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Posted by Peter Van der Biest on May 20, 19102 at 05:42:34:
In Reply to: Anyone know anything on Alienation posted by Selena on April 08, 19102 at 19:25:32:
: I need 1 page single spaced on the Alienation theory of Karl Marx....i cant find anything
Hi Selena,
In general, in German philosophy the concept of alienation is understood as a typically human feature rising up before humanity as a strange and hostile force...Hegel himself used the word in the sense of the movement of negation...something springing out of a common substance, a common origin and then positing itself as a contradictory force towards its original substance...
With Marx the word alienation has a more specific meaning. For the complete text I refer to Marx's Paris mcripts from 1844 (also entitled Economical-Philosophical Mcripts-1844). Marx uses the term alienation to describe the position of the worker in the modern capitalist production of goods and services.
Due to the fact that the tools with which the worker delivers his product do not longer belong to the worker himself, but to a strange hostile and more and more becoming impersonal force...capital, labour, from a fundamentally human occupation becomes something strange and hostile to the worker...That's why the worker ,in his human occupations, labour, feels like an animal and in his animal features (quietly sitting at home, reproducing himself, eating etc...)only then feels human.
So labour is not any longer an affirmation of his humanity, but the negation of it.
To put it more into practice, look at it this way...Ask some workers if they dont have the feeling sometimes that they are wasting their time while working...I'm sure you'll have an affirmative answer as well from those people forced to do mac s, as from wide layers of office workers...well if you get that affirmative answer (some will look upon you as if you come from mars too lol)then youve bumped into workers to which the situation of alienation is gradually becoming a conscious state of mind...
But again...the most complete excursion on alienation you'll find in the youthwork of Marx referred too above...
Feel free to email me at any time for further information or discussion,
Yours truly,
Peter