Marxs Concept Of Alienation And Its Impact On Hegel - Case Study Example

Marx’s Concept Of Alienation And Its Impact On Hegel Introduction The young Marx found great influence from the work of Hegel. In particular interest to Marx was Hegel’s theories of freedom and religion. It is from these issues that Marx got the idea of Alienation. Hegel was both a Humanist and an Idealist. He was a firm believer of the nature of the spirit (Wheen, 1999). While working on his Alienation theory, Marx put much focus on how history had significance to the work of Hegel, particularly his freedom ideas. Marx together with a group of other followers of Hegel’s works, sought to change Hegel’s idealism to materialism (Wheen, 1999). The alienation theory is one of the theories that are found in the early works of Karl Marx (Leopold, 2007). This theory is part of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, which were first published in 1932. Marx adapted his Theory of Alienation from the 1841 work of Feuerbach in The Essence of Christianity. According to Marx, the old philosophy departed from truth when it stated that man/woman is an abstract being who merely thinks without really belonging to the body. His philosophy is based upon the principle that man/woman is a sensuous and real being. Further, by principle the whole of man’s/woman’s body constitutes his/her ego (Feuerbach translated by Leopold, 2007). Marx uses his Alienation Theory to criticize the concept of State and capitalism, for which he is known to have been vehemently against. Theory of Alienation The theory of Alienation can be described as the contention that under capitalist conditions in contemporary industrial production workers, by losing control over the work they do, will certainly lose control of their lives. In any significant sense, therefore, workers cease to exist as autonomous beings (Elster, 1994). Marx’s theory of Alienation touched a lot on Human Nature. Marx views man as a species being with consciousness. All his activities therefore are free activities. He however notes that alienated labour reverses the connection; man makes his life activity merely a means for which he exists (Marx, 1844 trans. Marcus, 2008). Marx here means that man lets his essential activity to rule over him. This is in line with Feuerbach’s thoughts on alienation, when he states that man allows God to rule over his life. Marx contrasts man with animals when he says that an animal is “with its life activity at one” since it lacks a consciousness (Ollman, 1996). In his view, man only has a conscience. This thought process of Marx brings out the humanist in him. According to Karl Marx (2000), it is man’s consciousness that keeps him apart from other creatures; it is this that defines him. He notes that what constitutes the species-character of man is free conscious activity (McLellan, 1970). In other words, Marx sees religion and the concept of God as man’s reaction to material life alienation. In (Wolff , 1984) he states that until the material life of man is set free, this alienation will remain; but when it is eventually set free, then religion will cease to be important in the life of man. In The Holy Family (1844) Marx asserts that both capitalists and proletarians are alienated at the same level (Mclellan, 1970). However, he continues to say that they do not experience this alienation the same way. He says that capitalists are very comfortable in this situation of alienation while the proletariat is completely miserable. In this theory, Marx goes on to expound on his belief that more and more people rely on labour to survive in a capitalist system. According to Marx, people no longer rely on nature for basic needs. He asserts that without money it is impossible to survive in the modern world, and without work, one cannot get this money (Leopold, 2007). People have been made into slaves for the need of labour. It is as if people should be thankful that this need for labour has enabled them to find work, and hence a means of survival. Thus according to Marx, this sense of servitude is what constitutes the worker’s alienation. According to Cox (1998), what Marx meant by his alienation theory was a total loss of control, especially over matters related to the worker and labour. She says that Marx came up with his alienation theory to show that there is actually human activity that plays a big role in the occurrence in the impersonal forces that are so dominant in society. In Cox’s (1998) view, Marx has shown that the modern world was created by past human action. He has also proved that human action is capable of shaping a world that will be free from capitalism and contradictions. He also developed a theory to explain how the society human beings live in has shaped their lives, but also stated how they can change this same society. For him, people are both “world producing” and “world determined”. Unlike his predecessors Feuerbach and Hegel, Marx argues that alienation is not rooted in religion or in the mind but instead it is founded in the material. Alienation to him therefore meant loss of control – particularly over labour. Alienation of the Worker Marx believes that the worker is alienated at four levels. The first level of this alienation is from the products that he produces. In other words, just because the worker is working hard to produce a product for someone else and not himself, he is bound to feel removed from that product. Karl (2000) claims that the product exists outside the worker, “opposed to him, alien, an autonomous power”. The second level of alienation that the worker experiences is