Ubicación de los terrenos

D.

M a r x ’s Use of the Term "Alienation",

Richard Schacht points out that under the influence of Hegel’s usage of alienation as "separation" and "alienation" as "wilful

surrender", Marx proceeds to combine the two images in a single

general sense of "separation through surrender" , ^ 00 Schacht explains that this fusion of meaning was not a deliberate act. Instead it xvas the result of Marx’s failure "to distinguish them in his discussion

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of Hegel", Schacht's summary of this synthesis is very useful: His own use of the term is the result of a (perhaps fruitful) confusion of them, through which the ideas of both 'separa^- tion’ and ’surrender' come to be suggested. He gives the term many different applications. In each case, however, it is used to suggest the existence of a separation of some sort. And in each case, the separation to which the term

‘’alienation’ refers is related in some way to a certain surrender: namely, the surrender of one’s control over one's product and labour. This affords a contrast with Hegel’s two senses of ’alienation'-. In Marx, the separation

is the result of the surrender; whereas in Hegel's discussion of the relation of the individual to the social substance the separation (alienation.) is overcome through the surrender (alienation). 102 (Schacht's emphasis)

In seeking out the specific meaning of the term in Marx' s use of i t , one needs to bear in mind that Marx took the liberty to apply the term to numerous and different situations. Though its basic sense of "separation through surrender" remains fairly consistent, care must be taken to distinguish the various contexts in which the term is

applied in order to grasp some of the depth of meaning which the term possesses in Marx's thought.

As its name implies, the 1844 (Economic and Philosophic) Manuscripts, clearly shows that Marx was concerned with the interrelationship between philosophy and economics. Steeped in Hegelian philosophy and confronted by the exploitative character of m o d e m industrial capitalism, Marx could not avoid the question of "alienation". Indeed he attempts to face the socio-economic and political plight of the worker, albeit in philosophic categories, as he proceeds to analyse the concept of "alienation".

Marx argues that there are essentially four categories of alienar* tion which are all related to production - man's creative work. Firstly, man is alienated from his product. In political economy, he notes, the worker suffers from increasing poverty the more he produces. He is a mere worker whose product is in the hands of someone else, the capitalist,

the man of means. As the worker produces the capitalist is enriched since the former's compensation for his labour is not commensurate to the value of the product produced. This disparity is engendered by the capitalist. The capitalist exploits the surplus value of the worker's labour. The man of means acquires his wealth precisely because of the exploitative nature of production which he is able to manipulate to his advantage but to the worker's detriment. The product which the worker expends his labour to produce is alienated from him because someone else usurps his right to its " v a l u e " , M o n e y , which specifies the demeaning value of the worker's laboxir objectified in his product, is the impersonal

link between the worker and his labour. In the productive process the worker is preoccupied with the wages he receives. His value is not in

physical substance of his labour, the worker is not free to use or 105

dispose of it as he wills# To the capitalist the worker’s value is in his capacity to produce. He views the worker as a mere producer of commodities. The worker, for his part, internalizes this estimate of his worth, and comes to see himself as being valued at the level of his wages. Marx puts this degeneration of the worker very aptly when he says,

The worker becomes a commodity that is all the cheaper the more commodities he creates. The depreciation of the human world progresses in direct proportion to the increase in value of the world of things. Labour does not only produce commodities; it produces itself and the labourer as a commodity and that to the extent to which it produces commodities in general, 106

In producing commodities the labourer creates himself as a commodity as well. Thus, in actual fact he is the architect of his own alienation.

To illustrate the hostility which the worker experiences between himself and his product which now stands over against him, Marx writes,

... the object that labour produces, its product, confronts it as an alien being, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labour is labour that has solidified itself into an object, made itself into a thing, the objectification

of labour. The realization of labour is its objectification. In political economy this realization of labour appears as a loss of reality for the worker, objectification as a loss of object or slavery to it, and appropriation or alienation as extemalization, 107

The worker's creativity, objectified in production, is experienced by him as loss because he is producing not for the sake of the object

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but for the wages; and it is not he himself that appropriates the use and value of the products. The capitalist, who is considered a non-worker, dominates the worker and his products. Under the exploit­

ative capitalist system, the product is not an affirmation but a denial of the human value of the worker. Marx concludes, therefore, that,

not only that his labour becomes an object, an exterior existence but also that it exists outside him, independent and alien, and becomes a self-sufficient power opposite him, that the life that he has lent to the object affronts him, hostile and alien, 109

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