Marx Essay Research Paper In Karl Marx

Marx Essay, Research Paper

In Karl Marx’s early writing on “estranged labor” there is a clear and prevailing focus on the plight of the laborer. Marx’s writing on estranged labor is an attempt to draw a stark distinction between property owners and workers. In the writing Marx argues that the worker becomes estranged from his labor because he is not the recipient of the product he creates. As a result labor is objectified, that is labor becomes the object of mans existence. As labor is objectified man becomes disillusioned and enslaved. Marx argues that man becomes to be viewed as a commodity worth only the labor he creates and man is further reduced to a subsisting animal void of any capacity of freedom except the will to labor. For Marx this all leads to the emergence of private property, the enemy of the proletariat. In fact Marx’s writing on estranged labor is a repudiation of private property- a warning of how private property enslaves the worker. This writing on estranged labor is an obvious point of basis for Marx’s Communist Manifesto.

The purpose of this paper is to view Marx’s concept of alienation (estranged labor) and how it limits freedom. For Marx man’s freedom is relinquished or in fact wrested from his true nature once he becomes a laborer. This process is thoroughly explained throughout Estranged Labor. This study will reveal this process and argue it’s validity. Appendant to this study on alienation there will be a micro-study which will attempt to ascertain Marx’s view of freedom (i.e. positive or negative). The study on alienation in conjunction with the micro-study on Marx’s view of freedom will help not only reveal why Marx feels labor limits mans freedom, but it will also identify exactly what kind of freedom is being limited.

Karl Marx identifies estranged labor as labor alien to man. Marx explains the condition of estranged labor as the result of man participating in an institution alien to his nature. It is my interpretation that man is alienated from his labor because he is not the reaper of what he sows. Because he is never the recipient of his efforts the laborer lacks identity with what he creates. For Marx then labor is “alien to the worker…[and]…does not belong to his essential being.” Marx identifies two explanations of why mans lack of identity with labor leads him to be estranged from labor. (1) “[The laborer] does not develop freely his physical and mental energy, but instead mortifies his mind.” In other words labor fails to nurture mans physical and mental capacities and instead drains them. Because the worker is denied any nurturing in his work no intimacy between the worker and his work develops. Lacking an intimate relation with what he creates man is summarily estranged from his labor. (2) Labor estranges man from himself. Marx argues that the labor the worker produces does not belong to him, but to someone else. Given this condition the laborer belongs to someone else and is therefore enslaved. As a result of being enslaved the worker is reduced to a “subsisting animal”, a condition alien to him. As an end result man is estranged from himself and is entirely mortified. Marx points to these to situations as the reason man is essentially

estranged from his labor. The incongruency between the world of things the worker creates and the world the worker lives in is the estrangement.

Marx argues that the worker first realizes he is estranged from his labor when it is apparent he cannot attain what he appropriates. As a result of this realization the objectification of labor occurs. For the worker the labor becomes an object, something shapeless and unidentifiable. Because labor is objectified, the laborer begins to identify the product of labor as labor. In other words all the worker can identify as a product of his labor, given the condition of what he produces as a shapeless, unidentifiable object, is labor. The worker is then left with only labor as the end product of his efforts. The emerging condition is that he works to create more work. For Marx the monotonous redundancy of this condition is highly detrimental because the worker loses himself in his efforts. He argues that this situation is analogous to a man and his religion. Marx writes, “The more man puts into God the less he retains in himself….The worker puts his life into the object, but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object.” The result of the worker belonging to the object is that he is enslaved. The worker belongs to something else and his actions are dictated by that thing. For Marx, labor turns man into a means. Workers become nothing more than the capital necessary to produce a product. Labor for Marx reduces man to a means of production. As a means of production man is diminished to a subsisting enslaved creature void of his true nature. In this

condition he is reduced to the most detrimental state of man: one in which he is estranged from himself. To help expand on this theme it is useful to look at Marx’s allegory of man’s life-activity.

Of the variety of reasons Marx argues man is estranged from his labor, probably the most significant is his belief that labor estranges man from himself. Marx argues that the labor the worker produces does not belong to the worker so in essence the worker does not belong to the worker. By virtue of this condition Marx argues the worker is enslaved. Enslavement for Ma