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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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Fermelita Borre AB1213 Rochelle Igot Philosophical Research Paper What is Alienation? In this paper, we will evaluate alienation and its premises as presented in “Estranged Labor” by Karl Marx. Although the entirety of the arguments he presented in his manuscript were substantial, there was a flaw in one of the arguments he presented in the types of of alienation, the estrangement of the worker from the activity of production.

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Marx, equally, believes that the outcome of industrial capitalism is alienation of the proletariat, the working class, from their society.

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Marx explains that the third type of alienation is self-alienation. This explores the alienated relationship between the worker and himself. As a producer, the worker is directed how to perform each task is has no freedom of choice (Misina 2015). “It alienates from man his own body, nature exterior to him, and his intellectual being, his human essence”(McIntosh 1997:20). Marx argues that workers must follow orders and aren’t given the opportunity to innovate and use their own ideas.

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In the year 1844, Marx wrote the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, in which he described the concept of “alienation”. Marx speaks of several alienations of the worker. The first alienation of the worker to the product of labor. When the worker puts their time and energy into the product, they become lesser for it, as the product of labor is literally the objectification of labor as Marx states: “This fact expresses merely that the object which labor produces – labor’s product – confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labor is labor which has been congealed in an object, which has become material: it is the objectification of labor.

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The modern world that we are living in is making technological advances that have surpassed our expectations—we are experiencing the prime of our thriving society. However, as society continues to flourish, we are simultaneously feeling vulnerable and powerless as ever due to the advancements we ourselves have produced; the fruits of our labor have become a force that endangers our very own existence. The Marxist theory of alienation discusses the disastrous effects of global capitalism—lack of communication, economic instability, exploitation of natural resources, etc.—and shows how foreign and oppressed it makes the working class. Emily St. John Mandel utilizes the psychological version of this theory, which delves into societal influences

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Our economic and political system is not only supposed to work as a base for progress; it is also presumed to allow everyday people the opportunities to succeed and sustain their basic lives. In a world dominated by capitalism, humans are not getting the freedom they require to survive because they are being exploited, oppressed, and ignored by the dominant force or state. This topic of state oppression is an important one to discuss because the results of state actions affect society in a broad sense and similarly, it affects individual people. The state and powerful corporations have connections and more resources to hide their exploitative actions and evade accountability. Discussing Marx’s alienation, it will become clear that it is a result of Hegel’s

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In today’s industrialized world, the fact of the matter is that most individuals must work for those who are wealthy and are familiar with the luxury of owning property in order to survive. However, being a member of the working class in a Capitalist society makes it all too easy to begin to feel disconnected from the rest of the world. According to sociologist Karl Marx, this is known as Alienation, which can be experienced in four distinct stages: alienation from the product of one’s labor, from the labor process, from others, and from oneself. In their most basic forms, the stages of Alienation detail the loss of control over what one produces, the inability to control how they work to produce, the strains that form in relationships as a result of working too much, and the lack of self-development caused by experiencing the prior three stages,

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Karl Mar was an interesting socialist whose ideas were not generally supported by some countries. He focused on alienation, species being, and the social impact of our system of food distribution and consumption. He wanted his audience/followers to understand how alienation was and is related to the organization of labor and systems of exchange under capitalism. Marx thought of alienation as being “inherent in capitalism, because the process of production and the results of our labor confront us as a dominating power“ (p. 47).

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Srilalitha Cunkari Fridays- 9:00am-9:50am In Kant Marx's, Religion as Alienation, alienation is described as being deeply into an organized religion as well as economic, political and social theory of that time. He argued that alienation does not come from ideas, but rather from the material conditions of political economy that people are suffering from and that it is our material needs that primarily directs our fundamental interaction with the world rather than ideas. Kant Marx was a logical person who did not believe in the unseen truth and wanted evidence in order to believe in religion. He wanted people to see things beyond religion because he didn’t want the society to blindly believe in something that cant be seen and had his own

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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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Alienation from the product is where people are engaged in a lot of mass production but in a capitalist system the labourer is assigned a very specific or specialised task. Unlike in the culture industry where people own the product, in alienation they work to make a product they don’t own for the people to consume and make the maximum amount of profit. The 2 | P a g e idea in culture industry is to create products for people to consume and not for them to make maximum profits. And again in alienation the capitalist collects all the profits and doesn’t really care about the product (Bronner 2011:40).

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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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Sociologists such as Herbet Mc Closky, Richard Schacht, Jan Haida, Michael Aiken, Jerald Huge, Melvin Seeman, Beijamin Zablocki and Emile Durkhein opine that alienation is a result of human powerlessness, meaninglessness. Cultural estrangement, social isolation and self-estrangement. From the sociologist point of view, alienation can be divided in 2 realms: Structural and socio-psychological. Societal Alienation refers to the situation where a person feels alienated from the society due to its societal structures i.e. there is a distance between an individual and the work product and an individual’s treatment on the basis of class, caste, race, gender etc.

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