Labor and Alienation

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“Political economy conceals the estrangement inherent in the nature of labor by not considering the direct relationship between the worker (labor) and production” (Pg. 30). According to Marx, human nature is neither fixed nor transcendent; instead, it is alterable and embedded in the productivity of everyday life. The only fixed attribute that we have is our openness. We are different from other animal species in the sense that we are able to adapt to different natural environments by creating a social environment. We recognize what Marx termed us as ‘species being’ when we plan our actions, organize collectively to draw a living from nature, and make sense our experience in the different form of cultures. Generally speaking, estrangement or alienation occurs since the beginning as Marx recalled man being alienated from God through “the fall” (Pg. 28). However, alienation, understood in the legal perspective, occurs through a contract when one gives or sells his own property to someone else. In other words, it is when humans lose control over their unique creative faculties. Hence, through the course of history, almost everything is understood in terms of supply and demand because everything could be bought and sold, including human beings (i.e. slavery). Hence, human beings are thought of as objects or property that could be bought and sold for profits although it is dehumanizing. More accurately, one can understand alienation through the four aspects that Marx had invoked. As argued by Marx, man is alienated (1) from nature, (2) from himself, (3) from his species-being, and (4) from other men.

From the beginning, man originally shares an intimate relation with the object of the natural order that surrounds him which is identic...

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...re and locate the source of meaning in a remote and inscrutable God, Spirit, or Nature. From the political perspective, the modern state constitutes humans as citizens and legal subjects, and it identifies human rights exclusively with property rights. On the economic level, the institutions of capitalism (especially in the United States) constitute humans and their productive efforts in terms of their cash value. The worker becomes not a person but a quantum of labor power – a product on the balance sheet, like raw materials and machinery, to be possessed at the cheapest price and resold for profit. Estrangement occurs in consumption as well as production, when workers hasten to buy the goods they have produced and define their identity in terms of cars, clothes, household goods that they possess. Therefore, human identity is subdivided and turned against itself.

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