Alienated labor pdf

We have considered the act of estrangement of practical human activity, of labor, from two aspects: 1 the relationship of the worker to the product of labor as an alien object that has power over him. The relationship is, at the same time, the relationship to the sensuous external world, to natural objects, as an alien world confronting him, in hostile opposition.

This relationship is the relationship of the worker to his own activity as something which is alien and does not belong to him, activity as passivity, power as impotence, procreation as emasculation, the worker's own physical and mental energy, his personal life -- for what is life but activity? Self-estrangement, as compared with the estrangement of the object mentioned above.

Man is a species-being, not only because he practically and theoretically makes the species -- both his own and those of other things -- his object, but also -- and this is simply another way of saying the same thing -- because he looks upon himself as the present, living species, because he looks upon himself as a universal and therefore free being. Species-life, both for man and for animals, consists physically in the fact that man, like animals, lives from inorganic nature; and because man is more universal than animals, so too is the area of inorganic nature from which he lives more universal.

Just as plants, animals, stones, air, light, etc. In a physical sense, man lives only from these natural products, whether in the form of nourishment, heating, clothing, shelter, etc. The universality of man manifests itself in practice in that universality which makes the whole of nature his inorganic body, 1 as a direct means of life and 2 as the matter, the object, and the tool of his life activity.

Nature is man's inorganic body --that is to say, nature insofar as it is not the human body. Man lives from nature -- i. To say that man's physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.

Estranged labor not only 1 estranges nature from man and 2 estranges man from himself, from his own function, from his vital activity; because of this, it also estranges man from his species. It turns his species-life into a means for his individual life. Firstly, it estranges species-life and individual life, and, secondly, it turns the latter, in its abstract form, into the purpose of the former, also in its abstract and estranged form.

For in the first place labor, life activity, productive life itself, appears to man only as a means for the satisfaction of a need, the need to preserve physical existence. But productive life is species- life. It is life-producing life. The whole character of a species, its species-character, resides in the nature of its life activity, and free conscious activity constitutes the species-character of man.

Life appears only as a means of life. The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It is not distinct from that activity; it is that activity. Man makes his life activity itself an object of his will and consciousness. He has conscious life activity.

It is not a determination with which he directly merges. Conscious life activity directly distinguishes man from animal life activity. Only because of that is he a species-being. Or, rather, he is a conscious being -- i. Only because of that is his activity free activity.

Estranged labor reverses the relationship so that man, just because he is a conscious being, makes his life activity, his being, a mere means for his existence. The practical creation of an objective world, the fashioning of inorganic nature, is proof that man is a conscious species-being -- i. It is true that animals also produce. They build nests and dwelling, like the bee, the beaver, the ant, etc. But they produce only their own immediate needs or those of their young; they produce only when immediate physical need compels them to do so, while man produces even when he is free from physical need and truly produces only in freedom from such need; they produce only themselves, while man reproduces the whole of nature; their products belong immediately to their physical bodies, while man freely confronts his own product.

Animals produce only according to the standards and needs of the species to which they belong, while man is capable of producing according to the standards of every species and of applying to each object its inherent standard; hence, man also produces in accordance with the laws of beauty.

It is, therefore, in his fashioning of the objective that man really proves himself to be a species-being. Such production is his active species-life. Through it, nature appears as his work and his reality. The object of labor is, therefore, the objectification of the species-life of man: for man produces himself not only intellectually, in his consciousness, but actively and actually, and he can therefore contemplate himself in a world he himself has created.

In tearing away the object of his production from man, estranged labor therefore tears away from him his species-life, his true species-objectivity, and transforms his advantage over animals into the disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him. In the same way as estranged labor reduces spontaneous and free activity to a means, it makes man's species-life a means of his physical existence.

Consciousness, which man has from his species, is transformed through estrangement so that species-life becomes a means for him. It estranges man from his own body, from nature as it exists outside him, from his spiritual essence, his human existence.

When man confront himself, he also confronts other men. What is true of man's relationship to his labor, to the product of his labor, and to himself, is also true of his relationship to other men, and to the labor and the object of the labor of other men.

In general, the proposition that man is estranged from his species-being means that each man is estranged from the others and that all are estranged from man's essence. Man's estrangement, like all relationships of man to himself, is realized and expressed only in man's relationship to other men. In the relationship of estranged labor, each man therefore regards the other in accordance with the standard and the situation in which he as a worker finds himself.

We started out from an economic fact, the estrangement of the worker and of his production. We gave this fact conceptual form: estranged, alienated labor. We have analyzed this concept, and in so doing merely analyzed an economic fact. Let us now go on to see how the concept of estranged, alienated labor must express and present itself in reality.

If the product of labor is alien to me, and confronts me as an alien power, to whom does it then belong? To a being other than me. Who is this being? The gods? It is true that in early times most production -- e. But the gods alone were never the masters of labor. The same is true of nature. And what a paradox it would be if the more man subjugates nature through his labor and the more divine miracles are made superfluous by the miracles of industry, the more he is forced to forgo the joy or production and the enjoyment of the product out of deference to these powers.

The alien being to whom labor and the product of labor belong, in whose service labor is performed, and for whose enjoyment the product of labor is created, can be none other than man himself. If the product of labor does not belong to the worker, and if it confronts him as an alien power, this is only possible because it belongs to a man other than the worker. If his activity is a torment for him, it must provide pleasure and enjoyment for someone else. Not the gods, not nature, but only man himself can be this alien power over men.

