Present and Discuss Marx’s Account of Alienation

Candidate Number: B00527

Degree: BA Psychology & Philosophy

Module Code & Title: PF307 Political Philosophy

Essay Title: Present and Discuss Marx’s Account of Alienation

Word Count: 4,040

Heythrop College, University of London

May 2008

Present and Discuss Marx’s Account of Alienation

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In Paris Manuscripts of 1844, where Marx gives his most detailed

presentation of alienation, he argues that it consists in four different aspects

(Wolff, 2008). The first two of these four ‘types’ of alienation are the

alienation of the product and the alienation of the labour; from these two both

the frustration of his species-life, the alienation of the labourer from himself

and by extension his alienation from other men can be deduced (Wolff, 2008).

According to Marx, each of these categories of alienation overlap; in his works

Marx attempts to apply a Hegelian deduction of categories to economics in an

attempt to reduce all the categories of capitalist economic to an analysis of

the concept of alienation, such as wage, rent exchange, profit, etc.; which he

eventually does with some success, via the Grundrisse of 1857/8, in Capital of

1867. In the Manuscripts, Marx’s argument begins with the simple economic

fact of supply and demand. As demand increases the price increases, whilst

as supply increases the price decreases; ‘the worker becomes poorer the

richer is his production, the more it increase in power and scope’ (McLellan,

2000; pp.86). He then argues from this fact that the worker himself

essentially becomes a commodity that also follows this rule of supply and

demand. It is interesting that Marx starts with the point and later, in Capital,

returns to it implicitly as the basis of alienation.

Thus, this essay shall start as Marx did, with his discussion of alienation

in the Manuscripts. Like Hegel, Marx did not believe production itself to cause

alienation, as the product is not alienated in virtue of the workers labour

becoming manifest in an object (Schact, 1970); it is not simply a physical

phenomenon. Where there is no deeper separation between labourer and

product the product is a true embodiment of the labourers self (Schact, 1970),

and so very much a part of him rather than alien to him, a true expression of

his own personality and creativity. Thus Marx clearly differentiates between

alienation and mere externalization or objectification by stating that

alienation only occur when the product is ‘outside of his control, and alien to

him, and… stands opposed to him as an autonomous power’ (quoted by

Schact, 1970; pp.85).

On the surface this is a passive alienation, and could be described as a

mere detachment. However, according to Marx alienation also involves an

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active sense of hostility. He states that alienation involves ‘a power

independent of the producer,’ which ‘sets itself against him as an alien and

hostile force’ (quoted by Schact, 1970; pp. 85). Marx attributes this hostility to

the object itself, and this gives rise to the first ‘type’ of alienation, the

alienation of a product from its labourer. Whilst this hostility becomes

manifest towards the object of production, it is really displaced hostility

towards the powers that control the product; specifically the ‘other-man’ for

whom the product is made and the economic laws which govern its

production. Thus, in this sense, the product does not become alienated from

the labourer because of the nature of the product itself, but the nature of its

production.

The ‘other-man’ is the entity that dictates the production of the object

and reaps the benefits of its production1, the employer (Schact, 1970). If the

product is an alienated and hostile object, it follows that it must belong to an

entity that is alien and hostile to the labourer, and thus its alienation must, in

part, be caused by the surrender of the product to this other person (Schact,

1970). This particular point has roots in Hegel, who pointed out the action of

selling an object requires the object to pass from someone’s hands (the

labourer) into someone else’s (the other-man) (Schact, 1970). However, whilst

Hegel thought this act of sale was permissible as long as some of the

labourer’s product remained his own property, as long as he received some of

the benefits specific to that product; however, Marx believed it was

unacceptable under any circumstances (Schact, 1970). He argues that any

change of product ownership through sale would mean that product no longer

serves the interests of the labourer, but serves the interests of the new owner

at the labourer’s expense (Schact, 1970). The other-man fully satiates his own

desire in return for mere subsistence, and at the cost of the labourer’s self-

realisation (Schact, 1970). The other-man is able to do what he wants with the

product, regardless of how it affects the labourer, and the product becomes a

symbol of the labourer’s oppression and the other-mans power over him

(Schact, 1970). With this in mind, it is clear how the other-man is a hostile and

alien force to the labourer, and thus the product itself can become a force

that is also both hostile and alien after appropriation.

