<http://en.wikipedia.

org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation>

Contents
1 Types of alienation
1.1 Alienation in the labour process
2 The significance of alienation in Marx's thought
2.1 The concept of alienation — from Hegel and Feuerbach
2.2 Alienation and Marx's theory of history
2.3 Alienation and class
3 Further Reading

Types of alienation

Alienation in the labour process

Marx's Theory of Alienation is based upon his observation that in emerging industrial
production under capitalism, workers inevitably lose control of their lives and selves, in
not having any control of their work. Workers never become autonomous, self-realized
human beings in any significant sense, except the way the bourgeois want the worker to
be realized.

Alienation in capitalist societies occurs because in work each contributes to the common
wealth, but can only express this fundamentally social aspect of individuality through a
production system that is not publicly social, but privately owned, for which each
individual functions as an instrument, not as a social being:

'Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings. Each of us would
have in two ways affirmed himself and the other person. 1) In my production I would
have objectified my individuality, its specific character, and therefore enjoyed not only an
individual manifestation of my life during the activity, but also when looking at the
object I would have the individual pleasure of knowing my personality to be objective,
visible to the senses and hence a power beyond all doubt. 2) In your enjoyment or use of
my product I would have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied
a human need by my work, that is, of having objectified man’s essential nature, and of
having thus created an object corresponding to the need of another man’s essential nature.
... Our products would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential
nature.'" (Comment on James Mill)

In this work, written in 1844, Marx sought to show how alienation arises from private
labour, from commodity production:

'Let us review the various factors as seen in our supposition: My work would be a free
manifestation of life, hence an enjoyment of life. Presupposing private property, my work
is an alienation of life, for I work in order to live, in order to obtain for myself the means
of life. My work is not my life.' (Comment on James Mill)

Marx attributes four types of alienation in labour under capitalism:[1]

alienation of the worker from his or her ‘species essence’ as a human being rather than a
machine;
alienation between workers, since capitalism reduces labour to a commodity to be traded
on the market, rather than a social relationship;
alienation of the worker from the product, since this is appropriated by the capitalist
class, and so escapes the worker's control;
alienation from the act of production itself, such that work comes to be a meaningless
activity, offering little or no intrinsic satisfactions.

The significance of alienation in Marx's thought

The concept of alienation — from Hegel and Feuerbach

Alienation is a foundational claim in Marxist theory. Hegel described a succession of
historic stages in the human Geist (Spirit), by which that Spirit progresses towards perfect
self-understanding, and away from ignorance. In Marx's reaction to Hegel, these two,
idealist poles are replaced with materialist categories: spiritual ignorance becomes
alienation, and the transcendent end of history becomes man's realisation of his species-
being; triumph over alienation and establishment of an objectively better society.

This teleological reading of Marx, particularly supported by Alexandre Kojève before

World War II, is criticized by Louis Althusser in his writings about "random materialism"
(matérialisme aléatoire). Althusser claimed that said reading made the proletariat the
subject of history (i.e. Georg Lukacs's History and Class Consciousness [1923] published
at the Hungarian Soviet Republic's fall), was tainted with Hegelian idealism, the
"philosophy of the subject" that had been in force for five centuries, which was criticized
as the "bourgeois ideology of philosophy".

Alienation and Marx's theory of history

In The German Ideology Marx writes that 'things have now come to such a pass that the
individuals must appropriate the existing totality of productive forces, not only to achieve
self-activity, but, also, merely to safeguard their very existence' [1]. In other words, Marx
seems to think that, while humans do have a need for self-activity (self-actualisation, the
opposite of alienation), this will be of secondary historical relevance. This is because he
thinks that capitalism will increase the economic impoverishment of the proletariat so
rapidly that they will be forced to make the social revolution just to stay alive - they
probably wouldn't even get to the point of worrying that much about self-activity. This
doesn't mean, though, that tendencies against alienation only manifest themselves once
other needs are amply met, only that they are of reduced importance. The work of Raya
Dunayevskaya and others in the tradition of Marxist humanism drew attention to
manifestations of the desire for self-activity even among workers struggling for more
basic goals .

Alienation and class

In this passage, from The Holy Family, Marx says that capitalists and proletarians are
equally alienated, but experience their alienation in different ways:

The propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-
estrangement. But the former class feels at ease and strengthened in this self-
estrangement, it recognizes estrangement as its own power and has in it the semblance of
a human existence. The class of the proletariat feels annihilated in estrangement; it sees
in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existence. It is, to use an
expression of Hegel, in its abasement the indignation at that abasement, an indignation to
which it is necessarily driven by the contradiction between its human nature and its
condition of life, which is the outright, resolute and comprehensive negation of that
nature. Within this antithesis the private property-owner is therefore the conservative
side, the proletarian the destructive side. From the former arises the action of preserving
the antithesis, from the latter the action of annihilating it. [2]

Further reading
“ I am not interested in dry economic socialism. We are fighting against misery, but we
are also fighting against alienation. One of the fundamental objectives of Marxism is to
remove interest, the factor of individual interest, and gain, from people’s psychological
motivations. Marx was preoccupied both with economic factors and with their
repercussions on the spirit. If communism isn’t interested in this too, it may be a method
of distributing goods, but it will never be a revolutionary way of life. ”
— Ernesto "Che" Guevara [3]

Alienation is a theme in Marx's writing that runs right throughout his work, from the
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, to Capital - especially the unpublished
sections entitled Results of the Immediate Process of Production. An online archive of
almost everything written by Marx can be found at the Marxists Internet Archive- at
which you can search for 'alienation'. Another good way to approach Marx's original
writing is through a good collection - Karl Marx: selected writings (second edition),
edited by David Mclellan clearly indicates sections on alienation in its contents. Key
works on alienation include the Comment on James Mill and The German Ideology. An
example of characterisation of alienation in Marx's later work (which differs strongly in
emphasis, if not in actual content from earlier presentations) can be found in the
Grundrisse. Marx's work can sometimes be daunting - many people would recommend
reading a short introduction (such as one of those indicated below) to the concept first.