Human Alienation in Capitalism: Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Analysis
Human Universality and the Production of an Objective World
In the practical production of an objective world, man appears as a conscious being, a specific being who sees the human self and, in itself, the species, therefore producing universally. In this sense, Marx sees in art the pattern of productive activity.
On the other hand, man becomes the object of his will and therefore free. Facing the animal, man is constituted as a universal, generic being. This universality is revealed in the fact that he makes all nature his inorganic body, both as a direct means of subsistence and as a subject and instrument of his life activity.
Man is able to direct his activities according to the end proposed by him.
Sociality
One of the basic human determinations is sociability, which is understood by Marx as being specific to each individual, their own activity, life, and wealth. With society, the unity of man in nature is produced, but only social man is aware of the innermost human nature. The embodiment of the individual alone is given in accordance with his social being. Society is not an abstraction that makes the individual. Thus, Marx says that the human essence is not an abstraction, immanent in the individual. It is the set of social relations, as the development of an individual is conditioned by the development of others. From these considerations, Marx finds the key to the world of men.
Political Alienation
Political alienation, which indicates the division of man in his social life and political life, between society and state, is not to be exceeded in the political sphere, apart from overcoming the contradictions of civil society (private property, division of labor, etc.). For Marx, the resolution of these social contradictions is a condition of every human emancipation. Economic relations are therefore a central element of human life.
Alienated Labor
Interested in the topic of economics, Marx reads and discusses works of Smith, Ricardo, Mill, etc., in parallel with a study of socialist thought. In the concern for interests from a socialist perspective, Marx is preceded by writers such as Proudhon. The originality of Marx’s approach lies in applying the theory of alienation, developed by Hegel, to the economic level, analyzing the anthropological and historical budgets inherent in the national economy from the perspective of a new anthropology.
Alienated labor is the fundamental category with which Marx critically examines the plight of man in bourgeois civil society. Marx addresses the problem of relations between private property and labor. Previously, private property was regarded as a natural principle separate from forms emerging from labor, capital, and land, as well as the mechanisms that choose to economic life. Marx seeks to explain the whole process. This stems from the fact of the alienation of labor and discusses its implications. Overall, alienation is a process by which human powers are objectified not only in their products through work but become independent and foreign to himself, to whom they are sold, standing before them like strangers and threatening their products’ own existence.
The alienation of the worker affects the four basic dimensions of the human being:
- Alienation of objects in the work of man and nature. Under the conditions of the bourgeoisie, the products of work, a manifestation of the objectification of workers, oppose them as something foreign, independent, and alien to them. Thus, objectification becomes the loss of the object, and appropriation becomes estrangement or “extrañación.” The more objects the worker produces, the more wealth, the more lost, “extrañación,” alienation, and suffering. This not only produces goods but also occurs as a commodity, and therefore cheaper to produce themes. The alienation of the products of its objectification implies the alienation both in nature itself, of which man is given in the mediated nature of man, with whom he is related to and acted upon. Nature, the sensuous external world, natural objects, thus become hostile and alien to man.
- Alienation of the specific activity of man. Alienation is not confined to products of human work and, by extension, nature but also the very act of production, productive activity. Rather than being a means of developing its capabilities in the context of capitalist social relations, it appears as a workforce that belongs to its owner but must be sold to others. With this sale, the proper use of his work appears to the worker as an alien power that dominates him. Consequently, the worker feels free only in his animal functions (eating, drinking, etc.), while in his human functions, he feels a mere animal. Thus, work ceases to be a necessity and becomes a means to satisfy needs outside of work.
- Alienation of the species. With the alienation of labor, man’s core activity, the life of their species, with consciousness and freedom inherent in its universality, becomes a mere means to his existence. Alienated labor turns the life of the species, both natural and psychic, into something that is foreign to man.
- Alienation of sociability. By putting himself, subject and species, for their livelihoods, with the alienation of himself, there is the alienation of the social life of men. Alienation finds its fulfillment until it expresses man’s relationship to others. In this sense, the economic alienation of sociability derives social alienation as an expression of the class division of society.
Overcoming Alienation
A key component of Marx’s concept of man is what constitutes the idea of communism as a new stage of urban development to allow the full development of human essence. In this sense, Marx’s thought is not only defined by the formulation of the theory of man’s alienation in capitalist society but also compensates for the overcoming of this alienation. The basic element of bourgeois relations of production, private property, is derived from alienated labor, so the idea of communism, as Marx has advocated, is abolishing the fundamental presupposition of private property in terms of alienation from itself. The positive transcendence of all alienation is the return of man to his human existence. The man of communist society is not bounded by an exclusive circle of activity but may seek a multi-dimensional development of relations with the world. Against the concept of wealth, purely economic, political economy, in which man is reduced to a mere object, Marx proclaims that true wealth lies in man himself. The rich man is the man who has multiple manifestations of life and for whom his own realization exists as an inner necessity.
Contextualizing the Manuscripts
The manuscripts of economics and philosophy are a source of continuous performances since their first publication. Marx gets them in the first explicit outline of the main lines which could be his thinking. With the concept of “alienated labor” as the key to explaining economic alienation, Marx made the first synthesis of elements from three different sources: classical political economy, French utopian socialism, and the problems of classical German philosophy, especially Hegel and Feuerbach.
Since the formulation of the theory of economic alienation as the key to explaining the state of derealization and dehumanization of man under capitalism, Marx arrives at the conviction that there is no possibility of an approach to freedom or emancipation in Germany in purely political terms. All emancipation must take into account civil society. Marx criticizes everything purely ideological, the idea of revolution, or limited to the political sphere of the state, as some followers of Hegel argued. Works immediately after the manuscripts of economics and philosophy can be explained as an application of the principles they developed.