BY: Seth Warren Heath
FOR: Lora Stone
SOC 371: Classical Sociological Theory; M-W 1430-1545
2.18.02
Cause for Despair
Marx introduced four types of labor estrangement. 1) The estrangement of the worker from his/her labor or product. 2) The act of production, also the physical activity of creating the product. 3) Alienation and estrangement of his/her “species being” or his/her human self. 4) The estrangement of people from other people. Estrangement could be described as a feeling of separation from something once intimate. In an excerpt from Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844(Marx) found in Readings in Social Theory Karl Marx says “labor’s product confronts it as something alien”(Farganis, pg. 44). Marx asserts that when the laborer/worker creates a given thing that is not in truth his own, but belongs to the owner of the means of production the worker develops a sense of alienation to the object he has produced. Marx further elaborates this point by saying “the worker is related to the product of his labor as to an alien object.”(Farganis, pg. 44) This relates to the 2nd labor estrangement in that once alienated from the thing produced the worker becomes alienated from the method of production as well. Marx also feels that the more of him self the worker puts into this object, which is not his in possession but only in creation, he actually surrenders part of his own species being to the thing of his/her creation. Marx said; “the worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object.”(Farganis, pg. 45) Marx comes to the final conclusion that “in fact, the proposition that man’s species nature is estranged from him means that one man is estranged from the other, as each of them is from man’s essential nature.”(Farganis, pg. 48) If what Marx supposes is true then much could be understood about the current state of many social structures within our country.
According to Marx the basis of the problem is the existence of private property. By having private property we create the opportunity for exploitation and division. The people with capital utilize it to force those who are living at subsistence levels to work for them. Since these workers are barely able to survive without work they have no choice but to work for these capitalist. Marx would say that the only thing these workers then have to offer is their labor, their only form of capital. The 1st estrangement, that between worker and product is a direct result of this. By having nothing to offer but their labor the worker is limited in developing capital to what can be produced by their labor. The items that the worker produces are actually the property of the bourgeois, who are the ones really profiting from the workers efforts. So in the end the worker is left with nothing but wages scarcely enough to survive on, a product which means nothing to them, and a hollow feeling.
While the frustration of the worker mounts so to does the disgust with the method with which capital is produced. The worker strives and according to Marx manifests some of him self in what he produces. By not maintaining ownership of the things he produces man is in effect selling his soul. The product of the worker becomes an alien thing to him, created by his labor yet not his own, the private property of the capitalist. This alienation from the product in return creates an estrangement between the worker and the process that produces the alien thing, the 2nd estrangement. By tearing the product of man away from him the “productive life” is essentially taking nature and humanity away from the man, for we are what we produce this is what Marx calls “life activity”. Marx refers to this equivocating men and animals saying, “the animal is immediately identical with its life-activity”(Farganis, pg. 47) thus man is also identifies with his life-activity. If the workers sole purpose is to produce objects for the capitalist in return for wages then man becomes identified by his wages, creating classes divisions and competition among people.
The estrangement between people spoken of in the 4th estrangement is a direct result of two things, man’s estrangement from nature and man’s exploitation of one another to obtain private property. As discussed above men are represented by their life activity. Since men are dependent on and a part of nature their life activity is also part of nature. When men sell their life activity they are in effect perpetuating their estrangement from nature. When man exists in a state of nature he owns the products of his labor. Under a capitalist society he forfeits these benefits to others in return for wages, often times not representative of his efforts. This exploitation of the workers by the capitalist has created division between the people and classes of people.
In the end Marx predicted that the capitalist system was destine to fail due to several intrinsic factors. In reality the system has adapted in order to provide for both the worker and the capitalist, although the capitalist still gets the better end of the bargain. Perhaps in the future we will see a society in which all people are paid an equal wage for equal effort, a society where one man doesn’t exploit the other, a society in which we can all work together to achieve what is best for us all not just for our self.
Works Cited
Farganis, James. Readings in Social Theory 3rd ed. 2000. Mc-Graw-Hill : Boston