POL 315
THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MARXISM
transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation
of, the producers.
The system mutilates the laborer into a fragment of a man, degrade him
to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of
charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil. The worker is estranged
from his intellectual potentialities of the labor-process in the same
proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power.
They distort the conditions under which he works, subjecting him during
the labor-process to despotism, transforming his lifetime into working
time beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital.
Alienation is a situation in which creations of humanity appear to
humans as alien objects and such creations are seen as independent from
their creators and invested with the power to control them. People create
their own society, but will remain alienated until they recognise
themselves within their own creation. Until that time, humans will
assign an independent existence to objects, ideas and institutions and be
controlled by them. In the process they lose themselves, become
strangers in the world they created: they become alienated.
Religion provides an example of human alienation. In Marx's view
religion does not make man. However members of society fail to
recognize that religion is of their own making. They assign to the gods
an independent power, a power to direct their actions and shape their
destiny. The more people invest in religion, the more they lose
themselves. The more man puts into God, the less he retains of himself.
In assigning their own powers to supernatural beings, people become
alienated from themselves. Religion is a reflection of a more
fundamental source of alienation. It is essentially a projection of the
social relationships involved in the process of production. If people are
to find themselves and abolish illusions of religion, they must abandon a
condition which requires illusions. Humanity must therefore eradicate
the source of alienation in the economic infrastructure.
In Marx's view, productive labor is the primary most vital human
activity. In the production of objects, people objectify themselves; they
express and externalise their being; then they lose themselves in the
object. The act of production results in human alienation. This occurs
when people regard the products of their labor as commodities, as
articles for sale in the market place and the objects of their creation are
then seen to control their existence. They are seen to be subject to
impersonal forces, such as the law of supply and demand, over which
they have little or no control. The object that labor produces, its product,
confronts it as an alien being, as a power independent of the producer. In
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