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Karl Marx’s Theory of Alienation
-Roudro Mukhopadhyay
ABSTRACT
Alienation is characterized as alienated labour. The alienated labour in Karl Marx's Manuscripts
refers to forced and involuntary labour in which the worker finds no purpose, no pleasure or
contentment, no needs fulfilment, no independence or power, no mental growth or physical
development. This is a state in which a person feels isolated, humiliated, unworthy, and
insignificant. It is an operation that belongs to someone else and it is not random and it simply is
a way of meeting the needs of physical life. It is a pure wage-earning practice in the political
economy. According to Marx, here are four types of alienation of which Marx wrote as relating
to the capitalist mode of production: the alienation of the worker from the products of his labour,
the alienation felt in the course of production or labour, the alienation from the nature of our
species or human existence, and finally the alienation of man from man or society (1844). This
research paper will further look into this.
INTRODUCTION
Karl Marx was an economist, philosopher, writer, and social thinker who lived from 1818 to
1883. He is most well-known for his communist and capitalist ideologies. The work of Marx laid
the groundwork for future leaders of communism such as Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin.
Operating on the assumption that capitalism held the seeds of its destruction; its theories formed
the basis of Marxism and served as communism's theoretical foundation. Almost everything
Marx published was seen from the eyes of the rising worker.
Amongst his multiple theories was his theory of Alienation. The concept of 'alienation' has had a
long tradition in the history of Western theology and philosophy (Oppolzer 1997).
The feeling of an outsider or feeling a sense of isolation, strangeness, or feeling of having no
external connection is labeled as 'Alienation'. For Hegel and Feuerbach, alienation is primarily an
intellectual phenomenon. It is the result of an inaccurate view of the universe. But this is a
material and social process, for Karl Marx. He uses the word "Entfremdung," which he refers to
as his "Alienation Theory," to describe the division or division of beings or objects that are or
have been inherently together. In his early study, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of
1844, Karl Marx examines alienation from a political, anthropological, and socio-cultural
perspective. Through Karl Marx’s philosophical view than economic; He explains how he is
isolated, in the capitalist mode of production, from work or other workers. This definition of
alienation in modern literature, political science, psychology, and sociology has become very
popular. It is a sense of powerlessness, isolation, and meaninglessness experienced by human
beings and feelings of being oppressed. According to Marx, alienation is a symptom of the
industrial age and capitalism. The worker can only see and be involved in the part of the work
and has no control over the final product nor does he have any knowledge over it. This often
explains the causes, location, and hostility effects between events and individuals or groups that
are/were in proper harmony.
RESEARCH PROBLEM
The objective of this paper is to look into the concept of “Alienation” by Karl Marx in the
capitalistic society that we live in today and how it affects the individuals or the workers is the
analysis and clarification of the idea of 'alienated labor' in the early works of Karl Marx, as well
as the description of possible ways of overriding alienated labor.
HYPOTHESIS
Karl Marx’s theory of Alienation suggests that workers get alienated from their species under
capitalism, to the point that we cannot function according to our species-being, we are alienated
from our existence. The capitalistic society does not profit the working class rather only the
bourgeoisie class. It can be seen everywhere in the world how alienation as an experience and
exploitation affect the mental health of the working class.
METHODOLOGY
This research paper uses investigative and descriptive methods to arrive at a close to the accurate
formulated opinion of the hypothesis on research sources. It goes through various works and
texts written by Karl Marx and also a variety of research projects done on Karl Marx by various
other esteemed authors.
