Karl Marx Alienated Labour Analysis

Realization and Revolution The realization of alienated labour is a realization of the reciprocal relationship alienated labour has with private property. For private property is both the product of alienated labour, as much as it is the cause of this alienation. Marx writes that through an analysis of this alienation it appears that private property separates man from his product, labour, his life, and his fellow man: “i.e., of alienated man, of estranged labour, of estranged life, of estranged man” (79). The four forms of alienation and estrangement are fluid, they work on one another, they need not be successive, they are the combined ramification of the bourgeoisie’s effort to commoditize labour. This commoditization of labour is the result …show more content…
Communism illustrated in this excerpt is precisely this abolishment of private property. Marx continues, “Communism therefore [is] the complete return of man to himself” (84). Communism is an activity of reclaiming ourselves. Communism to Marx is humanism, a philosophy of cultivation by way of identifying what is essentially human. Humanism is nothing less than that philosophy which raises the estranged labourer to what is properly human. The exodus from private property therefore, is an exodus from that which undermines personhood and causes the inhuman condition. It is this inhuman condition, this separation of persons from their essence, that Marx exposes as the driving power to overcome: “The human being had to be reduced to this absolute poverty in order that he might yield his inner wealth to the outer world” (87). Therefore, it is in this exodus that man emancipates himself from the exclusively biological components of his being. Man is now characterized in his rising of his essence as a rational being engaged in sensuous production. Man is not merely serving animal functions, but rather has his vocation in an entirely different role of self-development of the person. Man has become