Oliver Kim July 5, 2011 Estranged Labor by Karl Marx I. Introduction a.

Society falls into 2 classes: property-owners, and propertyless workers b. Workers become commoditized and are wretched in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of their production c. Workers experience estrangement, or alienation, from the world II. Forms of Alienation a. Estrangement of the worker from his product i. The product of his labor becomes an alien object ii. The product of the workers labor represents a cold, objectified reality iii. This objectified reality is hostile to the worker; hence, the worker also works towards his own detriment b. Estrangement of the worker from the activity of production i. Man benefits from nature in two ways: 1. It provides the raw materials necessary for labor 2. More directly, it provides physical sustenance for the worker ii. Hence, by appropriating nature for his labor in the capitalist system, the worker deprives himself from these two benefits iii. If the product of labour is alienation, production itself must be active alienation iv. The labor of the worker is not his own; its a means of survival that he is performing for another party v. As a result, Mans freedom is stifled and his sense of self is destroyed c. Estrangement of the worker from species-being

i. Every individual man is a representation or embodiment of the species-being ii. The act of taking inorganic matter (nature) and transforming it into both sustenance and the means to activity is essential to the human identity iii. Mans power to work for the species-being in objectifying reality and shaping reality is part of human nature

iv. Separating man from the object of his production tears him away from the species being, making him no more than an animal d. Estrangement of man to man i. To whom does the workers product belong? ii. Not to the Gods or nature, but to his fellow man, the capitalist iii. As the capitalist owns the product of the workers labor, there is a sense of both hostility and alienation between fellow men iv. The worker views production as the loss of his reality and the product as his loss, and he resents the dominion of the nonproducer over production and the product III. Further Exploration a. Private property is both a result of alienated labor and a realization of this alienation i. The relation of the worker to labor and the relation of the man alien to labor (i.e. the capitalist) engenders private property ii. We originally obtained the concept of alienated labor from observing the movement of private property b. Wages and private property are the same, as wages are necessary for labors constant estrangement; labor becomes a servant of the wage c. Better payment or equality of wages for workers will not solve the problem d. Only emancipation of the workers will lead to emancipation for all of humanity, as all servitude is derived from the relation of the worker to production

Possible Discussion Questions To what extent do we see Marxs black-and-white class division in modern society? How does the objectification of labor lead to the estrangement of workers? What does Marx mean by species-being? What does he see as the proper relationship between the individual and the universal? To what extent is Marx critical of religions role in the capitalist system?