Marx’s Alienation
The social theory that is drawn from the article “Making Ends Meet on Low Wages” is Marx’s social theory of alienation. The article examines the financial peaks different size families must reach in order to meet the standard of living and explains the LIS (Living Income Standard), a development by the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center that estimates the financial peaks families need to reach to afford basic needs. The overall perspective one may conclude, if thinking about the relationship between worker and his or her labor, is that reaching the standard of living relies and is determined solely on a family’s income, an exchange value for their labor, rather than the value and magnitude of their labor. Ultimately, the basis of meeting the standard of living, income, alienates the worker from the value of their labor. There are four types of alienation that will be discussed throughout this paper all pertaining to how a Capitalist economy can separate the working class from its own meaning of labor. The four types of alienation are, the alienation of the worker from the product of his or her work, the alienation of the worker and the activity of production, the alienation of …show more content…
Marx states “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”(p.46). This explains that the different statuses and positions of workers throughout a company alienates them from one another. These social relations between levers of labor power can be competitive, and separates the workers even more and also leads to more labor being obtained by capitalist from the workers (Novak). While working at the factory my grandfather illustrated how the people who worked there were always looking to move up the ladder within the company not only for better pay but for more
The social theory that is drawn from the article “Making Ends Meet on Low Wages” is Marx’s social theory of alienation. The article examines the financial peaks different size families must reach in order to meet the standard of living and explains the LIS (Living Income Standard), a development by the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center that estimates the financial peaks families need to reach to afford basic needs. The overall perspective one may conclude, if thinking about the relationship between worker and his or her labor, is that reaching the standard of living relies and is determined solely on a family’s income, an exchange value for their labor, rather than the value and magnitude of their labor. Ultimately, the basis of meeting the standard of living, income, alienates the worker from the value of their labor. There are four types of alienation that will be discussed throughout this paper all pertaining to how a Capitalist economy can separate the working class from its own meaning of labor. The four types of alienation are, the alienation of the worker from the product of his or her work, the alienation of the worker and the activity of production, the alienation of …show more content…
Marx states “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”(p.46). This explains that the different statuses and positions of workers throughout a company alienates them from one another. These social relations between levers of labor power can be competitive, and separates the workers even more and also leads to more labor being obtained by capitalist from the workers (Novak). While working at the factory my grandfather illustrated how the people who worked there were always looking to move up the ladder within the company not only for better pay but for more