Marxism and Religion

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Marxism and Religion

The alienation of the worker according to Carl Marx

In this paper I will be defending Marx’s theory of the alienation of labor. According to Marx the worker is alienated in four main ways. First the worker is alienated from the products of their labor; the worker does not own what they create. Next they are alienated from the process of work. Third the worker is denied their species being. Finally they are physically alienated from other people. These four forms of alienation are the main flaws in capitalism. Some common counters to Marx’s alienation of labor that we will get to later are as follows. People try to counter Marx by saying that increased production, while it may lead to the worker being able to own less, makes it so the worker can own a greater variety improving their quality of life. Another common counter is that if people just work harder they will eventually have enough where they don’t have to work.

1) The alienation of the worker and the products of their labor.

The objectification of the worker creates a conflict between themselves and what they have created. That is once a worker creates an object, that object that they created doesn’t belong to them. What was once a part of the worker, like an idea or their labor, is no longer and technically never was theirs. The object belongs to the employer who actually performed no work to create the object. According to Marx the more a worker produces at work, the less they will be able to possess, thus the more powerful the alienation becomes. “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates” (Tucker, 71) Thus the poorer he and his inner self become.

2) The alienation of the worker from the process of work.

 Marx identifies the alienation of the worker from the process of work as a lack of control over...