Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
marx alienation theory
concept of alienation as outlined by Marx
concept of alienation as outlined by Marx
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: marx alienation theory
Each of the three main theorists, Marx, Durkheim, and Weber have significantly different aspects on how society is held together. Some things about their theories are related in few ways. Marx was quoted, “The origins of change are all materialistic, not based on ideas.” This aspect focuses on how material items are the basis of society. Durkheim focused on the dependence of others to make society work. Weber used the focus of religion affecting all aspects of life. This is known as social cohesion.
Marx’s theories became known as “Marxism.” Marxism is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “theories and practices of socialism including the labor theory… dialectical materialism, the class struggle, and the dictatorship of the proletariat until the establishment of a classless society.” The goal of Marx was to have an all equal society, or as we know it today Communism or Socialism. The labor theory incorporates the idea of alienation. Alienation is directly related to the working class. As the workers work, they begin to realize they gain no fruits of their own labor. Because the idea is not their own, they have no sense of creativity. Without this sense of creativity they are given the feeling of being alienated from the world, the workers are reduced from an active human being to a passive result or object. (AnthroBase.com)
I think that even though Marx saw alienation as a problem with the people that this is what kept the society going. The dependence on others kept the society in constant function. The capitalists need the workers to complete the job so that money could be made; they passed a bit of the money back down to the workers for making the goods made. To achieve a society without any struggles would be ideal for Marx....
... middle of paper ...
...y never got to see what it has become today. If they only knew how influential they were in this science.
Reference
Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary. Retrieved March 19, 2010 (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/marxism).
AnthroBase. Retrieved March 19, 2010 (http://www.anthrobase.com/Dic/eng/pers/marx_karl.htm).
Ritzer, George 2008. “Karl Marx.” P 61 in Sociological Theory New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Bartle, Phil 2007. “Emile Durkheim.” Retrieved March 19, 2010 (http://www.scn.org/cmp/modules/soc-dur.htm).
Radford University. Retrieved March 19, 2010 (http://www.radford.edu/~junnever/law/onDurkheim.htm).
New World Encyclopedia. Retrieved March 20, 2010 (http://www.newworldencyclpedia.org/entry/Sociology_of_religion).
Ritzer, George 2008. “Max Weber.” P 119 in Sociological Theory New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
His critiques highlight his concern that capitalism makes economic exclusion inevitable. He believes that under a capitalist system, workers lose their identities as individual agents and instead become slaves to their own labor and to their employer. One may initially claim that working actually contributes to a sense of self, rather than detracts from it. While this makes sense intuitively, Marx contends that “labor is external to the worker, i.e. it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself” (30). In other words, while work may not be inherently isolating at first, under capitalism, work shifts from where individuals first develop skills to where employees are then performing labor for the sake of another. Additionally, when an agent no longer identifies with his labor, it may compromise his identity. For example, if I am a skilled plumber and I consider this to be central to who I am, then under a capitalist system where my plumbing is only valued insofar as it brings instrumental benefits, I am stripped of the intrinsic value of plumbing. In this regard, “the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien” (29). Essentially, labor for a system of capital perpetuates alienation, as each worker just becomes another cog in the
Karl Marx sums up the basics of his thoughts on alienated labour well in the first paragraph in the last section of the first Manuscript. “On the basis of political economy itself, in its own words, we have shown that the worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities; that the wretchedness of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production; that the necessary result of competition is the accumulation of capital in a few hands, and thus the restoration of monopoly in a more terrible form; and that finally the distinction between capitalist and land rentier, like that between the tiller of the soil and the factory worker, disappears and that the whole of society must fall apart into the two classes – property owners and propertyless workers.” This is how our society today really does work, and it is much more evident then in 1844 when karl marx was writing about this.
Marx, discuss a certain concept of alienated labor as an unavoidable result of capitalist system. The framework that he tries to draw in the book is that capitalist system should be blamed to have class strafication and alienated labor in the society. In a capitalist society people suffer from class conflict and property ownership of bourgeoisie. Bourgeoisie owns the big factories and businesses so then, small manufacturers have to shut down and basically have to join the labors in the big businesses. Workers in capitalist system are obligated to work for long hours under unhealthy conditions for really low salaries. In order to feed a family provide just basic needs, they have to accept those conditions otherwise they would be down the street without any source of income. While bourgeoisie class is enjoying large profits and luxuries life that has been provided by the effort of labors, they can barely themselves and the family.
money they need to survive and support their families. In this scenario, proletariats work extremely hard and do practically everything the business needs yet they receive little pay while their capitalist counter part do very little and reap most of the rewards and, otherwise known as exploitation. Marx also felt that workers were subject to alienation which is when a job forces machine-like, thoughtless activities onto a person, like repetitively doing that same task while completely taking out the human elements such as thinking freely and working alongside others, alienating them and making them feel like robots. Marx predicted that the gap between the two classes would expand greatly and proletarians would have no more hope for improving their lives and revolt against the capitalists once they understood capitalism. This revolution would then create a communist society.
