worker in his product means that not only solely that his labour becomes an associated object, assumes an external existence however that it exists independently, outside himself which it stands against him. Marx distinguishes clearly between externalization and the alienation of the product.

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Karl Marx and Max Weber both agreed that capitalism generates alienation in modern societies, but the cause for it were both different. For Marx it is due to economic inequality in where the capitalist thinks that the workers worth nothing more than a source of labour, that can be employed and dismissed at will. This causes the workers to be dehumanised by their jobs (in the past, routine factory work and in the present-day, managing demands on a computer), which leads to the workers finding slight satisfaction and feeling incapable of improving their situation. It was noted by Marx four methods on how capitalism alienates workers. The first, is alienation from the function of working.

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