from labour. Marx says that people approach labour as an object, an impersonal means to an end. Alienation from labour according to Marx results from the fact that the worker is alienated from his product. To justify this, Marx says that production ought to be externalized if the product that results from work is externalized (Karl, 2000). He also asserts that labour will always be alienated from the worker because it is not freely given; it is actually forced labour (Singer, 2000). The third level of alienation is from self and the other alienation level is from other human beings. According to Marx, if man is alienated from his product and his labour, then he has to be alienated from himself. He says that the act of working or labouring is part of the human nature. Therefore if the worker cannot feel this part of his nature, then he is alienated from self (Singer, 2000). To illustrate how labour alienates humans from other humans, Marx explains that labour for the rich produces marvellous things but privation for the labourer. It produces for the worker hovels but palaces for the wealthy. While producing beauty, it cripples the labourer. Replacing work by machines, it ties back part of the workforce to barbarous labour and turns others into tools. While producing sophistication, it produces for the workforce idiocy and feeble-mindedness (Marcus, 2008). Marx points out that if one man is alienated from himself, then he is alienated from other men as well (Geras, 1983). Hence, the process of alienation starts with the worker producing a product which is alien to him and this leads him to be alienated from his labour. When the labour is alien to him, the worker becomes alien to himself and eventually he is alienated from everyone else. Marx claims that there is a hostility that brews up as a result of this alienation process. He states that the product of one’s labour is related to one as to a powerful, hostile and alien object that is independent of one, he is related in a way that another powerful, hostile and alien person independent of one is the object’s lord. If a person is not free in relation to what he does, then he is to it related as bond activity – under coercion, domination and the yoke of another person (Geras, 1983) To satisfy their needs, people have to exchange their property and in the process, this property becomes impersonal, which is only used as an exchange value. According to Marx, capitalism leads to alienation because of the use of private property as a means of production and moneymaking. He argues that capitalist-based labour is a way of exploiting the working class for the benefit of those within the capital class (Vale, Karl Marx and His Theory of Alienation). Marx says that the whole process of alienation of labour leads to the worker not no be happy with what he is doing. Marx says that the worker would feel at ease when not working as opposed to when he is working. Marx points out that the reason why the worker is not happy is because the whole concept of alienation is not in his nature. Marx states first that external to the person that works is labour. In other words, labour belongs not to his nature and thus he realizes himself not at work, denies himself in his engagement with work, and is clearly not at ease in it. Rather he is unhappy because his mental or physical energy is not developed in the course of work and yet his spirit is ruined and flesh mortified by it. Marx further reasons that the worker feels outside of himself as he works but is at home away from work. This simply means that the labour is forced and not voluntary. This kind of labour in his view does not gratify a need but rather is a means of gratifying needs that exist outside of his person. The alien nature of work is revealed unmistakably by the fact that it is like the plague shunned as long as means of coercion exists (from Wilde, 1989). In all these levels of alienation, Marx’s point is that the worker is estranged from the process of his work. In the capitalist world, the workers are in total control of their work environment. Even when the reasons for working are motivated by economic gains, an individual worked as an independent person. However, in modern capitalist times, workers cannot work independently. Instead they work like the simple passive objects that Marx describes in his early writings (Wolff, 2008). In other words there is no humanization in the work place today. In this case, Marx conclusion is that alienation changes the relationships between men and instead this relationships are between property owners. Why Is the Concept of Alienation Important in Marx’s Early Works The importance of Marx’s Theory of Alienation is very important in his early work when he was trying to conceptualize his other concept of materialism. He talks of alienation as being a social alienation, where human beings are estranged from aspects of their conscious human nature. Marx was a strong anti capitalist and he blamed alienation in society on capitalism. His later work was primarily based on capitalism and the social class. His work in alienation perhaps played a very important role in helping Marx shape his materialism concepts. In his alienation theory, Marx speaks strongly against religion, much the same way as he does in his materialism concept. It is like he uses bits and pieces of his Alienation theory to build the theory on materialism and the social class. In the German Ideology (Ollman, 1996) it is evident that while Marx sees the need for self activity or self actualization, which is in effect the opposite of alienation, it will not be very