Because of this, Marx thought to believe that society and its individuals would not live to their full potential, as a result of this they aren’t truly happy, as they are being tricked by religious teachings to believe that they should be happy and grateful for their lives. Marx theorised that the solution to alienation would be society and individuals cutting themselves off from God which would then allow them to see what reality is really
In sociology, there are three names you will always hear, Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. Each are successful sociologist, they have made many significant contributions to the development of sociology. While all being enlightenment thinkers, each of them have their own distinguish perspective and focuses in their respective theories. Durkheim, a structural functionalist, argued everything in society exist for a purpose, and that society are bounded together by ideas and social unity, social solidarity. Weber focused on rationality and bureaucracy, he believes they are key element to modern society and he is interested to understand how people feel. Marx is primarily study society with economic perspectives, focused heavily on inequality among classes
Emile Durkheim and Max Weber both appealed to me in the reading of chapter 1. They both have similarities and differences on their approaches to sociology. While reading the background of Emile, I found it fascinating how he studied sociology in a way that he put together the individual dimensions and added them together to better understand a society or social group. The case of suicide rates and religion. This one case can be analyzed through other elements, such as careers. For instance, the type of profession can be studied. I am really into statistics and like to break down information. The way he broke down the information to analyze a society or social groups interested me. Max Weber, I chose to write about because I felt he had a refined understanding of his teacher, Karl Marx.
Three thinkers form the foundations of modern-day sociological thinking. Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber. Each developed different theoretical approaches to help us understand the way societies function, and how we are determined by society. This essay will focus on the contrasts and similarities of Durkheim and Weber’s thought of how we are determined by society. It will then go on to argue that Weber provides us with the best account of modern life.
Because of the conditions that the wage-workers worked in, Marx described it as exploitation. Marx felt that the wage workers were being exploited. The capitalist, also known as the bourgeoisie, were exploiting the wage workers, the proletariats, because of their cheap labor. They were essentially using them to create and increase their own profit. This in turn brought up alienation. Basically, alienation, also known as estrangement, is when a person is separated from their work, what they produce, themselves, and their environment. Marx’s theory of alienation was used to describe workers laboring under the capitalist society. The workers, also known as wage laborers, were commodities—things that are bought, sold, or exchanged in the market. They were selling their labor which means that they were being alienated from what they were doing.
In the Communist Manifesto it is very clear that Marx is concerned with the organization of society. He sees that the majority individuals in society, the proletariat, live in sub-standard living conditions while the minority of society, the bourgeoisie, have all that life has to offer. However, his most acute observation was that the bourgeoisie control the means of production that separate the two classes (Marx #11 p. 250). Marx notes that this is not just a recent development rather a historical process between the two classes and the individuals that compose it. “It [the bourgeois] has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, and new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie ...
Morrison, K. (2006) Mark, Durkheim, Weber: Formations of Modern Social Thought. 2nd ed. London: SAGE.
Marx’s theory of alienation describes the separation of things that naturally belong together. For Marx, alienation is experienced in four forms. These include alienation from ones self, alienation from the work process, alienation from the product and alienation from other people. Workers are alienated from themselves because they are forced to sell their labor for a wage. Workers are alienated from the process because they don’t own the means of production. Workers are alienated from the product because the product of labor belongs to the capitalists. Workers do not own what they produce. Workers are alienated from other people because in a capitalist economy workers see each other as competition for jobs. Thus for Marx, labor is simply a means to an end.
Weber, Max. 1947. Essays in Sociology. Translated by Gerth and Mills. London: K.Paul, Trench, Trubner
Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber are all important characters to be studied in the field of Sociology. Each one of these Sociological theorists, help in the separation of Sociology into its own field of study. The works of these three theorists is very complex and can be considered hard to understand but their intentions were not. They have their similarities along with just as many of their differences.
During the nineteenth century, Karl Marx and Max Weber were two of the most influential sociologists. Both of them tried to explain social change taking place in a society at that time. On the one hand, their views are very different, but on the other hand, they had many similarities.