Marx on Labor and Alienation

The product of labor is labor fixed in an object, materialized as an object: this is the objectification of labor. Labor produces not only commodities, but also labor itself and the worker as commodities. The product of labor confronts labor as an alien being, as a power independent of the producer. The worker loses reality and is enslaved by the product of his own labor.

I. The Worker Is Enslaved by the Product of Labor, That Is, Capital

The more products the worker produces, the fewer products he possesses.

The more wealth the worker produces, the poorer he becomes.

The more value the worker produces, the more he himself is devalued.

The more products the worker produces, the more he is ruled by his products, that is, by capital.

The more perfect the worker’s products become, the more deformed he himself becomes.

The richer the world the worker creates, the poorer his inner world becomes.

The more civilized the world the worker creates, the more barbarous the worker himself becomes.

The more strength the worker puts into production, the more powerful the alien world of objects that he has created with his own hands becomes against him. The life he gives to the object confronts him as something hostile and alien.

The more life the worker puts into production, the less life he has of his own. The realization of labor manifests itself as such a loss of reality that the worker is excluded from reality, even to the point of starvation.

Labor is realized in the product, while the worker loses reality.

Labor is objectified, while the worker is enslaved by the object.

The more powerful labor becomes, the more powerless the worker becomes.

The more ingenious labor becomes, the duller the worker becomes.

Labor creates wonders for the rich, but produces destitution for the worker.

Labor creates palaces, but creates slums for the worker.

Labor creates beauty, but deforms the worker.

Labor produces intelligence, but produces dullness and idiocy for the worker.

Labor replaces people with machines, but turns some people into machines and leaves others to starve.

II. Relations Between People Become Alienated: Producing Workers, Producing Capitalists

The more the worker appropriates the external world, sensuous nature, through his own labor, the more the external world abandons him and withholds the means of production, and the more nature withholds the means and conditions of subsistence.

In both these respects, the worker becomes a slave to his object: only by first obtaining the means of production, that is, work, can he eat and obtain the means of subsistence. He must first be a worker before he can be a human being.

Alienated labor alienates people from one another. When a person stands opposed to himself, he also stands opposed to others. Everyone views others according to the relationship and standard in which he himself stands as a worker.

The product of labor does not belong to the worker. It belongs to another person who is alien, hostile, powerful, and independent of him. The laborer is unfree: he serves others, is ruled by others, and is subject to their coercion and oppression. Only human beings themselves can become the alien power that rules over human beings. In the practical, real world, self-alienation can manifest itself only through practical, real relations with other people. The very means through which alienation is realized are practical. Through alienated labor, a person produces not only his relationship to the object and act of production as alien, hostile powers, but also other people’s relationship to his production and his product, as well as his relationship to those people. He produces the domination of production and its products by those who do not produce, and produces the capitalist’s relationship to this labor.

III. Alienation in the Labor Process

Labor is no longer something intrinsic to one’s own essence, but something external.

Labor is no longer one’s own, but someone else’s.

Labor no longer affirms oneself, but negates oneself.

During labor, the worker no longer belongs to himself, but to someone else. His activity belongs to someone else; this activity is the loss of himself.

In labor, he no longer feels happy, but unhappy.

Labor is no longer the free exercise of one’s body and mind, but the torment and devastation of one’s body and mind.

Labor no longer satisfies the need to labor; it merely satisfies needs outside labor.

During labor, one no longer feels at ease and comfortable; only outside labor does one feel at ease and comfortable. As soon as physical or other coercion ceases, people flee from labor as they would from the plague.

When exercising human functions in labor, one feels only like an animal; only when exercising one’s animal functions—eating, drinking, sexual activity, and, at most, dwelling, personal adornment, and so on—does one feel human.

Activity is passivity; strength is weakness; procreation is castration. The worker’s own physical and intellectual powers, his personal life, become an activity that is independent of him, does not belong to him, and turns against him.

IV. The Alienation of Truly Human Life and Individual Life

Does one earn money to live, or live to earn money? Life itself becomes merely a means to life.

Alienated labor alienates the body, nature, spiritual essence, and human essence from human beings themselves.

It thereby also alienates species-life—truly human life—from human beings; it makes people turn species-life into a means of sustaining individual life. It turns individual life in its abstract form into the purpose of species-life, which is likewise abstract and alienated in form.

Labor, this life activity, this productive life itself, becomes for human beings merely a means of satisfying their needs, namely, the need to maintain physical existence. Yet productive life is originally species-life: life that brings forth life.

The defining characteristic of the human species is originally free, conscious activity. An animal is immediately identical with its life activity. Human beings, by contrast, make their life activity itself an object of their will and consciousness. Humanity is a species with free consciousness that transcends ordinary animals. Yet alienated labor turns human essence into a mere means of maintaining one’s own existence. It subjects human free will to human-made unfreedom.

V. The Relationship Between Externalized Labor and Private Property

We derive the concept of externalized labor from vulgar political economy, which rests on private ownership. Yet private property is less the basis and cause of externalized labor than its consequence.

Society’s emancipation from private property and so forth, and from servitude, takes the political form of the emancipation of the workers. The emancipation of the workers encompasses the emancipation of all humanity, because the whole of human servitude is contained in the worker’s relationship to production, and all relations of servitude are merely variations and consequences of this relationship.

All the categories of economics, such as commerce, competition, capital, and money, are merely developed expressions of the two basic factors: externalized labor and private property.

Wages are a consequence of alienation. Tinkering with wages—raising them or introducing equal wages in Proudhon’s fashion—does not change the essence of the matter.