Marx and Alienation of Workers

HUMN 221 – Group 3

For Marx, alienation of workers consists of alienation from the world, from the objects they create, from their own humanity, and from their fellow man. Probably the biggest problem for Marx was that workers did not reap the rewards of their own labor; those who owned the factors of production, or the bourgeoisie, did.

Furthermore, he noted that the more the worker produced for the capitalist system, the less he or she could produce for himself. For example, a farmer who produces more and more crops for market has less and less land on which to subsist.

The rich practically own the fruits of the workers’ labor. For example, if a worker works more productively, that productivity creates more profit for the rich, and the worker receives the same wage (at least in the environment Marx wrote about).

“It is true that for the rich, labor produces wonderful things-but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces, but for the worker hovels.”

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