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Karl Marx Alienation Essay

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Marx believed that all historical change was caused by a series of class struggles between the 'haves' and the 'have not’s'. Capitalism describes an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned. Marx describes a theory of alienation as a consequence of living in a society of very strict social classes. This so called alienation for one self is a consequence of being a product of a mechanism in a specific social class, which then can eventually take away from a person’s humanity.
The way Marx sets up the theory of this alienation shows the means of a capitalistic society and also as a mode of production. A worker is someone who loses the ability to determine life and could eventually loose ones humanity. They are deprived …show more content…

“When they are at work they feel homeless, but; when they are having a leisure time they feel at home.” There is a fundamental social aspect that relates to an individuality of a person, and while the worker is can only express this labor it is thought through a private production of industry in which each worker is only thought as a tool or instrument. Karl Marx identifies types of work under the capitalistic society that is being discussed in the production of …show more content…

He says that the “Design of the product and how it is produced are determined not by the workers, nor by the buyers of the product, but buy the capitalistic society it is being produced in.” The classes within the capitalist society tell the workers what to do and to make and they not only get rid of the emotion of the workers but they also tell the labor engineer and the designers of the product, that In order to get the consumer to buy the goods they must shape the product and maximum input and output to gain the most profit from their product. Workers have no control over what is to be made or put together, it is put in front of them and they are told to make it. That is why alienation is describes these work habits of labor. By the workers being told what to do the capitalists gain control over everything within the worker himself, whether it be manual or intellectual they benefit from the labor that is being done and could not care if the person doing this work looses his

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Essentially, the worker does not control what he or she produces because the capitalists control it to ensure an increase of profit. In Alienated Labour, Marx explains that, “this relationship is at the same time the relationship to the sensuous exterior world and to natural objects as to an alien and hostile world opposed to him”(McIntosh 1997:18). He argues that the workers feels alienated form their own work because they know that they will be unable to reap the benefits (McIntosh 1997). An example of product alienation is how Z understand that he is digging tunnels to increase the production of the colony however is alienated because he does not receive any personal benefits of his work. The general stands in front of the entire colony and says, “We are the hero’s.

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Alienation is used to describe a person who feels isolated from others or is prohibited from taking part in aspects of society in which he or she should otherwise be allowed to participate. For example, people who often perceive themselves or are perceived by others to be 'outsiders' or a 'social misfits' might find that they are unwelcome in certain areas of society and will therefore feel alienated from others because they don't fit in. From Marx's perspective, human beings distinguished themselves from other animals based on their consciousness, autonomy, and ability to be productive members of a society, which give them a sense of purpose in life. Broadly, this is what Marx referred to as human nature, which he characterized as the essence

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Marx’s theory on exploitation is related to his earlier writings on the theory of alienation. They are both similar in that they are both highly critical of the capitalist system. Grint,(2005) emphasises that before Karl Marx nobody had ever confronted the idea of exploitive wage labour, many great thinkers of Marx’s time like Locke and Ricardo thought that the value of the wage labour was exactly equivalent to the labour expended while producing a product. Watson,T.J (2008) states that “ capitalist employment is exploitive in attempting to take from working people the value which they create through their labour and which is properly their own. ”P.62.

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