Marx Alienated Labour Analysis

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MARX Marx states the following: “Private property is, therefore, the product, the necessary result, of alienated labour, of the external relation of the worker to nature and to himself” (Alienated Labour 280). This quote concludes an essay of the explication on alienated labour. Marx’s alienated labour relies on what he deems a new type of materialism. In this essay I will examine this statement with respect to three essays: “Alienated Labor”, “Theses on Feuerbach”, and “Ideology in General, German Ideology in Particular”. I will critically analyse his statement in three ways: first, by detailing Marx’s new form of materialism; second, by addressing the four aspects of alienated labor: (1) the worker as alienated from the product of his labour, …show more content…

In this essay, Marx criticises the popular form of materialism proposed by Feuerbach, and others, because it only observes. Marx says “The chief defect of all previous materialism (including that of Feuerbach) is that things (Gegenstand), reality, the sensible world, are conceived only in the form of objects (objekt) of observation, but not as human sense activity, not as practical activity, not subjectively” (281). The new type of materialism conceives sensuous existence as practical activity (283) and believes that “all social life is essentially practical” (282). This is further fleshed out during the beginning of the essay “Alienated Labor” regarding the relationship between humans and inorganic matter– matter such as plants, animals, minerals, and air. Inorganic matter is “a part of human consciousness as objects of the natural sciences and art” and are human’s “intellectual means of life” (276-77). Inorganic matter is also human beings’ “spiritual inorganic nature” which they prepare, (277) this means that the matter forms part of human life and humans live through these natural products (277). Nature, then, is the “(1) direct means of life; and equally (2) as the material object and instrument of his life activity” (277). Humans are completely interconnected with nature for survival as well as creation. The final aspect of the materialism forwarded by Marx is that “materialism is human society and social humanity” (283) which will be important in the final part in understanding alienating labour, the alienation of one individual from others, that will be expanded on

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