RESULTS
In Karl Marx’s manuscript, The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts 1844, he criticizes the
national economy, particularly the German idealism, and the economic approaches by other
philosophers. Marx bases his assessment on the historical situation of the capitalist modes of
production and shows the principles and contradictions in the theories of national economics. In
his first manuscript, Marx begins with an overview of the wage labor, capital, and basic pension
production rules. Karl Marx analyzes the production of remuneration, resources, and basic
pensions on the basis of the division of labor prescribed in the national economy, current private
property, and the division of labor, resources, and land. Because of the capitalist orientation
towards the rate of profit and capital accumulation, in the long run, only the two forms of capital
remain wage labour and capital. As a result, society is disintegrating into two groups-owners and
workers-who remain implacably hostile to each other. As the workers generate even greater
wealth through continuous production, they also generate their own misery and become a
commodity to be traded on the labor market. However, capital rises with increased production
and accumulation, gravitating into monopoly structures. Karl Marx analyzes the relationship
between private ownership and alienated labor, coming to the conclusion that private ownership
is:
"the product, the result, the necessary consequence of alienated labor" (Marx 1968).
"The national economy is based on the reality of private ownership. But it does not explain
it." (Marx 1968)
In his manuscript, he further goes on to say the course and methods by which the capitalists
were exploiting the working class. He also commented on how the capitalists follow these
production models that favor them and cause the workers to be oppressed. Because of this
oppression, the ruling classes and the working classes segregated themselves. He termed this
practice as Alienation. It meant that working people put everything in their jobs, but got close to
nothing in return and thus causing class division between them both. Alienation includes all
aspects of life — religion, politics, economic and social relationships; but it specifically affects
labour.
Marx differentiated amongst four different types of alienated labour:
Alienation from the product (Objectification)
By alienating workers from the products of their labor, the laborer produces for him an alien,
objectified environment and is internally impoverished. To survive, the worker must create goods
by the use of the property of others and thus recreate a worldly objectification in the form of
goods and thus his own objectivity in the form of goods. Production is a permanent state for
human existence and a permanent trait of human nature. But when a man makes an object
through his own labour that objects clashes with himself. The producer is ceasing to own his own
thing. He continues to produce and the world of the objects produced surrounds him like an alien
and hostile world. Just like primitive men alienated themselves through their hostile nature,
modern humans alienated themselves through the object they create themselves.
Alienation from economic and own activity (Self-Alienation)
This type of alienation alienates them from the act of production or the economy along
with their own activities. In this type, a man starts to reject his own self and does not
accept that this causes self-annihilation; Man is miserable, sad, and depressed. He cannot
nourish or improve his mental energy or his physical strength. In addition, he mortifies
his body and destroys his mind, sinks into a feeling of shame. In the economic sense,
there are two forms. In the first form, a man describes the external essence of labor that is
not part of human existence and does not contain spiritual or physical energy. This form
of labor is fundamentally foreign to the worker and is not performed or confirmed during
periods of leisure. The worker sees himself as an 'outsider' or unrelated to his job or his
development. When he is working, he is not at home and he his is this "Forced Laborer".
It is literally a way of fulfilling needs outside of him. The second form of economic
activity alienation struggles with the separation from private ownership and wage labour.
Since labor belongs to the proprietor rather than to the worker, the laborer's economic
activity is abstract, decided by others, and not liberating.
Alienation from species-being (Man’s separation from his species)
To Marx, the human being is a social and working being, formed as a species-being
representational. Human beings, unlike animals, behave not only for their own purposes
but also for their own species. Labor is what sets man apart from lower animals. Animals
always do labor, but they are specifically forced to do so. Man may produce only when
he is free and his production conforms to the ordains of beauty and is commensurate with
nature's rules. As labor develops into a way of self-preservation and food supply, the
worker becomes alienated from their species and the lifestyle of the species becomes
simply an instrument of an individual's existence.
Alienation from other People (individual from other individuals)
This is directly related to the other forms, especially with the third. In the capitalist
relations of production, not only are we alienated from the commodity and the
production process, but provided that we are alienated from our human existence, it also
means that we are alienated from ourselves and each other in turn. So the dimension of
alienated labor deals with the fact that our social ties are alienated by themselves. Man
feels isolated from his own species, relatives, and associates. This spreads from man to
man, and even to society. For if a man feels conflict with or inside himself, then he is
often in conflict with others.
The states of the workers are perhaps the most devastating, immediate effects for the worker.