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The ‘inhuman power(s)’ in capitalist society are the economic forces

that control all the prices within the market, those of the labour, capital and

final product. According to Marx, the labourer has no power over these laws2,

and thus the market created by the labourer is governed by forces external to

himself; alien forces. Furthermore, in a capitalist economy the labourer

produces large quantities of his product, much of which he cannot use; this

mass production of a singe product rather subsistence production of all his

necessities of life means that he becomes entirely dependant upon the whim

of these inhuman powers which are hostile to him (Schact, 1970). The worker

himself also becomes a commodity subject to these laws of supply and

demand, and under a free market system with many suppliers and relatively

few buyers such as the labour market, the cost of the good, in this case

labour, will set itself at the same level as the cost of the inputs to production,

wages will ‘thus tend inevitably to fall to the lowest level that will keep the

workmen alive and allow able to rear children’ (Kolakowski, 1978; pp138).

This means that the workers life becomes joylessly focused upon his

subsistence and that of his family, which gives rise, in part, to the alienation

of the labour itself and the frustration of his species-life.

In order to present the second type of alienation, some context must be

considered. Adam Smith’s theory that ‘humans will sacrifice the state of rest

only when forced to by necessity’ (Dupre, 1983; pp38) appears at first look to

conflict with Marx’s theory that true labour occurs when man is free from

physical need; but when combined with the Marxist idea that free labour is a

form of fulfilment, it can then be seen as a necessity. The conjoining of these

two ideas thus lends support to Marx’s argument that man is different from

animals in that he only truly produces in freedom from physical needs; when

producing in order to fulfil solely physical needs it is because of a physical

dependency on material things such as food and shelter, it is not labour for

pleasure and as such does not satisfy the psychological part of the being, only

the physical part. Free, un-alienated labour serves to satisfy the psychological

part (and in the ideal case the physical part also), and thus the man is able to

fulfil his species-life and be at one with his nature. However, Marx argues, in

capitalist society the labourer is alienated from his labour, and as such it is

unable to fulfil this double role.

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Marx believed that a product becomes alienated from its labourer when

it is not an ‘objective embodiment of his own personality and the distinctive

expression of his creative powers and interests’ (Schact, 1970; pp. 85); this is

because in a capitalist economy the labourer is usually directed to produce a

certain object in a certain way, and thus he is unable to express himself in the

product, only his employer; furthermore, the labourer is forced to suppress

himself at the direction of his employer and he produces as a machine rather

than as a species-being. Thus the labourer becomes merely a crude

‘instrument’ (Schact, 1970; pp.85) of the employer’s production, and is not

only alienated from both the act of production and the product, but also

dehumanised.

This is how the act of production itself can become a torment to the

labourer. The labourer is said to ‘avoid it [labour] like the plague’ and ‘not

[be] at home’ when he is at work (pp.88). For Marx, this dislike of labour

stems from the fact that within a capitalist society the act of labour is not

performed for the love of labour itself, the joy of self-expression through

endeavour, but rather as a method of subsistence, a method of fulfilling his

physical needs. The labour becomes an undesired effort for the labourer,

solely a means to an end rather than an end in itself, no longer an enjoyable

act but a frustrating struggle. As mentioned above, Marx believed that true,

un-alienated labour occurs only when man is ‘free from physical need’

(pp.90), so, for Marx, any form of labour for wages cannot satisfy mans

emotional needs; the labour is not a part of him, and thus must be alienated

from him.

The final two types of alienation in Marx’s account also together cause

man to be alienated in a social sense; it is a conjunction between the

alienation of labour, where the labourer does not express himself in the mode

of production, and the alienation of the product, where the labourer does not

express himself in the product. Marx himself expresses this in two parts; to

him it is alienation ‘from species-being, for humans produce blindly and not in

accordance with their truly human powers’, and further ‘the relation of

exchange replaces the satisfaction of mutual need’, where members of the

economy cease being concerned with one-another’s well-being, and become

focused upon their own material gain.

