Marx's Explanation Of Alienation In Capitalism

In his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and Grundrisse, Marx has a discussion of alienation in capitalist societies. Marx creates the scene, by stating that a capitalist society has changed workers into commodities, and also states “that the wretchedness of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production” (35). The more powerful the product the more wretch the worker is. Then the whole population is split into two class, the property owners and propertyless workers. This political economy starts with private property; the formula he develops is material passes through private property. This is then taken as laws. It is unknown how, but explains that these political property fails to explain the

Marx describes a commodity as "A commodity appears at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties" (63). Fetishism in anthropology, refers to the primitive belief that an object has superpower, or godly powers. Marx continues to example commodity by a piece of wood being turned into a table. The table is just use-value, until the table is connected to money. People in a capitalist society thus begin to treat commodities as if value inherent in the objects themselves, rather than in the amount of real labor spend producing the object, people forgot that work was put into the object. As Marx explains, "A commodity is therefore, a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour: because the relation of the producers to sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour”