Lesson v Notes on Human Labor
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Transcript of Lesson v Notes on Human Labor
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The Manifesto of the Communist Party
Marx and his coauthor, FriedrichEngels, begin The Communist
Manifesto with the famous and
provocative statement that the history
of all hitherto existing societies is thehistory of class struggle. They argue
that all changes in the shape of
society, in political institutions, in
history itself, are driven by a process
of collective struggle on the part of
groups of people with similar economic
situations in order to realize theirmaterial or economic interests.
INTRODUCTION:
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The Manifesto of the Communist Party
- Where Hegel had seen
history as a dialectical conflict
between nations, Marx saw itas a dialectical conflict
between classes. A class is a
particular socio-economic
group.
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The Manifesto of the Communist Party
- According to this view of history,
first there existed the king-states,
which broke down into elements of
rulers and the slaves. From this
thesis and anti-thesis emerged asynthesis a feudalistic society
emerged. But soon the feudalistic
society also broke up into lords andserfs. The conflict between the two
resulted in the formation of modern
capitalistic society.
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The Manifesto of the Communist Party
- Marx says that the capitalistic
society has also divided into the
thesis and antithesis. The mostsignificant classes of the capitalism
are the bourgeoisie, the class that
owns the means of production, and
the proletariat, the class that
works for the bourgeoisie for
wages.
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The Manifesto of the Communist Party
- And there is a fundamentalinconsistency between these two
classes, which is giving rise to a
state of conflict. This conflictbetween the thesis and antithesis
will ultimately lead to a new
synthesisa socialistic society.Each stage in this dialectic is
ethically superior to its previous
stage.
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Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
(Karl Marx)
SUMMARY OF THE FIRST MANUSCRIPT:
The FOUR FORMS of ALIENATION
1. The estrangement of the worker from the
product of his work.
2. The estrangement of the worker from the activity
of production.
3. The workers alienation from species-being,or human identity.
4. The estrangement of man to man.
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The FOUR FORMS of ALIENATION
1. The estrangement of the worker from
the product of his work:
- Under the economic system of private
ownership, society divides itself into two
classes: the property owners and theproperty-less workers. In this
arrangement, the workers not only suffer
impoverishment but also experience an
estrangement or alienation from the world.This estrangement occurs because the
worker relates to the product of his work
as an object alien and even hostile to
himself.
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- The worker puts his life into the object
and his labor is invested in the object, yet
because the worker does not own the
fruits of his labor, which in capitalism are
appropriated from him, he becomes moreestranged the more he produces.
Everything he makes contributes to a
world outside of him to which he does not
belong. He shrinks in comparison to thisworld of objects that he helps create but
does not possess.
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The FOUR FORMS of ALIENATION
2. The estrangement of the worker from
the activity of production.
- The work that the worker performs
does not belong to the worker but is
a means of survival that the worker isforced to perform for someone else.
As such, his working activity does not
spring spontaneously from within asa natural act of creativity but rather
exists outside of him and signifies a
loss of his self.
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The FOUR FORMS of ALIENATION
3. The workers alienation from species-
being, or human identity.
- For human beings, work amounts to
a life purpose. A person is what he or
she does in transforming nature into
objects through practical activity. But
in the modern system of private
ownership and the division of labor,the worker is estranged from this
essential source of identity and life
purpose for the human species.
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The FOUR FORMS of ALIENATION
4. The estrangement of man to man.
- Since the workers product is owned by
someone else, the worker regards this
person, the capitalist, as alien and hostile.
The worker feels alienated from and
antagonistic toward the entire system of
private property through which the
capitalist appropriates both the objects ofproduction for his own enrichment at the
expense of the worker and the workers
sense of identity and wholeness as a
human being.
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Marx called himself an atheist and believedreligion to be a human fabrication. He was
of the view that religion was invented asresponse to the alienation in the materiallife, and once man is emancipated from thisalienation, religion will itself die away. Many
of his views on religion have almost becomeproverbial. Religion is the sigh of theoppressed creature, the heart of a heartlessworld, and the soul of soulless conditions. Itis the opium of the people.