POL 315 MODULE 2
3.0 MAIN CONTENT
3.1 Alienation
By interacting with nature in what is termed labor, individuals develop
and change their own character. The essence of human beings, therefore,
becomes closely related to their work. For Marx work was a form of
self-creation and Man is constantly developing and changing-creating
his own nature. In other words, the product of our labor is part of us, and
something of us is in the things we produce through our work. This
attitude might appear naive at first glance; yet which of us has not felt
great satisfaction at having made something by hand? Do we not feel a
closer relationship with objects we have made ourselves?
Marx's theory of work and his attitude toward capitalism led him to his
theory of human self-alienation. Marx believed that workers became
alienated from themselves because of three exploitative features of
capitalism. First, since work can be a form of self-creativity, it should be
enjoyable, Marx reasoned. Yet, because the capitalists squeeze every
possible cent of profit from the workers, they make the conditions of
work intolerable. Consequently, instead of enjoying work or the act of
self-creation, the members of the proletariat grow to hate the very
process by which they could refine their own natures. Consequently,
they become alienated from a part of their own selves.
Secondly, Marx believed that capitalists must exploit the workers in
order to produce a profit. The capitalists force the workers to sell the
product of their labor and then use that product against the workers to
exploit them further. This, Marx claimed, forces the workers to regard
their own product, something that is actually part of them, as alien and
even harmful to them; thus, it becomes another form of self-alienation.
Thirdly, and here Marx is truly paradoxical, the capitalist is criticised for
mechanising production because this process robs laborers of their skills
and reduces them to little more than feeders of machines. All the
creativity is taken out of work, making it impossible for people ever to
develop their humanity fully: this is the ultimate alienation.
Marx clearly, saw himself as a prophet of the future. He claimed that
socialism was the coming economic system and that it would become
even more productive than capitalism. Yet, in this theory he is resentful
of mechanisation and even appears to look back nostalgically to an
earlier era. Within the capitalist system all methods for raising the
social productiveness of labor are brought about at the cost of the
individual laborer; all means for the development of production
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