Estranged Labour: Marx’s Humanist Critique of Capitalism

The Worker’s Relationship to The Product of Their Labour: Estrangement & Alienation “The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he produces.” “The devaluation of the human world grows in direct proportion to the increase in value of the world of things.” “Labour not only produces commodities; it also produces itself and the workers as a commodity…” (Marx calls this ‘objectification of labour’: turning the worker into a commodity-object is dehumanizing) Upshot: “This fact simply means that the object that labour produces, its product, stands opposed to it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer.” (This is what Marx means by ‘alienation’)

Estrangement and Alienation: Coordinate Concepts “The realization of labour is its objectification. In the sphere of political economy, this realization of labour appears as a loss of reality for the worker, objectification as loss of and bondage to the object, and appropriation as estrangement, as alienation.” (Here ‘appropriation’ refers to the worker appropriating part of Nature to create his product. Upshot: in the process of creating the object of labour [the product], the worker turns himself into an object like his product. To both his product and himself he becomes alienated and from each he is estranged [because he is a human being, not a product…products are alien, and when he becomes an object, he is alienated from himself]) “…the more objects the worker produces the fewer can he possess and the more he falls under the domination of his product, of capital.”

The alienation of the worker is not only to the object of his productive labours, but to the world of objects that his labour is helping to create, a world that seems more and more alien. The worker’s labour increases the power of the world of objects and capital while simultaneously descreasing the power of his labour and himself (“the rich get richer, the poor get poorer”). “….[the worker’s] product … exists outside him, independently of him and alien to him, and begins to confront him as an autonomous power….”

The Effects of Estrangment on the Worker 1. the more the worker produces, the less he has to consume; 2. the more value he creates, the more worthless he becomes; 3. the more his product is shaped, the more misshapen the worker; 4. the more civilized his object, the more barbarous the worker; 5. the more powerful the work, the more powerless the worker; 6. the more intelligent the work, the duller the worker and the more he becomes a slave of nature.) But Estrangement is Not Just Worker’s Relationship to the Product “… estrangement manifests itself not only in the [product], but also in the act of production.... How could the product of the worker’s activity confront him as something alien if it were not for the fact that in the act of production he was estranging himself from himself?”

What Constitutes Alienation of Labour? “Firstly, the fact that labour is external to the worker – i.e., does not belong to his essential being….” “His labour is … forced labour. It is, therefore, not the satisfaction of a need but a mere means to satisfy needs outside itself.” “External labour, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of self-sacrifice, of mortification.” “Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, the human brain, and the human heart, detaches itself from the individual and reappears as the alien activity of a god or of a devil, so the activity of the worker is not his own spontaneous activity. It belongs to another, it is a loss of his self.”

So far, we have only considered Two Aspects of the Estrangement of Labour These are: “1) the relationship of the worker to the product of labour as an alien object that has power over him; and 2) The relationship of labour to the act of production within labour.” There is a Third Aspect 3) It estranges man from his ‘species-being’ and ‘species-life’. Species-Being = the fact that man not only makes the species but also “looks upon himself as a universal and therefore free being.” Species-Life = the fact that man “lives from nature – i.e., nature is his body – and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die” and that this life is not only about his, about about himself as member of a species.

Species-character = “he whole character of a species, its species- character, resides in the nature of its life activity, and free conscious activity constitutes the species-character of man.” Upshot: “Conscious life activity directly distinguishes man from animal life activity. Only because of that is he a species-being. Or, rather, he is a conscious being – i.e., his own life is an object for him, only because he is a species-being. Only because of that is his activity free activity. Estranged labour reverses the relationship so that man, just because he is a conscious being, makes his life activity, his essential being, a mere means for his existence.” Unlike animals “…man produces even when he is free from physical need and truly produces only in freedom from such need…”

Relationship of estrangement to species-being and species-life of man: “The object of labour is, therefore, the objectification of the species-life of man: for man produces himself not only intellectually, in his consciousness, but actively and actually, and he can therefore contemplate himself in a world he himself has created. In tearing away the object of his production from man, estranged labour therefore tears away from him his species-life, his true species-objectivity, and transforms his advantage over animals into the disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him.” “Estranged labour, therefore, turns man’s species-being – both nature and his intellectual species-power – into a being alien to him and a means of his individual existence. It estranges man from his own body, from nature as it exists outside him, from his spiritual essence, his human existence.”

“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.” “In general, the proposition that man is estranged from his species- being means that each man is estranged from the others and that all are estranged from man’s essence.” What estrangement/alienation leads to: “If the product of labour does not belong to the worker, and if it confronts him as an alien power, this is only possible because it belongs to a man other than the worker. If his activity is a torment for him, it must provide pleasure and enjoyment for someone else. Not the gods, not nature, but only man himself can be this alien power over men.” And who is this ‘other man’? The capitalist (“master of labour”)!

Now Marx Sorts out the General Nature of Private Property The exploitation of labour by the capitalist is a direct consequence of the existence of private property: “Political economy starts out from labour as the real soul of production and yet gives nothing to labour and everything to private property.” “Wages are an immediate consequence of estranged labour, and estranged labour is the immediate cause of private property. If the one falls, then the other must fall too.” Now Marx Sorts out the General Nature of Private Property “Private property [is] the material, summarized expression of alienated labour [which] embraces both relations – the relation of the worker to labour and to the product of his labour and the non-workers, and the relation of the non-worker to the worker and to the product of his labour.” (Upshot: Without private property, appropriate is impossible.)

from “Two Treatises on Government” John Locke On Property from “Two Treatises on Government”

The Origins of Property First: God “…hath given the world to men in common” What this means: “The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being.” Second: Man adds his labour to that natural bounty (resources) given him by God. This means: “Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.” This is called the labor theory of value. It is the additive result of combining the original, natural value of the resource with the value of a human being’s body through labor. By imparting to

the resource the value of my body, I create additional value in the original resource, and that makes it my property. Third: Locke anticipates an objection. “It will perhaps be objected to this, that if gathering the acorns, or other fruits of the earth, &c. makes a right to them, then any one may ingross as much as he will. To which I answer, Not so. The same law of nature, that does by this means give us property, does also bound that property too. This is often called Locke’s Proviso. “As much as any one can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so much he may by his labour fix a property in: whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others.” This means: you cannot remove more from the common bounty of nature than one man can improve, working alone. To go beyond this is to encroach on the share of the Commons belonging to others.

Fourth: Locke applies this theory of property to the most-valuable potential property of all: land. “As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property.” Fifth: Locke’s Proviso assumes something, namely “no man’s labour could subdue, or appropriate all; nor could his enjoyment consume more than a small part; so that it was impossible for any man, this way, to intrench upon the right of another, or acquire to himself a property, to the prejudice of his neighbour, who would still have room for as good, and as large a possession (after the other had taken out his) as before it was appropriated.” Upshot: “the possessions he could make himself, upon the measures we have given, would not be very large…” Is this true anymore? What does it assume about the labour of a man that would change radically in the 19th century?

Consequences of Locke’s Theory of Property The accumulation of capital (=added value, which, having come from my body, makes the product of my labor my property), originally in the personal wealth of a individual constrained by the limits of a single body, however talented, hardworking, determined and strong. What Marx saw happen instead: with the advent of machines that radically altered the amount of value an individual’s labour could add to the natural resources made available to man by God, one man could produce far more property than any one man could ever hope to need. And who is that man? The capitalist! The one who, having accumulated more private property than others can buy the means of production, and then exploit the labor of workers, stealing the surplus value of their labour (the value added to a product by their labor that the capitalist does not return to the worker as wages).