| Marx's Theory Of Alienation |
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Karl Marx used the term Alienation (or, in his German writing ''Entfremdung'' or ''Entäusserung'') to refer to the separation of things that naturally belong together, or antagonism between things that are properly in harmony. In the concept's most important use, it refers to the alienation of people from aspects of their human nature. (Marx uses the German ''Gattungswesen'' usually translated as 'species-essence' or 'species-being'.) Marx believes that people will be alienated as a systematic fact of capitalism and all other forms of human society before now. CLARIFYING MARX'S CONCEPT OF ALIENATION While alienation can be something that people experience, for someone to be alienated in Marx's sense it isn't necessary for them to believe or feel that they are alienated. 'Alienation' for Marx describes objective features of a person's situation in capitalism. However, this doesn't mean that the objective fact of alienation will not have implications for a person's subjective feelings and experience. For an illustration of this, see the below section on ''Alienation and class''. Above, it was said that alienation principally refers to some estrangement (''Entfremdung'') between persons and their human nature. When people's ‘being does not correspond to their essence’ they are alienated, while actualisation (its opposite) is ‘the extent to which the human being as species being, as a human being, has become himself and grasped himself’. (For references to these usages in Marx's work, see ''Karl Marx'' by Allen Wood, second edition, p21.) Given this, we need to understand something more about Marx's conception of human nature. Some aspects of human nature are shared with non-human animals, such as the need for food, drink and rest. Alienation has little to do with these. Rather, it has to do with those elements of human nature which are uniquely human. Marx says that characteristically, ‘the human being makes his own species his object’. This means that, as humans, we conciously make ourselves, and our lives, the objective of our action. That is, we make plans about how we want our lives to go, and try to carry them out. Therefore, one aspect of alienation is powerlessness: when we are not in control of our own life's activity. This is most especially a problem in the arena of productive activity. Marx says that in this respect, 'as individuals express their life, so they are'. He means that what we ''do'' makes us what we ''are''. If production, which Marx believes is our most essential activity, is controlled and unfree, so will we be. Alienation is also caught up with the perceived monotony of the work of the proletarian under the capitalist division of labour. We can see how, if we were truly able to make our lives our own object we would be able to carry out whatever variety of activity we wanted. In ''The German Ideology'' Marx says that 'the calling, vocation and task of human beings is to develop themselves and all their capacities in a manifold way’. Marx sees alienation as caught up with individualism, and actualisation with community (''Gemeinwesen''). Thus, he says that to produce is 'immediately in the expression of my life to have created your expression your life, and therefore to have immediately confirmed and actualised in my individual activity my true essence, my human, my communal essence' (''Comment on James Mill''). We can see here an affirmation of the important place of productive activity in human life and also of the essentially collective nature of both humanity and productive activity. TYPES OF ALIENATION - THE DIFFERENT WAYS IN WHICH PEOPLE ARE ALIENATED Alienation in the labour process Marx argues that alienation in Capitalist societies is due to the fact that in Work , we each contribute to the common wealth, but can only express this fundamentally social aspect of ourselves through a production system that is not social but privately owned, for which we function as instruments, not as social beings: :'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 attempts 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'') THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ALIENATION IN MARX'S THOUGHT Alienation - a concept from Hegel and Feuerbach Alienation can be seen as a foundational claim in Marxist theory. Hegel described a succession of historic stages in the human '' End Of History becomes man's ''realisation of his species-being'' (i.e., our triumph over alienation; the establishment of an objectively better society). Alienation and Marx's theory of history In ''Capital'' volume 1, Marx writes that 'Things have now come so far that individuals must appropriate the present totality of productive powers not only in order to achieve self-activity, but even to make their existence itself secure'. In other words, Marx seems to think by 1867 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 Immiseration 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. ( Chapter 4 of ''The Holy Family'' - see under Critical Comment No. 2) SEE ALSO
FURTHER READING 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 reccomend reading a short introduction (such as one of those indicated below) to the concept first. Secondary literature
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