Summary Of Marx's Estranged Labor

In this piece, Marx discusses the concept of “Estranged Labour”, about which he goes into great detail. He begins by stating that the current political economy takes the worker from the level of a human, to that of a commodity. He describes this as “the most wretched of commodities”, as the commodification of the worker is always done in contrast to success of the land owner. This creates two classes, the property owners and the propertyless workers, with a stark distinction between the two. The political economy that creates this distinction is run by greed, which is fueled by competition. Marx then continues to stress the connection between private property, greed, separation of labor, and capital, all of which relates back to the devaluation of man and his estrangement.This is because the worker …show more content…
Man is meant to work to satisfy his own needs, however now this work has been distorted and used for external gains outside the worker. This taints the process of labor which is a part of man’s nature, therefore estranging man from nature. In addition, Marx argues that man’s physical and spiritual life is intrinsically linked to nature, as man is a part of nature. Therefore, the estrangement of the worker to nature is in essence the estrangement of man to himself. This is because the worker is estranged from the functions that make him man, as they are distorted for capitalist gains. In this manner, man is estranged from his species as a whole and how his species was intended to function. In summary, Marx outlines four types of alienation that compose estranged labor: the first being the alienation of man from the product of his work, the second being the alienation of the worker from the activity of production, the third being the alienation of the worker from his own species, and the fourth being the alienation of the worker to other