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The denial of the labourers species-being manifests itself externally to

the labourer in the form of dehumanisation, and internally as he becomes

unable to produce ‘in a specifically human manner’ (Kolakowski, 1978;

pp.139). Marx argues that life is activity, thus by his definition labour is ‘the

life of the species’ and alienation from labour in turn causes alienation from

species-being; ‘for humans produce blindly and not in accordance with their

truly human powers’. ‘[Animals] produce only under the compulsion of direct

physical needs, while man produces when he is free from physical need and

only truly produces in freedom from such need’, thus alienation causes man’s

species-life to become merely a ‘means to individual animalised life, and the

social essence of a man becomes a mere instrument of individual existence’

(Kolakowski, 1970; pp.139). This causes him to become or alienated from the

other members of his society, as rather than working with them for the

common good his focus rests purely on his own survival in competition with

others. Furthermore, the concept of private property becomes another cause

of alienation from species-being, as to say that ‘this is mine’ and ‘that is

yours’ is to differentiate between you and I, creating a sense of alienation

between us. The labourer not only alienates himself from other men, but also

alienates himself from himself; firstly he turns his species-life into a means for

his individual life, thereby alienating his species-life, and secondly he turns his

individual life into ‘the purpose’ of his species-life, which thus takes on an

abstract and alienated form, alienating the man from himself.

In addition, it is not just the labourer that is alienated from his species-

being, it is also the employer. For he becomes an ‘abstract money-power: he

becomes a personification of his power, and his human qualities’ (Kolakowski,

1970; pp.139). The employer ceases to be another human being to the

labourer, he becomes merely an abstract power from which wages, a

thoroughly impersonal substance, can be gained in exchange for the

enactment of his bidding, which bears little or no relation to the labourer. As

all markets within a capitalist economy tend towards monopoly unless anti-

monopoly legislation is in place, this particular aspect of alienation serves to

create two separate classes that cannot be integrated.

The dehumanisation of the labourer can also be clearly seen in that the

labourers come to view one another according to the standards of the

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employer (Schact, 1970). In the capitalist economy, the more skilled or

important workers are usually paid more than the less important or unskilled

labourers. This not only dehumanises the labourers, but also completely

contradicts the idea of mankind as a community of equals and serves to

further alienate the members of the society from one another. Just as the

employer comes to see his employees as a mere commodity, the employees

come to view each other as commodities also; the satisfaction of mutual need

is replaced by the relation of exchange as each member of the society comes

to view one-another as an artificial, or inhuman being, separate and in

competition with one another rather than a community of equals working

together for the common good.

Thus far this essay has focused entirely upon Marx’s account of

alienation as found in the Paris manuscripts of 1844 where he gives the most

detailed account of alienation. However the concept also appears in more

specific discussion at other points in his works, most notably in the German

Ideology of 1847, the Grundrisse and Capital. In the German Ideology he

extends the impact of alienation from the socio-economic field to the whole of

culture, whilst in the Grundrisse he focuses upon the nature of economic

production under capitalism. Finally, in Capital, he focuses upon the internal

conflict within the capitalist system.

In the Paris Manuscripts, Marx is inconsistent in the application of his

theory of man; he argues that man can only be ‘re-humanized’ by a change in

his socio-economic activity, whilst comparing the characteristics of capitalist

society with a humanist model of the ideal species-life (Dupre, 1983). It is

clear that they are related, but it is unclear exactly how. Marx clears up this

confusion The German Ideology by historicizing certain non-temporal

economic concepts; private property becomes a specific stage in the process

of production determined by the division of labour (Dupre, 1983). Due to the

division of labour, the individual labourers within the production process do

not produce a completed product from raw materials, but a more complete

product from a less complete one. Thus, in making its cause specifically the

system of division of labour, Marx historicizes the concept of alienation from

production. This clarifies the confusion in his application of his theory of man,

it is the ‘highly specialised, machine-driven, commodity orientated mode of

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production’ (Dupre, 1983; pp.30) that causes the alienation, which in turn is

caused by the focus on the accumulation of private property; thus the latter is

not the cause of alienation, is the cause of the former which itself is the cause

of alienation.

