What are the characteristics of alienation? When life becomes a means of life, which means that a person's existence and essence are split, man (the waged worker) is alienated. A worker is alienated in four aspects. The first is the alienation from his products. The more a worker produces, the less inner world is left for him. Therefore, he "alienates the products of his material activity in the form of commodity and money." (Petrovic, 1963) The second is the alienation from his production process. He alienates his labor activity because this activity is not free and does not belong to himself, that is, he cannot have control over his productive activity by his will and consciousness. Put in a more vivid way, "He is at home when he is not working, and when he is working he is not at home."(Marx, 1844) The third is the alienation from his essence, which is the self-alienation. As I mentioned above, Marx believes that man's essence is to produce. A worker uses his labor not for producing but for earning money; he is acquisitive but not productive. The fourth is the alienation from other men-his species beings. Economic growth and prosperity do not increase workers' own income, because capitalists will set the wage as the subsistence of workers strictly. The wealth that workers produce is not relevant to their own livings.
How are workers alienated? In Capitalism, the predominant power is the purchasing power of money. Money is the concrete form of private property; in the capitalist society, it becomes not only an exchange means, but also an alien, inimical power because "money is the alienated ability of mankind". The purchasing power of money is so strong in capitalist society that money becomes an overruling power against the individual and the bonds of society, and the measurement of human value is how much money he possesses, not integrity, intelligence, goodness, etc. "It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence, and intelligence into idiocy." (Marx, 1844) Therefore it enslaves all human beings (including capitalists and workers) into slaves of money. Man finds himself only freely active in activities like eating, dressing, procreating, and dwelling. Therefore, he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal, because he estranged his spiritual life and finally become a slave of the commodities. Human's life becomes a kitchen full of condiments but no food. This is alienation for all human beings (including workers) in the capitalist society.
What should we do? Based on these arguments, Marx contends that the dehumanized workers are the sacrifice of Capitalism and he believes the Communist society, a society with no private property, is the only way to provide human freedom and independence. He contends that with the emergence of the consciousness of the proletarian class, the state will disappear and the "true human history" will begin. "The society imagined is not the product or goal of revolution, but as revolution-ongoing and through which is realized a moral ideal itself coterminous with a vision of individual development and collective program. It is, for Marx, the material possibility of a self experienced as fully human." (Lee, 2002)
Be Sure to Continue to Page 3 of "Comment on Marx's Theory of Money and Alienation".
