POL 315 MODULE 2
this way people are estranged from the objects they produce; they
become alienated from the most vital human activity -productive labor.
Alienation and Capitalism
Alienation reaches its height in capitalist society, where labor is
dominated by the requirements of capital, the most important of which is
the demand for profit. These requirements determine levels of
employment and wages, the nature and quantity of goods produced, and
their method of manufacture.
Workers see themselves as prisoners of market forces over which they
have no control. They are subject to the impersonal mechanisms of the
law of supply and demand. They are at the mercy of the periodic booms
and slumps that characterise capitalist economies. The workers therefore
lose control over the objects they produce and become alienated from
their product and the act of production. Their work becomes a means to
an end, a means of obtaining money to buy the goods and services
necessary for their existence. Unable to fulfill their being in the products
of their labor, the workers become alienated from themselves in the act
of production. Therefore, the more the workers produce, the more they
lose themselves.
In Marx's view, the market forces that are seen to control production are
not impersonal mechanisms beyond the control of humanity: they are
human made. Alienation is therefore the result of human activity rather
than external forces with an existence independent of humanity. If the
products of labor are alien to the worker, they must belong to somebody
else. This somebody else is the capitalist who owns and controls the
means of production and the products of labor, who appropriates the
wealth that labor produces.
Given the priority Marx assigns to economic factors, an end to
alienation involves a radical change in the economic infrastructure. In
particular, it requires the abolition of private property and its
replacement by communal ownership of the means of production that is,
the replacement of capitalism by communism. Marx saw communism as
the complete and conscious return of man unto himself as a social being.
4.0 CONCLUSION
For the Marxist upon the attainment of communist society, conflicts of
interest will disappear and antagonistic groups such as capitalists and
workers will be a thing of the past. The products of labor will no longer
be appropriated by some at the expense of others. With divisions in
society eradicated, humans will be at peace with their fellows, and they
will produce both for themselves and others at one and the same time. In
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