Another important discussion in the German Ideology concerns

capitalism as a manifestation of such moral utilitarianism (Dupre, 1983), in

that its goal is essentially the most efficient use of capital in order to

maximise production. It thus views the economy as a whole and aims to

maximise the utility of this whole with no focus on the individual. This makes

at least some forms of alienation inevitable, not least because of its

dehumanising effects. The German Ideology is important in any discussion of

Marx’s account of alienation as it serves to remind us of his wider critique of

culture, that ‘what determines the economy of a society determines all other

aspects of its culture’ (Dupre, 1983; pp.33) Thus, if alienation is inherent in

the economic system of the society, as Marx argues it is in capitalism due to

the division of labour, and so alienation will be experienced in every aspect of

capitalist culture.

In the Grundrisse, the economic categories are ‘more radically

historicized’ (Dupre, 1983; pp.34) in that the concept of ‘property’ ceases to

refer to the product of the labourer itself but to the labourers control over the

conditions of his production. Many commentators have argued that through

this Marx has changed from a ‘subjective, humanist position to an objective,

economic one’ but he has actually simply shifted from a ‘non-historical

position to a thoroughly historical one’ (Dupre, 1983; pp35). The appearance

of a shift from the subjective to the objective comes out of Marx’s

replacement of abstract terms, general in nature, to more specific or technical

terms. However, in doing so all he has done is grounded such terms in the

society of day, thus historicizing them. Thus, in the Grundrisse the opposition

between the capital and labour is very similar to the opposition between

product and labourer in the Paris manuscripts; although through such a

change alienation becomes a manifestation of the labourer’s lack of control

over his own production, a more specific definition of the term that is less

general and further rooted in the capitalist economic system, but that has

similar theoretical consequences.

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In Capital, Marx exhibits a further change in focus to wages. Whilst the

term alienation is not used much in the work, it remains the central theme

under a different guise. The inner conflict that Marx describes as alienation

from species-being in the Manuscripts is rephrased as an inner conflict

through economic ‘contradictions’ (Dupre, 1983; pp.43). Marx also explicitly

sates his belief that alienation is not a feature exclusive to capitalism, through

his observation that the concept of surplus value leads to the capitalist desire

to maximise efficiency in production, and that this concept appears in all the

economic systems preceding capitalism, even in crude forms of slavery and

serfdom (Dupre, 1983). In terms of alienation, the core argument of Capital

states that the labourer sells the ‘living power’ (Dupre, 1983; pp.44) of his

labour, which to him has no value, to an employer for whom its productive

value outweighs its exchange value, manifest in wages (Dupre, 1983). The

employer is thus able to profit from the surplus value of the labour. This

objectification of labour is thus the basis of alienation when viewed against

the re-defined terms of the Grundrisse discussed above. Marx thus essentially

reduces all alienation under capitalism to wages (Dupre, 1983), a concept

inherent in the system.

Finally, it must be considered whether alienation is ‘characteristic of

one stage of the historical development of mankind, or is [it] a permanent or

non-temporal structural movement of mans existence, one of those

characteristics that constitute man as man’? (Petrovic, 1963; pp. 420) Thus

far this essay has based much of its explanation of Marx’s account in the

capitalist economic system, as Marx did; but, as Hyppolite pointed out, Marx’s

account of alienation, and thus far my own, suggests that ‘[Alienation] is a

tension inseparable from existence, and it is Hegel's merit to have drawn

attention to it, and to have preserved it in the very centre of self-

consciousness. On the other hand one of the great difficulties of Marxism is its

claim to overcome this tension in the more or less near future and hastily to

attribute it to a particular phase of history. It is surely an oversimplification to

imagine that this tension can be reduced to a superstructure of the economic

world.’ (Hyppolite, Quoted by Clarke, 1971; pp. 368); Hyppolite believed that

alienation could not be a product solely of capitalist society or a historical

product as Marx suggests in his manuscripts, but an inherent fact of life.

