Karl Marx's Theory of Alienation Explained

Introduction to Alienation in Modern Philosophy

The concept of alienation has acquired great significance in modern philosophy. With the aid of this concept, many philosophers — among whom Marx, Weber, and Mannheim are three of the most notable — have theorized the modern individual's estrangement from himself and his own spirit. Different thinkers have identified different causes for the process of growing alienation. Although the actual causes of alienation are complex and hard to define, the process itself is easy to recognize. The alienated individual loses control over his course of action, becomes distanced from his own spirit, and is immersed in a state of meaninglessness that comes from his lack of understanding of his own behavior and of the context in which he lives.

The core of the theory of alienation describes a state in which the individual becomes severed both from his own spirit and from his environment. An alienated person loses control over his environment, and this leads to a state of powerlessness and frustration. In the postmodern world, alienation has become a general phenomenon.

Marx on Labor, Production, and Estrangement

Karl Marx was among the first thinkers to observe the historical process of alienation as something that seemed to be growing ever greater. The concept itself pervades most of his works, from the earliest to the last. According to him, the main cause of alienation is the political economy. Through his work, man can produce beautiful results. Nevertheless, the activity and the products that result from it are precisely what give rise to the feeling of estrangement. Man produces something through his labor, but the political economy does not recognize the direct relationship between man and the object of his work: "Political economy conceals the estrangement in the nature of labor by ignoring the direct relationship between the worker (labor) and production. It is true that labor produces marvels for the rich, but it produces privation for the worker" (Marx, 100). Thus, man becomes alienated from his own work and, implicitly, from the world he lives in. Paradoxically, while labor is something positive and marvelous, the producer cannot enjoy it because he derives nothing from it and cannot control it.

In Marx's view, it is the capitalist economy that actively forces the process of alienation upon the individual. While capitalism had initially appeared to be an important advancement over the feudal system that preceded it, Marx emphasizes that the feudal form of domination was in many respects less aggressive than the capitalist market. Marx's intuition was that civilization moves inevitably toward alienation. In feudal society, the individual did not have direct control over his production because he was the serf of a lord. Nevertheless, feudal domination is less oppressive than that of capitalism, where the individual is subjected not to another individual like himself but to a system of abstract laws of the marketplace. In capitalist society, the dominion is less concrete and less visible, and therefore more apt to produce an intense feeling of alienation and frustration.

Critic Philip Kain observes that the dominion of the marketplace is more insidious and more profound precisely because it affects society as a whole: "In bourgeois society there is still oppression and domination — it just takes a different form [...] the abstract laws of the market replace the feudal lord. Furthermore, the domination and oppression of the market, while it cannot be blamed on a person, is nevertheless worse than feudal domination precisely because it is not visible, not understood, and thus is more insidious, widespread, and penetrates social life more deeply" (Kain, 131). Furthermore, in capitalist society every individual must compete against the others, transforming society into a general and perpetual state of war. Marx concluded that the product is alienating to the worker precisely because it belongs to another man who is in his turn hostile.

Capitalism, Private Property, and the Division of Labor

Other factors in the capitalist system contribute to the estrangement of the individual as well, including the division of labor, the system of private property, and the transformation of human labor into a commodity. In the capitalist system, the product becomes an entity in itself, independent of and unrelated to its producer. The individual who produces cannot actualize himself in his own work and thus becomes alienated. The result is that man is gradually estranged from his own product, from himself, and then even from other people and from his own species. As Marx sees it, the relationship between the individual and the product of his work is the first cause of alienation.

The object produced becomes displaced: "In the sphere of political economy, this realization of labor appears as a loss of reality for the worker, objectification as loss of and bondage to the object, and appropriation as estrangement, as alienation" (Marx, 105). The product does not belong to its producer but to capital. As Marx notes, the more an individual produces, the less of that production belongs to him: "So much does the appropriation of the object appear as estrangement that the more objects the worker produces the fewer can he possess and the more he falls under the domination of his product, of capital" (Marx, 106). There is an unnatural relationship between the object and the individual who produces it, a relationship that arises from the nature of the capitalist system itself: economic power increases proportionally with the individual's exertion in his work, while the individual grows poorer in spirit.

As Marx writes: "The more the worker exerts himself in his work, the more powerful the alien, objective world becomes which he brings into being over against himself, the poorer he and his inner world become, and the less they belong to him" (Marx, 107). The capitalist market thus grows as a great objective reality while the individual becomes less and less important. Marx further explains that the worker becomes a slave of the object he produces: "The worker becomes a slave of his object; firstly, in that he receives an object of labor, i.e., he receives work, and, secondly, in that he receives means of subsistence" (Marx, 111). By producing something, the individual gains only the means of bare subsistence. The modern political economy places the utmost significance on productivity and almost none on the individual, who is repaid only materially for his work. In capitalist society, labor power is nothing more than a commodity to be bought and sold on the market, leaving the individual anonymous and unimportant. Thus, the closer to perfection the object becomes, the farther from it the laborer who has been made merely its slave.