Marx's Theory of Alienation

Marx's Theory Of Alienation

Entfremdung (estrangement) is Karl Marx’s theory of alienation, which describes the separation of things that naturally belong together; and the placement of antagonism between things that are properly in harmony. Theoretically, Entfremdung describes the social alienation (estrangement) of people from aspects of their human nature (Gattungswesen, “species-essence”) as a consequence of living in a society stratified into social classes; Marx had earlier expressed the entfremdung theory in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (1927). Philosophically, the Entfremdung theory relies upon The Essence of Christianity (1841), by Ludwig Feuerbach, which argues that the supernatural idea of “God” has alienated the natural characteristics of the human being. Moreover, in The Ego and its Own (1845), Max Stirner extends the Feurbach analysis by arguing that even the idea of “humanity” is an alienating concept for the individual man and woman to intellectually consider; Marx and Engels responded to these philosophic propositions in The German Ideology (1845).

Alienation (Entfremdung) is the systemic result of living in a socially stratified society, because being a mechanistic part of a social class alienates a person from his and her humanity. The theoretic basis of alienation within the capitalist mode of production is that the worker invariably loses the ability to determine his or her life and destiny, when deprived of the right to think (conceive) of himself as the director of his actions; to determine the character of said actions; to define his relationship with other people; and to own the things and use the value of the goods and services, produced with his labour. Although the worker is an autonomous, self-realised human being, as an economic entity, he or she is directed to goals and diverted to activities that are dictated by the bourgeoisie, who own the means of production, in order to extract from the worker the maximal amount of surplus value, in the course of business competition among industrialists.