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1. Marx is saying that political economy pops up after private property has hit the

scene, become the huge rage of western civilization, needs to be protected, is in the favor of the bourgeois and capitalist classes to seek out forms of government that allow them to acquire and maintain this private property. However, what political economy doesn’t explain is private property itself or what that means. Private property is a fairly unintelligible notion of greed and self-interest. I believe Marx gives brief mention to Proudhon whose firs major work is entitles What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and Government that deals with such the notions and dispelling of the myths entailed with ideas of private property. People in the interest of preserving ideas of private property are those that own the means of production the capitalist class, the ruling class, and they are few and far between. The majority of the population of the planet are the workers or the estranged laborers who will never evolve to a higher plain of class and the majority who will never question nor see the class conflict that exists because of private property. It is most likely in the interest of political economy not to “explain it to us…” for if it did that would disrupt the whole system – workers would begin to think and the fog would be cleared from their eyes, imaginary light bulbs would begin to pop and explode above the head of every worker – the system would come undone much as in Russia in 1917 or in Paris in 1871. Later on pg 73 Marks says – “Political economy conceals the estrangement inherent in the nature of labour by not considering the direct relationship between the worker (labour) and production”.

2. “I think we can totally say that because of the specific nature of division of labor in capitalism, the exchange is also specifically tied to that division of labor. In one way, what makes capitalism different from non-capitalist societies is precisely its division of labor.”

3. As the worker produces more and more wealth they becomes less and less valuable himself. The worker is only casting their own role as a commodity more and more with each material commodity they produce. The world of the worker becomes less and less valued the world of material goods, of conspicuous consumption, of commodities becomes even more real with each casting the worker performs and in turn the world of the worker and the workers themselves become commodities. Does a woman at a supermarket consider how the tuna went from the ocean to the factory into a can and made its way, most likely by truck, to the store and then was priced and placed on the shelf? How many workers did that take and is anyone of them considered when the exchange is made (money for the tuna)? Or when a child wants a toy – a football, a doll, an action figure – does the child or even the child’s parent give consideration to the origin or creation of the commodity – a toy- no, especially because there exist so many duplicates of the same toy and so the workers who constructed those toys are as valueless as the commodities themselves as Marx points out the worker becomes a commodity onto themselves. Workers are alienated from their labour and people purchasing them are alienated from the products.

4&5. The objectification of human powers means – in Marx’s sense – to objectify human labor to make one labor external to themselves. Labor is no long

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subjective to the worker it is no longer part of him – it is outside of him. This objectification becomes alienation – as workers become indifferent to their labor to the production of their labor and they become ever increasingly isolated from the objective world they become alienated. The transfer of ownership of the commodities of the material objects that the workers place their labor into causes a loss of reality again isolation from the objective world causes this loss of mental faculties or even derangement of mental faculties. As a state worker – a custodian or night cleaner at my old high school – I can confidently say everyday I experience this objectification of my own powers. My work doesn’t belong to me it is autonomous, it tends to take on a life of it’s own. I step outside myself listening to my podcasts and the work completes itself or it uses my physical body to clean but I am not their really most days my mind and body are on autopilot. As a back room receiver at a grocery store for six years I had very similar experiences – unloading grocery trucks, putting away over stock (surplus commodities) and all the while not a part of my labor and my labor was not a part of me. My hands were forced and I was merely a statistic as we are all merely statistics or numbers in a book or on a computer or both. Does this work make me deranged you ask? Does it lead to alienation as Marx has said – and the answer is yes and in almost all cases or in the overwhelming majority of cases this alienation occurs. My father is a computer programmer making an upwards of $750,000 a year – money I will probably never make in a year – and does he feel his labor is his? No his labor too is objectified and he too is alienated from his labor. He does not own his labor his bosses, servers around the world, banks and corporations around the world own his labor which they most of they have no idea who my father is or what and how many hours went into creating this or that program that sorts their insurance and retirement packages creates safe and firewalls fro banks etc. My father thankfully has hobbies that he places his labors in, which do not alienate him but have a reverse effect – I believe – such as gardening, painting, and reading. The end result of the garden is his – fruits, vegetables, and the beauty of all the exotic foliage that grows in and around his property in the suburbs of NY in a ghetto town called Elmont. Drawing on examples given in the previous question I will continue my response and rant to these inquiries into alienation and whom they apply to and how it is defined. The more the worker exerts himself, the more powerful becomes the alien objective world which he fashions against himself, the poorer he and his inner world become, the less there is that belongs to him. It is the same in religion. The more man attributes to God, the less he retains in himself. The worker puts his life into the object…The externalization of the worker in his product means not only that his work becomes an object, an external existence, but also that it exists outside him, independently, alien, an autonomous power, opposed to him. The life he has given to the object confronts him as hostile and alien. It is evident that economics establishes an alienated form of social intercourse as the essential, original and natural form.

