Does the McDonaldization thesis do a good job of applying Webers ideas to

contemporary society? Discuss with examples.

1.
In the capitalist mode of production, what is the relation between alienated labor
and private property according to Marx?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Alienation from product- link to private property

Alienation from working- link to private property
Alienation from the worker himself- link to private property
Alienation from man to man
Communism

Alienation is a condition characterizing relations of production in capitalism. It

refers to the detachment, both physical and mental, of the laborer and his work, the
product of his work and himself.
Marxists define Private Property as the right of an individual, or group of
individuals, to exclude others from the use of an object1
The first type of alienation that Marx describes is the alienation of the worker from
the product that she produces. According to Marx, an estrangement occurs when the
laborer views the product of his labor as external and even hostile to herself.
Although the product is a culmination of the laborers own investment in work and
time, the laborer ultimately has no ownership over the product. The realization of
labor is its objectification, and this objectification is for the laborer at the same time
the loss of object alienation2. In effect, when a worker works to produce a product,
he is also losing the project as the profit and all benefits of the product are taken
away from the laborer and passed onto the capitalist class, or the bourgeoisie.
The alienation of a workers product is rooted in the workers alienation from the
act of his labor itself. Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto that the proletariat,
the working class lives only so long as they find work, and who find work only so
long as their labor increases capital.3 The labor itself does not belong to the worker,
instead it is an object owned by the capitalist class. The worker works as means of
Horvat, Branko. The Political Economy of Socialism: A Marxist Social Theory.
Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1982. 15. Print.
2 Petrovi, Gajo. "Marx's Theory of Alienation." Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research 23.3 (1963): 419-26. Print.
3 Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto (p.6). Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1967. Print.
1

survival.

The Political Economy of Alienation: Karl Marx and

Adam Smith
E. G. West