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However, as Clarke argues in his 1971, ‘the abolition of private property, of

the division of labor, and of the state does not of necessity - whether logical

or contingent - imply the abolition of alienation, and that while the capitalist

system represents one form of alienation, neither capitalism nor any other

form of economic arrangement can be identified with the alienated condition

of man’ (pp. 368). Furthermore, as discussed above Marx’s implicit discussion

of alienation in Capital shows that he did not believe it to be a feature

exclusively of capitalism.

On the surface it appears as though Marx puts the ‘blame’ for

alienation squarely on the shoulders of capitalism, from which it follows that

Marx must also have believed that the abolition of capitalism would

effectively also abolish alienation. This is the core of Hyppolite’s concern, but

a deeper reading of his works shows that Marx did not actually believe the

former, and he came to the latter by other means. Whilst the capitalist

system contains much that facilitates the alienation of man from his product,

labour and society, it is not the system that created these alienations, but

man himself; ‘men not only freely create their lives, they also freely pervert

them’ (Clarke, 1971; pp.371). Just as man created capitalism, so he created

its effects. Hyppolite’s argument comes out of a confusion, Marx did not in

fact believe that the abolition of capitalism would eliminate alienation, only

that it could eliminate it; he does not suggest that alienation could not occur

under a different economic system. Thus there is no real problem of

oversimplification in his argument; he does not reduce the ‘tension’ of

alienation to capitalism, nor does he attribute it to a particular phase of

history as Hyppolite suggests. In summary, Marx provides an excellent

account of alienation in is Manuscripts, especially when the clarifications in

which he presents it as a general term found in his other works are taken into

account. He is quite successful in historicizing the account and applying it

directly to capitalism, but his reduction of alienation to wages in Capital is

quite unsatisfying. There are many examples in our current capitalist society

in which labourers work for wages and yet are not alienated from product,

labour or society, these are essentially all the people in our society that enjoy

their jobs and gain satisfaction from them. Whilst it could be argued that this

problem is merely academic, as all markets within a capitalist society tend

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towards mass production, division of labour and monopoly, and it is in

markets like these that alienation is an inherent feature; alienation surely

cannot be reduced to wages, but to factors such as these three examples. To

conclude, when Marx discusses his conception of alienation in general terms it

is an extremely good account, both in terms of abstract theory and

observable facts in society; however, when he focuses his account as a direct

attack on capitalism, inconsistencies begin to appear between the theory and

fact.

1the labourer does not gain the benefits of the product; he receives wages. Whilst the wages

are earned due to the manufacture of the product, they are distinct from it; the other-man

receives the benefits specific to the product.2In reality the labour force, and thus by extension each worker, does have some power over

these laws in terms of both supply and demand, but they are essentially negligible, especially

in the sorts of large-scale mass-production markets that Marx is focusing on, and indeed that all

capitalist markets tend towards.

Bibliography:

Clarke, J. (1971). ‘The End of History: A Reappraisal of Marx’s Views on Alienation and Human

Emancipation.’ Canadian Journal of Political Science, Vol.4, No.3. pp.367-380. Canadian Political

Science Association.

Dupre, L. (1983). ‘Cultural and Social Alienation.’ Marx’s Social Critique of Culture, pp.15-57.

Yale University Press.

Kolakowski, L. (1978). ‘The Alienation of Labour. Dehumanised Man.’ Main Currents of

Marxism, Vol.1, The Founders, pp.138-143. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Petrovic, G. (1963). ‘Marx’s Theory of Alienation.’ Journal of Philosophy and Phenomenological

Research, Vol.23, No.3, pp.419-426. International Phenomenological Society.

Schact, R. (1970) ‘Marx’s Early Writings.’ Alienation, pp. 65-114. Doubleday & Company Inc.

garden City, New York.

Wolff, J. (2008). “Karl Marx.’ The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

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Source of original text, from which direct quotes and page references are taken:

McLellan, D. (2000). ‘Economic and Political Manuscripts’, Karl Marx; Selected Writings,

Second Edition. Oxford University Press.

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Present and Discuss Marx’s Account of Alienation

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