Estranged Labor

valued only as a means of accumulating profit to the owners of production.

Estranged labor also results in the alienation of the worker to nature and the natural environment. Marx asserts the importance of nature to the worker, in several different forms. Furthermore, Marx states, “But just as nature provides labor with the means of life in the sense that labour cannot live without objects on which to operate, on the other hand, it also provides the means of life in the more restricted sense., the means of life for the physical subsistence of the worker himself” (440). The laborers therefore must use the materials provided by nature and create commodities in order to gain a profit from the bourgeoisie. As a result, the laborer must become a

The workers cannot survive independently without selling their labor, for they would then not have a source of income in order to purchase the necessities of life. In a second sense the laborers are dependent on the resources that nature provides such as food, water, air, etc., in order to survive physically. Marx further explains that the more the laborer uses nature to create products, the more he or she deprives themselves of the means of life (440). Labor takes over nature and transforms it into property therefore the more nature is used for production of commodities, the less resources for the means of human existence. Humans are therefore depleting their means of life the more they engage in labor. However, workers continue to exhaust the resources of nature and engage in the labor process to receive money and increase their wealth. Nature is therefore alienated from the worker, for it is

Marx writes “The estrangement of man, and in fact every relationship in which man stands to himself, is first realized and expressed in the relationship in which a man stands to other men. Hence within the relationship of estranged labor each man views the other in accordance with the standard position in which he finds himself as a worker” (444). Through a political economy the way individuals view one another is based solely on the fact as to whether one is a worker, or whether one is the owner to the means of production. As a result, there is no true connection or relationship between the worker and other members of society, only a relationship based on the position of which the individual finds him or herself in. The interactions between individuals are no longer social and personal, but only based upon the capitalistic mode of production. Furthermore, laborers do not have relationships with one another but rather a relationship based on competition among the other laborers for wages. The laborer views other workers as competition for accumulating the maximum wages provided by the bourgeoisie, and not as true human