This made the product "hostile' and "alien" because the worker had no real connection to it. Maybe a female worker sewed the seam of a pocket for a coat several hundred times a day. But she didn't make the coat. Maybe a man tightened a bolt on the bumper of a car hundreds of times each day, or connected two wires, but he didn't make the car. The product was "hostile" because when the worker looked at it, he or she was only reminded of the hours spent in drudgery doing a seemingly meaningless task. Receiving a paycheck didn't make up for the loss of meaning and the pride of accomplishment, and it led to consumerism, that is, people working in order to buy things that are supposed to make them happy. I think Marx was correct in what...

I worked in a factory once on a machine that stuffed advertising into envelopes. The work was incredibly boring and I only lasted one week. The "product" wasn't even a thing -- it was an envelope full of junk mail. What was to feel proud of or connected to? Nothing. It certainly had none of the satisfaction of, say, making a gift for someone in the family. I think now that gradually, assembly lines with human workers are disappearing. Robots and computers are running the machines that mass produce all the junk. If you've ever watched those programs on HGTV about "purging" and "organizing" all the clutter in your home, you can see that people are not that attached. The problem for them is that they have too much of it.