When Karl Marx (2003) talks about labour in a political economy, he argues that the workers are “degraded to the most miserable sort of commodity” (p. 6)—in other words, the workers are being exploited by owners of private property. He introduces the concept of alienation, describing how workers become externalized not only from their labour and the product of their labour, but also from their species’ being and other workers. This, as a result reduces the workers’ capabilities of seeking their greatest potential, leaving them powerless. While Marx is able to explain how alienated labour is developed, are the ideas around alienation only confined to labour? This paper will discuss the ways in which alienation is conceptualized and applied