One very prominent theme in Marx's writings is that the worker is a commodity and is regarded
as such because of exploitation by non-workers of other workers and because of the perceived
position of the worker in production. The consequences of all this are that man is viewed and
exploited as an object, that he is not regarded as a human being but only as property, as a
necessary part of the economy, and that the needs of man and the ability to grow his own
faculties are entirely ignored as unimportant for
the system's objectives and with time, his position worsens even as a commodity.
ANALYSIS & INTERPRETATION
According to Karl Marx’s theory, all these types of alienation enumerated by Marx are of the
same origin. In fact, all forms are different aspects of the self-alienation of man or his
estrangement from his own "basic nature" In the end; this is responsible for the growth of all
social evils and antagonistic ties between the individuals and society. This paper has shown that
Marxian alienation is a phenomenon that comprises many aspects and elements of significance
that can be empirically defined in four main types of manifestations. Alienated labor is forced
and external labor is something in which the worker finds no purpose, no pleasure or fulfillment,
no needs fulfillment, no independence or power, no mental development or physical
development. It is behavior that belongs to another, it is not random and it simply is a way of
meeting the needs of physical life it can be seen how obvious it is in this system in which the
worker trades his labor for wages, the worker is in great disadvantage. It becomes just a wage-
earning activity.
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded that labor gives rise to private property. If the working class stops working
for the bourgeois class, there won’t be any alienation. This paper focused on describing the idea
of alienated labor from Karl Marx's early works and tried to unravel the notion of alienation by
explicitly applying it to his work. The individual, according to Marx, is a creature that acts in
relation to its own species and to the human society. Under the environments of private
ownership and exchange, the individual is alienated from his species-being and his fellows,
whom he considers solely as a means to attain personal goals. Marx defines the human as an
active natural being whose species freely proves its worth in the wilderness, is imaginative, and
objectivists itself through productive labor and in the products of that labor. Under the conditions
of private ownership, the species-being is the only channel for indirectly satisfying one's own
needs.
PROBLEMS FACED
1. Vast Array of Resources: Due to the novelty of this topic, the amount of scholarly
literature was vast and extensive. There were various sources and multiple publish to
gather information from and there was no particular source to write this from
2. Time-Consuming: To pursue this research aim at length, more time, and ideally more
reliable research would be required, than unreliable ones.
3. Research Tools: If research tools had been used, this project would have been far more
extensive in terms of its research object, but the severity of the issue at hand is huge once,
hence sequencing of groups would have been a challenging and tiresome task.
4. Credibility: Given the vast amount of information present, regarding this topic, the
credibility of some sources were questionable as different sites offered different tampered
information
.
INFERENCE
The aim of this paper was to analyze and explain the notion of 'alienated labour' in Karl Marx's
early works. All the types of alienations enumerated by Marx are of the same origin, in the last
study. In fact, all forms are different aspects of the self-alienation of man or his estrangement
from his own "true nature" In the end; this is responsible for the growth of all social evils and
antagonistic ties between the individuals and society. The self-alienated worker remains unaware
of his possibilities which were traditionally established. The world cannot, therefore, profit from
its individuals' enormous talent and limitless potentialities. The paper highlights the necessary
aspects.
References
Christ, Oliver. “THE CONCEPT OF ALIENATION IN THE EARLY WORKS OF
KARLMARX.” European scientific journal 11 (2015): ”[PDF]
Drysdale, Elisabeth Susan Hoecker. “The Theory of Alienation in the 1844 Manuscripts
of Karl Marx.” Diss. Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical
College, 1969.
Shah, Muhammad Iqbal. “Marx's Concept Of Alienation And It's Impact On Human
Life .” Marx's Concept Of Alienation And It's Impact On Human Life .[PDF]
Owusu, E. , Adade-Yeboah, A. and Appiah, P. (2019) Perceptions of Some Africans about
Post-Colonialism as Depicted in Jomo Kenyatta’s “The Gentlemen of the Jungle”. Open
Access Library Journal, 6, 1-8.
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Roudro Mukhopadhyay
B.A LLB
OP Jindal Global Law School
