Marx and “Alienation”

Group 6

“Alienation,” according to Marx, relates to the worker’s relationship with the products he creates.  One of Marx’s main ideas is that, through labor, the worker becomes a commodity amongst other commodities, which are really just the physical embodiment of the worker’s own labor.  Marx theorizes that the “worker puts his life into the object;” when he does this, his life belongs to the object rather than himself.  And this is why, “the devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things.”  When the worker produces these commodities, he puts a little of himself in each product, slowly losing himself, becoming a commodity himself; and, when he does this his labor, as well as himself, become external and independent of him–this is alienation.

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