Capital, Value, Work, and Alienation in Marxist Thought

CAPITAL

Expanding value, capital in its initial form is a mass of money that allows its owner to obtain a larger amount than the first. Used to purchase machinery and raw materials and, on the other hand, labor force. Capital is variable and constant capital. Once the capitalist owns it, they can organize the production of a certain good. Its value must be greater than the sum of constant and variable capital used in production. The money from the sale must be greater than the investment. Marxism holds that capital is a value that is valued.

VALUE

Value is determined by the amount of socially necessary labor to produce it. The workload is measured by the working time spent producing it. It does not mean that the goods contain much more value the more lazy or stupid the producer is, or how much longer it takes. There is talk of socially necessary labor time in normal production and with a certain degree of skill in labor intensity.

The magnitude of the value varies by changing the productivity of labor, which depends on several factors: degree of skill through the workers’ progress in science and technical applications, volume and efficiency of resources, and natural conditions.

An object can be useful without having value when the utility that this item has for man does not require work, such as air or the wilderness. No useless object can have value, or the work will not count or represent value.

The value of a good is broken down into the value of the raw materials used, the value of the time the machines are worn in their production, the value of labor used, and the surplus generated by the workforce. Changes in value are driven by various market forces, including supply, demand, etc., but always around the magnitude of value.

Value Change

Extent to which goods are exchanged for goods of another class and that varies with places and times. If a sack of salt can be traded for two of flour, the exchange value is a bag of salt for two of flour. It oscillates with the play of market forces on the value. It is an expression of value.

Use Value

The ability of an object to meet human needs. Marx says that the use value of an object is the material of the same.

WORK

Activity by which man transforms reality to meet their physical and spiritual needs. In capitalist societies, work experience is alienated and not an activity of self-actualization.

For Marx, the notion of work goes beyond economics and becomes an anthropological category. Man is not passive but active, and work is an expression of their physical and mental capabilities, where man is developed and perfected. Work is an end in itself and can be sought by itself and enjoyed.

In his early writings, Marx called this inclination to move “personal activity.” When he criticized the concrete form of this activity occurring in capitalist societies, he called for the abolition of work. He differentiated between “free labor” and “alienated labor,” and his criticism of alienation is expressed in his concern for the “emancipation of labor.”

ALIENATION

Alienation or estrangement is a circumstance in which a person does not own themselves or is not responsible for their actions and thoughts. Marx explains that this is the condition in which the oppressed class lives in a society of exploitation, which admits the private ownership of the means of production. Within this, we find:

BUSINESS ALIGNMENT

The main form of alienation on which all others depend. It occurs on the job and refers to his dispossession. The product of their work, their own activity, and of themselves. Man is productive and works to satisfy their needs, but in transforming nature, man transforms himself. Happiness, human perfection, is given by the action of taking possession of things, and therefore work, including intellectual work.

The problem is that the place where man has to be experienced becomes the place of suffering and limitation of their physical and spiritual potential. Economic alienation is manifested in:

Alignment of the Activity

Man is alienated from their own creative powers and does not live their activity as something that truly belongs to them. We experience work as something foreign and forced upon us for money, not because we want to do it.

Alignment of the Object

The objects that a worker produces do not belong to him. The producer submits to the product as a mere means to produce the object. The important thing is not the producer but the goods produced. According to Marx, the great social and moral failing of capitalist societies is that they treat people as means and not as ends. The producer is a mere object of production and not a person.

Social Alienation

The object produced does not belong to the workers but to another, giving rise to the oppressed classes that produce the goods and the oppressor class that appropriates them.

Marx assumed that alienation in work reaches its peak in capitalist society, where the working class is the most alienated.

RELIGIOUS ALIGNMENT

Religion is a kind of alienation because it is a human invention that comforts man from the suffering of this world, decreasing the revolutionary capacity to transform the real cause of suffering and legitimizing such oppression.