In Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts, the chapter titled The Estranged Man shows the effects Capitalism has on the worker. He describes capitalism “alienating” man, or stripping man’s life of a form. This essay will begin by describing Marx’s interpretation of capitalism before explaining the four ways in which capitalism alienates and conclude with Marx’s view on how labour under the capitalist mode of production affects the life of the working class.

Background of the 1844 Manuscripts

Karl Marx was a German philosopher, economist and political theorist who lived from 1818 to 1883.  Marx’s commentaries stretch across disciplines but are primarily concerned with understanding political economy and its effects on society. Marx wrote his 1844 Manuscripts when living in Paris, after being expelled from his home country of Germany for his political activities. The 1844 Manuscripts contain some of Marx’s earliest attempts at the exploration of capitalism, and present a far more humanist analysis than his future works. Crucially, the 1844 Manuscripts were not published during his lifetime. This is for a multitude of reasons, including difficulty finding publishers for his radical ideas, but also Marx felt that the 1844 Manuscripts were unfinished or unpolished and not suitable for publication. It was not until after Marx’s death where his long-time collaborator and friend Friedrich Engels found the work and, recognising its importance, published it posthumously. The work is still read by philosophers and political-economists till this day with some school of thought even considering it the most important of Marx work, such as the Critical Theorists (Frankfurt School) and the humanist branch of Marxism (Erich Fromm, Jean-Paul Sartre…). 

Capitalism according to Marx

To understand the life of the alienated man, we must first understand the system in which he suffers. Marx saw capitalism as the mode of production in which the means of production are privately owned and the social relations of individuals are mediated through the exchange of commodities. The means of production are the resources needed for the production of goods and services, which can include land, materials, machinery/tools, buildings, and technology. A commodity is a good or service produced for exchange which have two properties: its use-value (utility) and its exchange value (value in relations to other commodities).

Under capitalism, there are two primary classes of people, “property owners (bourgeoisie) and propertyless workers (proletariat)”. The bourgeoisie are those who own the means of production and reap the benefits of commodity production. The proletariat are those who do not own the means of production and are left only to sell the labour power (capacity to perform work) for wages. Surplus value is the difference between the worker’s wage and the exchange value of the commodity they produced. The bourgeoisie absorb the surplus value of the proletariat as profit, this is called exploitation. The proletariat and bourgeoisie have different ends (objective/goals) and thus contradict each other, leaving them locked in a class struggle.

Alienated Labour

Alienated labour or estranged labour describes the effects of the capitalist mode of production on labour. It can be separated into four separate categories:

1. Alienation for product

“The product of labour is labour embodied and made material in an object” as the commodity is a representation of its constituent parts, their labour (proceeding from the labour theory of value). The labourer imparts himself onto the object, and thus his labour is captured in the object (objectified). However, the product of the worker’s labour (the commodity) is owned and disposed of by the capitalist, the labourer has no control over it. The product, the objectified version of his labour, thus “stands opposed to it as something alien, as a power independent of the product”.

2. Alienation from production

In addition to having no control over the objectification of their labour (the commodity), the labour has no control over the process of production, this presents itself in two ways. Firstly, the labourer has no ownership or control over the means of production, meaning the tools, land, and technology he uses to objectify himself are alien, thus he feels less responsible and connected to his labour. The second reason derives from the division of labour. The division of labour is modularisation and separation of tasks necessary to create a commodity. An example of the division of labour can be found in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. Smith elucidates the efficacy of a pin factory when the steps in the construction of a singular pin - straightening the wire, cutting the wire and sharpening the wire - are each divided to one person. While productivity and efficiency increase, the labour proportionally feels disconnected from the end product. It follows that “the worker feels himself only when he is not working; when he is working, he does not feel himself”.

3. Alienation from himself (species-being)

Labour is external to the worker (does not belong to him). Man feels unfilled and dissatisfied with his work but still goes, why? He continues for survival through wages, “here wages are concerned, labour appears not as an end in itself but as the servant of wages.”, his labour thus is “not voluntary but forced, it is forced labour. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need, but a mere means to satisfy needs outside itself.”. As the end of his labour is not for the sake of the production of the commodity but survival, he himself is relegated to the level of a commodity. In this sense man is not a species-being, a representative of the inherent nature of human beings as social, creative and free beings, but a slave. To this Marx wrote, “Man is acting freely only in his animal functions - eating, drinking and procreating… in his human functions he is nothing more than an animal,”

4. Alienation from others

“An immediate consequence of man’s estrangement from the product of his labour, his life activity, his species-being, is the estrangement of man from man”. The end of man is wages, man is in a constant state of survival and competition to achieve this end. This manifests in the commodification of social relationships, seeing other human beings as a means to their own ends rather than ends in themselves, ethically breaking Kant’s formula of humanity supplanting humanity (“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means”) as an end and making “money as capital an end in itself”, fundamentally changing morality. In addition, the workers’ life belongs to the owners of the means of production, creating class distinctions and class antagonism due to their opposing interests. This stretches to the point where the proletariat is completely alienated from society, reflecting its alienated relations of production, leading to further isolation and a breakdown of humanity. Life as an Estranged Labourer “Life is activity” and activity under capitalism is rebranded slavery. Marx’s depiction of estranged labour paints a morbid depiction of society, where the economic system is descended to alienate us from our product, production, selves and humanity at large. Life then is suffering from the ennui of alienation, leaving the labourer with two choices: continue on as a slave of the capitalist mode of production and bear the weight of its contradiction, or unite and transform the mode of production.

Bibliography

Marx, Karl. Das Kapital: Volume 1. Translated by Ben Fowkes. London: Penguin, 1998.

—. Early Writings. Edited by Lucio Colletti. Translated by Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton. London: Penguin Books, 1992.

Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott. London: Penguin, 2006.