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That sentence is from a notebook Marx used when preparing for the writing of the 1844 manuscripts. This is the core of Marx’s objection to classical economics (i.e. Ricardo and Smith). Marx does not challenge the classical economists within the presuppositions of their science. Instead he takes a perspective outside those presumptions and argues that private property, competition, and greed are only found in a specific condition of human existence, a condition of alienation. In contrast to Hegel, whom Marx praises for grasping the self-development of man as a process, the classical economists take the present alienated condition of human society as its “essential, original and definitive form”. They fail to see that it is a necessary but temporary stage in the evolution of mankind. Marx goes on to discuss the present alienated state of humanity. One of his premises is that “man is a species-being”. This conception of man is a species-being originated with Hegel and then later are reinterpreted by Ludwig Feuerbach. For Marx “Productive life…is species-life”. It is in activity, in production, that humans show themselves to be species-beings. The somewhat unconvincing reason Marx offers for this is that while animals produce only to satisfy their immediate needs, human beings can produce according to universal standards, free of any immediate need – for instance, in accordance with standards of beauty. Therefore, it would seem, in Marx’s view that labour in the sense of free productive activity is the essence of human life. Whatever is produced in this way – a statue, a house, a piece of cloth – is therefore the essence of human life made into a physical object. Marx calls this the “objectification of man’s species-life”. Ideally the objects workers have freely created would be theirs to keep or dispose of as they wish. When, under conditions of alienated labour, workers must produce objects over which they have no control (because the object belong to someone else i.e. the employers) and which are used against those who produced them (by increasing the wealth and power of the employers) the workers are alienated from their essential humanity. A consequence of this alienation of humans from their own nature is that they are also alienated from each other. Productive activity becomes “activity under the domination, coercion and yoke of another man”. This other man becomes an alien, hostile being. Instead of humans relating to each other co-operatively, they relate competitively. Love and trust are replaced by bargaining and exchange. Human beings cease to recognize in each other their common human nature; they see others as instruments for furthering their own egoistic interests.

Marx’s solution to these problems: abolition of wages, alienated labour, and private property in one blow. In a word – Communism. The key concept, alienation: in capitalist societies, human beings become mere objects when the product of their labor is no longer theirs and when their activated

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are controlled by others. He analyzes in detail the consequences of human alienation: the loss of personal dignity, and the reaction of human beings in their functions to the level of lower animals. Alienation could mean a feeling of separateness but in Marx’s case it’s a technical term used often in German Philosophy. Hegel uses it too: things that are meant to be together coming apart. Essence and Existence. For Marx it’s the essence of human beings and the existence of human beings. Human beings have a certain essence or idea in what constitutes or what should be the good or ideal life for human beings. This essence separating from existence means human beings aren’t living in accordance to they way they ought to be. Marx says this is the human condition under capitalism not simply the human condition in general and that we can conceive of social situations in which human life (existence) is carries out in essence would be the goal of social thought of actions i.e. the good life. Workers are alienated in four ways:

1. Alienation from the product – not just that the product is taken away from the worker but that it reappears in alien form after some part of human essence comes back and dominates or oppresses human existence in an unexpected way. Workers are alienated collectively Most people approach the world as strangers to it i.e. a tape recorder, a pencil most don’t know how these things are made commodities are taken for granted. Social conditions under which commodities are made Capitalism – social structure in which some are rich and other are poor Capitalists - have great power taking commodities produced by workers selling them off, making a profit, and becoming wealthier. The more the worker produces the more his is producing the means of his own domination. We become as play things of alien forces Marx says Capitalism is a monster we’ve created that controls us.

2. Alienation from production activity i.e. production line activity Human beings in producing in turn reduce themselves to mere machines. Human beings have tremendous potential can even create within the “laws of beauty” Most workers under capitalism don’t exercise in will and consciousness they do what they are told acting as machines or as I see as modern day slaves or what might be referred to as slave laborers. The last two can really be lumped together

3. Alienation from species essence

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Human beings as a species have a particular essence there are certain things about us that are distinctive to human beings. However under capitalism human beings don’t enjoy the essence in their daily lives. Marx essence splits in two

1. What is special in human beings or what distinguishes human beings from animals in terms of what we can do? Marx says human beings are essentially creative, they learn from each other; one generation can build better bridges or building than the last. Under capitalism this doesn’t often take place. i.e. This part of our essence is not enjoyed by this part of our existence

2. Division of labor. What makes human life livable is that we don’t have to produce everything for ourselves – part of an incredibly complex division of labor. Again Marx distinguishes two:

1. Social division of labor – some people make hats some shoes and then exchange for what they want.

2. Division of labor within the workplace – great specialization of tasks. Adam Smith wrote about a pin factory and how there would be 8 – 10 tasks delegated to 8-10 individuals that went into producing pins.

