The Ideas of Marx on Alienation - Essay Example

As a thinker, humanist, and revolutionist, Karl Marx had afforded us, perhaps the greatest ideas of our time. He first polished ideas on the human being, society, and finally, nature criticizing all religions. He has inspired mass actions and revolutions that have disturbed a lot of government officials. His beliefs and writings inspired mass movements and have caused societal change and consequently the downfall of rulers in some countries. To better understand the situation of countries advocating his teachings one must know what Marx intends to impart to us all.

For Marx, capitalism is an economic system in which businesses are controlled and owned by a few individuals of private enterprise rather than by the government and its people. That no matter what the business is, a capitalist, uses his own money or other people’s money to make a profit and appropriate it for himself. Workers are mere dispensable laborers who work for the capitalists, to produce the goods that are to be sold which in turn provide a profit for the capitalists.

He theorized that alienation occurs as a result of the capitalistic effort whereby in his aim to amass more profit, the capitalist continues to push the laborer and later on, replaces him with robots and machines. The worker is thereby alienated from the “object of his work” when the use of machinery is employed to create a surplus in production. Machines compete with the actual talent of a worker thereby allowing cheap labor.

A worker would be alienated from the “activity of working” when he is forced to work. He does not have any right over his work as he is under close supervision to produce. Another set of workers are tasked to do most of the important thinking for him thereby allowing repetitive drudgery work under regimented working conditions.

Workers are also alienated from the “chance to determine what it is to be human” when he is forced to work under certain conditions that are not biologically favorable for them. Man adapts to nature and uses it for his own benefit, but when a man is forced to destroy whatever is beneficial for him to satisfy a greater need, he is separated from himself at the same time. He is not only alienating his needs but he is destroying what is vital to his existence.

As a person, man needs other people to relate with. But when workers are forced to compete with one another to satisfy the demands of the capitalist, he is being “alienated from other individuals”. In the real sense, Karl Marx wishes to impart that alienation occurs when labor is not voluntary, but forced. When there is coercion man is no longer comfortable with his working environment. He is not happy with what he is doing because of several factors that psychologically interrupt his balance. The knowledge that his work does not belong to him; in his workplace, his job is under the control of his superiors; and to gain recognition, he has to outshine others thereby creating conflict among his peers similarly displaces man’s true nature and alienates him. As a result, man is happier when he is not under these working conditions and work is shunned like a disease that will eat him up alive.

Karl Marx provided that the theory of “alienation is not an end in itself but a means to an end”. In his romantic and idealistic views for an end to alienation, changes would be geared towards an approach to a classless society and the withering away of the state.

He explicitly provided that class struggle has always existed from the time human beings made their own history. No amount of scarcity or surplus to satisfy the needs of an individual could alleviate what society creates false consciousness among men. Seemingly his ideas point towards the need to develop in man a sense of satisfaction after his basic needs are alleviated. After man works for his own basic needs alone; he no longer has to work for a capitalist who belongs to the upper class of society. A social revolution would gradually occur when man toils with his hands and others will have to follow. In the creation of a classless society, eventually, the state will wither and leadership will cease to hold power.

In the process of ending alienation, one cannot dismiss the fact that its viability would create impossibility in this age and time. We have been amassed with a population boom and third world countries have a different struggle for survival.   Certain lands are not arable enough for man to plant food for his own sustenance and there would be little room for anything else to consider when food is scarce and nature refuses to cooperate. Climate and geography pose as a hindrance yet man is forced to live in such climates. Another factor in opposition to the end of alienation is the separation of ideologies, faith and religion, and man’s moral values. Undeniably, more learned individuals right now who can consciously form their own opinions and create solutions to their own problems can easily reach out to others to impose their own ideas through electronic connectivity which relays ideas in a matter of seconds. Greed as an intrinsic attitude and power as an extrinsic pull is ultimately a hindrance that has allowed man to fall prey to his own primal needs.

Ideally, Marx’s visions of such a society are prayed for, but man has to start correcting his own attitude before he creates a certain global change for the betterment of the human race. We will continue to harbor the hope that someday this possibility will turn into a reality. That Karl Marx’s belief would lead to the perfected ideology that would benefit man as a whole. Only then can we be allowed to exist in this world peacefully.