important to the proletariat. He states that the proletariat will be trodden down upon by the capitalists in such a short time that he will have to make a social revolution so that he has a chance of survival (Wilde, 1989). He sees capitalism as a means through which some people alienate others as they chase their own wants. He states that people have now to appreciate the connection among landownership, capitalism, greed, division of labour and private property, and the relationship between exchange of monopoly with competition, and of value with men’s devaluation, and of wholesome alienation with the system that is based on money. It is hard to understand the theory of alienation without first understanding Marx’s concept of capitalism. Conclusion It is quite clear that Marx’s Alienation theory had a lot of humanist and idealist concepts. In his later works, Marx tried very hard to distance himself from these two concepts and instead focused on materialism. According to Geras (1983) within materialism, no place is left for “human nature” as a concept and yet the Alienation theory is founded on the concept of human Nature. Though he tried to distance himself from such people as Feuerbach in his later works, the young Marx was more of a philosopher than a social economist (Hook, 1958). This can be seen from the way he used idealism and human nature to explain his theory of alienation. According to Wolff (2008), Marx started changing his philosophical stance a year after developing his alienation theory. However, during the development years of his materialism and social class theories, Marx set to distance himself from his earlier philosophical approach to issues. According to Avineri (1968), this ‘materialism’ is the foundation upon which Marxist thought is based; essentially, it is the basis of communistic revolution. Economic and social change is more important to Marx and not the ‘abstractness’ of philosophy. Wolff also notes that Marx is more concerned with transforming the world, in its current state, and not concentrating on philosophy. Some scholars think that Marx’s earlier philosophical approach to issues set the stage for his mature thought. According to Gordon (2004), Marx’s theory of alienation in no way comes into conflict with his materialism concept. The bridge between Marx’s earlier works of alienation and his later social theories is pegged on the idea that the alienated human is as a result of external forces which are a product of human actions (Hook, 1958). According to Marx, capitalism influences an individual’s future behaviour, thus determining some of the possible actions. There have been many criticisms towards Marx’s Alienation theory, especially regarding its tie to capitalism. Marx blames capitalism or the money system for the problems that man faces (Cox, 1998). He blames materialism for the development of an alienation culture among workers. However, since developing his alienation theory and blaming the workers’ conditions on capitalism a lot has happened to change the face of capitalism, as we know it. Workers do not work under deplorable situation as they used to during the nineteenth century. Many workers today love the work they do, the products they create and even the people they work with. Alienation, as explained by Marx is not as evident to day as it was 200 years ago. Today, workers are treated with utter respect. Nowadays, it is the people who control the workplace, not the products that they make. The world still has got a long way to go before all the class issues can be resolved, but all these problems cannot be blamed on capitalism alone. That is why it is very hard for the theory of alienation to have any significance in this day and age. However, the fact that Marx was influenced by his early work when developing his later theories is not in doubt. References Avineri S. (1968) The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, Cambridge University Press. Cox J. (1998) An Introduction to Marx’s Theory of Alienation, viewed 12 December, 2009 http://www.lpi.org.uk/ Elster J. (1994) Making Sense of Marx, Part 8, Cambridge University Press. Geras N. (1983) Marx and Human Nature: Refutation of A Legend, Verso:London. Gordon J.B. (2004) Is Marx’s Concept of Alienation in Conflict With his materialism? Viewed 12 December, 2009 http://www.jakeg.co.uk/essays/marx_theory.htm Hook S. (1958) From Hegel to Marx: studies in the intellectual development of Karl Marx, New York, Humanities Press. Karl Marx (2000) Selected writings (2nd ed.) (Mclellan D. eds), Oxford University Press, New York Leopold, D. (2007) The young Karl Marx, Cambridge University Press. Marcus B. (2008) Karl Marx and His theory of Alienation: how It Can Be Applied to Modern Society, viewed 12 December, 2009 http://www.helium.com/items/1183639-karl-marx-and-his-theory-of-alienation-how-it-can-be-applied-to-modern-society McLellan D. (1970) Marx before Marxism, Macmillan, London. Ollman B. (1996) Marx’s Concept of man in Capitalist Society( 2nd Edition), Cambridge University Press. Singer P. (2000) Marx: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press. Vale B. (n.d)Karl Marx and His Theory of Alienation, viewed 12 December, 2009 http://weuropeanhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/karl_marx_and_his_theory_of_alienation Wheen Francis. (1999) Karl Marx, Fourth Estate, London. Wilde L. (1989) Marx and Contradiction, Ladershot, Avebury. Wolff J. (2008) Karl Marx, viewed 12 December, 2009 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/ Wolff R. P. (1984). Understanding Marx, Princeton University Press. Read More