Critical Review: Karl Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscript of 1844

Estranged Labour, Human Requirements, and Division of Labor Under the Rule of Private Property

            Marx’s 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts contain one of the most comprehensive discussions on the concept that he calls “alienated labor”. Marx mostly sees alienation at work as the most predominant form of alienation that humans have to undergo under the system of capitalism. Marx’s alienation is based on the assumption that human has the ultimate need to engage in free and creative labor as part of his human nature. Since capitalism systematically hinders that needs, it is an alienating system. He claims in the 1844 manuscript that most people in the modern society perceive work as unpleasant and unfulfilling experience. This is particularly true in the modern context of the most capitalistic society like United States and some developing countries who pursues capitalistic mode of production as its means of development. Marx used the term mode of production to refer to the specific organization of economic production in a given society. A mode of production includes the means of production used by a given society, such as factories and other facilities, machines, and raw materials.

Capitalism is a system that promises people a content and self-fulfilling life and in US for instance this vision even has a name; the ‘American Dream’ or in developing country; the general idea of upward social mobility. The notion that says you can climb up the social ladder by working hard and contributing much to the system. However for Marx, all of these are just false promises of capitalism, it is an illusion created within the system to further allow the exploitation of workers and alienate them in many ways.  The reality is that many working people in the modern capitalist society suffer from mental illness and general feeling of stress and isolation. Rather than feeling like they achieve meaningful life in which they can actualize themselves in their work, many people experience some degree of alienation in which they are estranged from whatever productive activity they are doing.  Even when you are not necessarily a blue collar worker or hard labor whose experience of alienation are most likely very obvious, you will still likely to engage in some form of self-deception, maybe maintaining a sense of meaning and self-worthy only with the help of illusions about themselves or the circumstances they are in.

            What Marx wrote about blue-collar worker in mid nineteenth century remains true and relevant for much of white collar work at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Many people now even think that this stress and estrangement is inevitable because work is inherently unpleasant yet Marx argues that it doesn’t have to be this way.  Work could be a creative and meaningful experience in the alternate system that isn’t capitalistic in nature . He emphasizes there are several reasons why capitalism takes away ‘life content’ of people. Firstly, capitalism is an economic system that emphasizes the division of labor, breaking production into sequences of smaller and more specialized tasks each done by a different kind of worker, because this will increase profitability. It results into “the individual laborers are appropriated by a one sided function and annexed to it for life”[1], depriving them of the variety of activities that they need to be full human beings. Secondly, capitalism creates alienation because it is an economic system where a small minority controls the means of production and in which most people can survive only by selling their own labor power. Labors under capitalism have to work for someone else, causing the work to have little or no intrinsic worth for the worker or as Marx puts it “it is not the satisfaction of a need but a mere means to satisfy needs outside it self.”[2]

            As the capitalism remains dominant, labor will continue to be alienated. In the Manuscript, Marx talks about various form of this alienation. Firstly, workers are alienated from the product they produce. What they produce does not belong to them and that the characteristics of what they produce have little concern and have nothing to do with them. All that matters is that they get paid a wage for it. This type is true for modern labors who work to create luxurious goods in factories owned by Nike or other fast fashion industry which are not even affordable for them. This form of alienation is somehow worsened by the fact that capitalist society also takes part in constructing certain social values of what deemed as luxurious goods and the prestige in consuming them. Capitalist society put values in luxurious goods by asserting that in order for you to attain certain status to be like the ‘bourgeois group’ you need to take part in the consumption of luxurious goods, creating an illusion of empowerment. As if the only way you can be worthy is by consuming whatever expensive stuff the rich are consuming. This is also particularly relevant when we are talking about current reality of massive urbanization where many young villagers move to city to become a worker in order to pursue their desire in becoming part of the ‘modern society’ yet finding themselves got alienated from the goods they themselves produce.

            Secondly, labors under capitalism are also alienated from their own productivity where they have no control over their own productive activity and can’t use it to pursue their own goals. They merely shed their sweat to fulfill target quota from their boss without having a say in how the productive activity they’ve done would play any role in giving meanings to their life other than money. Thirdly, labors are also alienated from what Marx calls their “species-being”. ‘Species being’ refers to characteristics and qualities that make human distinctively human. He argues that what differentiates us human from other species is our capability to engage in creative, conscious, and free work, yet alienation strip off human from this characteristic, making us no different than animal. While many thinkers throughout history had seen the distinctive qualities of humans as our capacity to produce rational thoughts, Marx thinks that it is the application of rational thought to productive activity that differentiate us human from other species.  He mentioned in The German Ideology that; “Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence.”[3] Therefore unlike animals, human can step back from the activities we do to remain alive, consciously evaluate it, and improve it.

            Marx said that “The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It does not distinguish itself from this activity.”[4] On the other hand, a human being’s activity “is not a determination with which he immediately fuses.”[5] Unlike other animals, “the human being makes his life activity an object of his will and consciousness.” However, capitalism does not give its labor the chance to exercise this characteristically human ability, making human in his human functions (i.e working) nothing more than animal. Labor in capitalism “estranges human from her own body, from nature as it exists outside of her, from her spiritual essence, her human existence.”[6] Marx believes that alienations isn’t just a feature of capitalism as it existed even before class emerged. In the pre-class societies, humans were dominated by all sort of external forces where the direct producers are under the control of a certain ruling class. However, he argues that alienation got even worse under capitalism because the gap between the potential betterment and reality is so much greater today than in the early societies. Capitalism while on one hand has created the technological innovation and wealth for humankind that would allow human to lead a fulfilled and meaningful lives, at the same time deny most people of that kind of lives. It offers us snippets of what our lives could be like not in imagination but in reality and making us chase for that snippets without realizing we are being exploited and losing ourselves along the way.  .

            We usually treat the experience of alienation as an individual problem and there is already a self-help industry that has emerged to offer individual solutions. Capitalism has created a set of values which worsens our vulnerability to emotional distress. It results in us giving high values on acquiring money, property and material possessions. It results in us giving values on looking good in the eyes of others and fame. This can be seen for instance in the rise of sharing culture on social media. The solutions offered are also mostly individualized. From self care indulgence (treat yourself to expensive salon treatment!) to medications, the truth is that there is no lasting individual solution to the problem of alienation. Happiness, well being, and individual freedom can only be realized in a society free of oppression and exploitation. Achieving that kind of society demands a collective struggle to change the system. Changing the system of capitalism at this point may seems like an impossible task, since capitalism keeps proving itself to be self-healing with the emergence of its vague solutions like conscious consumerism, fair trade and green economy. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t start our own personalized form of resistance while still pursuing for collective struggle. This resistance can be as simple as choosing to eat at a local restaurants or wearing local products rather than big brands that probably treat their workers badly.

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[1] Karl, Marx. 1932. Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Accessed on :https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Economic-Philosophic-Manuscripts-1844.pdf

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Karl, Marx. 1932. Estranged Labor in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Accessed on : https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.