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Alienated Labor

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Jul 24th, 2016
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  1. ​Karl Marx’s “Alienated Labor” is an argument against capitalism which pushed for the equality of all workers. Described through his philosophical work is his theory of alienation felt by the entire working class. The reasoning behind this alienation is the labor of the workers themselves. “The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more production increases in power and extent. The worker becomes a cheaper commodity the more commodities he produces” (Marx). Workers of the lower class, the proletariat, spent their entire lives manufacturing and working with things they can never afford, and this, Marx theorized, was the very thing that would keep them in poverty. ​
  2. ​These emotions felt by the proletariat would lead to the next stage of alienation: the resentment, by the laborer, of the labor itself. This argument draws more from psychology than philosophy, in that Marx analyses the mind of the hypothetical worker of whom he writes. This laborer is a member of the lower class. He feels as if he is getting nowhere with the job he is holding, and does nothing but make things for his social or economic superiors. He makes less money producing things that sold for more, all for those who can afford it. Marx implies that he is nothing but a slave to a cruelly capitalistic society.
  3. ​Alienation of the laborer ends with a more depressing note which is meant to arouse sympathy from the reader for the worker. Marx alleges the laborer will end up seeing himself as he supposes he is seen by his superiors, which is as a lower class worker who is nothing more than a slave to the money he is paid, and worse, the product with which he is associated. “The externalization of the worker in his product means not only that his work becomes an object, and external existence, but also the it exists outside him independently, alien, an autonomous power, opposed to him” (Marx).
  4. This brings us to the first portion of this refutation. Marx’s deductive argument presented throughout the work relies heavily on the grounds mentioned above. However, with respect to deductive reasoning, the original premises all must be true in totality to result in a valid conclusion, and therein lies the fault in Marx’s argument.
  5. The alienation of workers is a misdirected argument, focusing on the capitalistic economy of his time rather than what a capitalistic economy could become. Adam Smith’s theory of “the invisible hand of the marketplace” involves a capitalistic economy being driven and built upon itself to appeal to the majority, and this is what actually happens with capitalism, not the revolution Marx thinks is necessary. Marx was right in that the voices of the proletariat would indeed be heard, but not at all in the way he expected. America’s economy earned the nickname “the land of opportunity,” for good reason. The invisible hand of the market has evolved it to enable the motivated individual or optimistic entrepreneur to reach out and grasp at their goals so long as they are willing to work hard and put forth the necessary effort. A good example of this would be a man who organizes and cleans parts at an electronics company beginning to tinker with the spare pieces he finds. He also reads and learns all he can. His hard work pays off and he ascends the ranks, eventually becoming a regular employee or even a manager of the store. And this isn’t even the only option for this young man or woman. The young employee can apply for a job at a different company that would better suit his talents, or even take the risk of starting his own company.
  6. The ending of alienation is a matter of the mindset of the laborer. Marx says a lower class worker ends up being a slave to his job, ultimately resenting his employer and his product. However, this is again contradictory to modern capitalistic societies. Marx implies all workers are unable to stop doing what they do, despite not liking what they do at all. He says they are mere subordinates to the upper class, and there is nothing which can be done about this, as it represents a key element in capitalism. He is right about the division of classes in a capitalistic economy, but not about the inability of the lower class to change their status. This is the key base upon which the flaw in his argument rests. Because people can change their status, there isn’t as much of a feeling of hopelessness as Marx suggests. College students, for example, think to themselves at their jobs, “Why am I doing to this to myself? I’m sick of these people!” and the common response would be that they are finishing paying their tuition and they can’t quit until then, or that they took a job to gain experience, or to see what life might be like in the real world. The mind of the laborer isn’t void of hope; hope is its very foundation. This is where Marx’s error is.
  7. Now that these individual arguments have been addressed, the same should be done to its very foundation. The big picture that Marx sees in his ideal world is a community with no class conflict and labor based on individual talents and efficiency of production. However, there is more to the economy than efficiency, and conflict isn’t always a bad thing. Conflict stimulates competition, and competition is the driving force behind economic production. It is a better motivator than paychecks or greed will ever be. The perfect example of competition nurturing progress would be the “Space Race”. The evolution of products usually takes a very long time, and is dependent upon societal interest. The “Space Race” between the United States and the Soviet Union resulted in the first manmade object in space and man walking on the moon all in under fifteen years. Since then, there has been little to no competition in the field of astronomy and space travel, and we have made few landmarks in the field since. If things had continued on the prior path, NASA actually had planned on man reaching Mars by 2000, yet we are in 2016 with no plans for an attempt until at least 2020. Progress in this field slowed dramatically because of a lack of competition. So Karl Marx may see the social conflict as a hindrance, but throughout the history of mankind, it has been one of our greatest motivators. From tribes of early man battling for territory or food to modern battles of morals and the good of mankind, all these conflicts have resulted in man bettering himself at a pace which would have been impossible to achieve without rivalry. Thus, the very foundation upon which Marx built his argument crumbles to truths about the nature of humanity.
  8. While Alienated Labor is a smart and respectable philosophical piece, there are many flaws which cause it to be more of an invalid argument than a potential economic breakthrough. Marx’s clever use of deductive reasoning clearly shows he deserves and receives respect in the field of philosophy, yet his concepts need large amounts of reworking before they can be properly applied to modern society.
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