Marxs Alienation Theory - Essay Example

The workers’ poverty and misery increased with the size and power of their production. The workers are devalued to cheaper commodities as the value of their products gets higher. Apart from creating goods alone, labor also produces itself and workers as commodities (Gouldner 186). He explains that under the political economy laws, an increase in what the workers produce leaves them with less to consume. Therefore, the more value they create, the more valueless they become. While labor produces more riches for the rich, it produces misery for the workers (Fromm 96).

Alienation occurs in capitalism in the sense that the workers do not work to create products that they can sell to real people (D’Amato 1). Workers need to put their subjectivity into objects so that they can also enjoy the fact that other people will in turn enjoy the products of their labor. However, in capitalist societies, the workers work merely to get a means of life. They work in order to live. The workers depend on labor to get money to enable them to live. Rather than providing natural, human satisfaction, labor works to provide more wealth to the capitalists.

The capitalists exploit the workers as if their labor were property that can be bought and sold (D’Amato 1). The workers are, therefore, alienated from their products precisely because they do not own them. They belong to the capitalists who bought the workers’ labor power. The capitalists hence not only obtain exclusive ownership of the workers’ products but also all the profit realized by the sale of the products (D’Amato 1). The laborers can only articulate their social characteristic of individuality through the production systems. These systems are not collectively owned, but rather privately owned. They are privatized assets for which individuals function, not as social beings, but more as instruments.
There are four forms of alienation as described below:
Alienation of the worker from the work
With the alienation of the laborers from their products, the laborers also become objects. Furthermore, they become slaves of the objects, existing only as workers and physical subjects. The products confront them as alien powers and rule over them because they belong to other people (Fromm 48).
Alienation of the worker from working
Since the workers are alienated from the process of labor, they cannot satisfy themselves. Instead, they work for the needs of others. They are in compelled labor instead of voluntary labor (Fromm 95).

Alienation of the worker from himself
Because alienation transforms free and self-directed work into a means to live, it ultimately transforms the species’ life of humans into a means of physical, individual survival. It alienates humans from their own bodies and external nature (Fromm 103).
Alienation of the worker from other workers
Marx points out that alienating man from the product of his labor, his activities and his species life results in his alienation from other men. He argues that what applies to man’s relationship with his work, a product of his work and himself, also applies to his relationship with other men, their labor and the objects of their labor (Fromm 103).
In conclusion, Marx is correct when he argues that it is possible to overcome alienation by restructuring society. Workers can achieve this by collectively abolishing the separation from the ownership and control of production means (D’Amato 1). The control can in turn be used to abolish the market and replace it with consciously planning for human needs.