3. Alienation from other human beings If aliens from space were looking at earth and they had no concept of money they may believe humans created the most unbelievable incredible fantastic global system of cooperation. Human beings don’t understand the system of cooperation they’ve created. They just walk into a store or a mall and use money being totally and entirely alienated from the process of cooperation that allows for the existence of commodities and the ability to walk into a local store and purchase them. 6.

Private property is thus the product, the result, the necessary consequence, of alienated labour, of the external relation of the worker to nature and to himself. Private Property thus results by analysis from the concept of alienated labour – i.e., of alienated man, of estranged labour, of estranged life, of estranged man. [sic.] Where as Locke said that by man putting his labour into something i.e. picking apples from a tree and placing them in a basket, that this creates private property. Marx is saying no not such simple tasks as taking nature and putting our labor into a thing such as nature does that make it private property but that private property is rather the result of estranged labour, alienated labour, etc. 7. The answer to this is not necessarily the answer to the question for I feel in my rhetoric and action is enough to know how I feel about the working class and the

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capitalist class. I have been working for unions since sixteen years old. In two super markets and now in a high school service workers union and I’m a state worker. I can see why both unions ask of employers and why employers ask from unions and workers…in a word – CAPITALISM. The system causes these conflicts, these class struggles, the inequality, the greed and so on. The system is inherently corrupt and corrupting. Human behavior is dictated by Capitalism. Capitalism doesn’t help people. It may have during the industrial revolution, and even then I highly doubt it. But human progress was greatest under capitalism, the thing is capitalism wasn’t the system that was always here and people forger that perhaps they can improve on a system or replace it entirely. Mercantilism, feudalism, right? These systems became outdated. It’s the 21st Century technology is at a point where robots and automation could do menial labour. We are at a point where we could use wind, solar, wave/tidal, and geothermal energy and never have to burn another fossil fuel ever again in history. People could live their essence people could live more purposeful or meaningful lives if we could rid ourselves of class inequality, money, and many other fetters that are entirely and wholly unnecessary in this year 2010. 1. Dialectics. Capitalism is a transitional state to something better. Communism

or scientific socialism is societies next phases in the unfolding of history. Revolution of the proletariat class. Workers of the world unite. Workers have no borders. Alienated labour. Capitalist Mode of Production. Mainly he felt whatever human nature was presently at the time and in a good amount of time before that was the result of capitalism and unequal classes within society.

2. Human nature is good. Capitalism is bad. Capitalism makes human nature bad. Collectively we all want to live and work and have fun living and laughing and loving all everyone. In analyzing an individual’s nature, Marx focuses on the actual or concrete historical setting for a person rather than characterizing an agent in terms of some vacuous, logical abstractions. Human lives are inextricably bound up with the existing mode of production (that is, the way they organize themselves to produce the goods they need). Marx maintains that the more sophisticated forms of human intelligence – morality, religion, politics, and so forth – are determined by the economic conditions of a given society and have no independent status. i.e. moral values are ideological in character = they are not products of pure reason but are the effects of material forces that are their sources. There are no moral philosophies that hold for all cultures and times. Those who govern (that is, those who control the means of production and distribution) determine which conceptions will prevail in a given societ.

3. Communism. Scientific Socialism. A workers state. A revolutionary state. The Status Quo is unacceptable, unsustainable, unequal, and inhumane.

4. Everyone, so long as everyone is equal should participate in politics EVERYONE. If there are two or more unequal classes I believe Marx would say fuck the rich and vote the poor.

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5. Very systematically. Uncover truths. Enlighten readers. Uses politics. Uses daily life examples. Uses different writing styles.

6. Marx diverges from anything and everything we’ve read so far this semester. He is writing in 1844 or around that time after the thousands of years of philosophy, politics, economy, and history as been unraveled, written, experienced, handed down, learned, taught, turned over, analyzed by those before him, discussed, maybe attempted again and now only now does Marx write and with the industrial revolution the creation of the US nation states capitalism, capitalist modes of production etc now Marx begins his go at it. He changes history for the remainder of history.

According to Marx, capitalism creates divisiveness among individuals by creating classes of labour. Self-activity (creative, meaningful productivity) ceases because persons become mere cogs in the industrial complex. This state of affairs will be rectified only when the inevitable proletarian revolution takes place, in brief, true freedom will be expressed when the masses take control of the instruments of production.