Consider the above proposition that the relationship of man to himself becomes objective and real for him only through his relationship to other men. If, therefore, he regards the product of his labor, his objectified labor, as an alien, hostile, and powerful object which is independent of him, then his relationship to that object is such that another man -- alien, hostile, powerful, and independent of him -- is its master.

If he relates to his own activity as unfree activity, then he relates to it as activity in the service, under the rule, coercion, and yoke of another man. Every self-estrangement of man from himself and nature is manifested in the relationship he sets up between other men and himself and nature. Thus, religious self-estrangement is necessarily manifested in the relationship between layman and priest, or, since we are dealing here with the spiritual world, between layman and mediator, etc.

In the practical, real world, self-estrangement can manifest itself only in the practical, real relationship to other men. The medium through which estrangement progresses is itself a practical one.

So through estranged labor man not only produces his relationship to the object and to the act of production as to alien and hostile powers; he also produces the relationship in which other men stand to his production and product, and the relationship in which he stands to these other men.

Just as he creates his own production as a loss of reality, a punishment, and his own product as a loss, a product which does not belong to him, so he creates the domination of the non-producer over production and its product.

Just as he estranges from himself his own activity, so he confers upon the stranger and activity which does not belong to him. Up to now, we have considered the relationship only from the side of the worker.

Later on, we shall consider it from the side of the non-worker. Thus, through estranged, alienated labor, the worker creates the relationship of another man, who is alien to labor and stands outside it, to that labor. The relation of the worker to labor creates the relation of the capitalist -- or whatever other word one chooses for the master of labor -- to that labor.

Private property is therefore the product, result, and necessary consequence of alienated labor, of the external relation of the worker to nature and to himself. Private property thus derives from an analysis of the concept of alienated labor -- i.

It is true that we took the concept of alienated labor alienated life from political economy as a result of the movement of private property. But it is clear from an analysis of this concept that, although private property appears as the basis and cause of alienated labor, it is in fact its consequence, just as the gods were originally not the cause but the effect of the confusion in men's minds.

Later, however, this relationship becomes reciprocal. It is only when the development of private property reaches its ultimate point of culmination that this, its secret, re-emerges; namely, that is a the product of alienated labor, and b the means through which labor is alienated, the realization of this alienation. Text taken from www. Yesterday, in Sudan, during nationwide demonstrations against the military dictatorship that seized power on October 25, state forces repeatedly used live rounds against protesters, killing at Using the concept of the intermediate level, an exploration of what a new workers movement in the US might entail.

Four demonstrators and a spectator were The direct relationship of labor to its products is the relationship of the worker to the objects of his production. The relationship of the man of means to the objects of production and to production itself is only a consequence of this first relationship — and confirms it.

We shall consider this other aspect later. When we ask, then, what is the essential relationship of labor we are asking about the relationship of the worker to production. Till now we have been considering the estrangement, the alienation of the worker only in one of its aspects , i.

But the estrangement is manifested not only in the result but in the act of production , within the producing activity, itself. How could the worker come to face the product of his activity as a stranger, were it not that in the very act of production he was estranging himself from himself? The product is after all but the summary of the activity, of production. If then the product of labor is alienation, production itself must be active alienation, the alienation of activity, the activity of alienation.

In the estrangement of the object of labor is merely summarized the estrangement, the alienation, in the activity of labor itself. First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home.

His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague.

External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self. As a result, therefore, man the worker only feels himself freely active in his animal functions — eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc. What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal.

Certainly eating, drinking, procreating, etc. But taken abstractly, separated from the sphere of all other human activity and turned into sole and ultimate ends, they are animal functions.

We have considered the act of estranging practical human activity, labor, in two of its aspects. This relation is at the same time the relation to the sensuous external world, to the objects of nature, as an alien world inimically opposed to him. Here we have self-estrangement, as previously we had the estrangement of the thing. XXIV We have still a third aspect of estranged labor to deduce from the two already considered.

Man is a species-being [20] , not only because in practice and in theory he adopts the species his own as well as those of other things as his object, but — and this is only another way of expressing it — also because he treats himself as the actual, living species; because he treats himself as a universal and therefore a free being. The life of the species, both in man and in animals, consists physically in the fact that man like the animal lives on organic nature; and the more universal man or the animal is, the more universal is the sphere of inorganic nature on which he lives.

Just as plants, animals, stones, air, light, etc. Physically man lives only on these products of nature, whether they appear in the form of food, heating, clothes, a dwelling, etc.

The universality of man appears in practice precisely in the universality which makes all nature his inorganic body — both inasmuch as nature is 1 his direct means of life, and 2 the material, the object, and the instrument of his life activity.

Man lives on nature — means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. In estranging from man 1 nature, and 2 himself, his own active functions, his life activity, estranged labor estranges the species from man. It changes for him the life of the species into a means of individual life.

First it estranges the life of the species and individual life, and secondly it makes individual life in its abstract form the purpose of the life of the species, likewise in its abstract and estranged form. For labor, life activity , productive life itself, appears to man in the first place merely as a means of satisfying a need — the need to maintain physical existence. Yet the productive life is the life of the species. It is life-engendering life. Life itself appears only as a means to life.

The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It does not distinguish itself from it. It is its life activity. Man makes his life activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness. He has conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he directly merges. Conscious life activity distinguishes man immediately from animal life activity. It is just because of this that he is a species-being.

Or it is only because he is a species-being that he is a conscious being, i. Only because of that is his activity free activity. Estranged labor reverses the relationship, so that it is just because man is a conscious being that he makes his life activity, his essential being, a mere means to his existence.

In creating a world of objects by his personal activity, in his work upon inorganic nature, man proves himself a conscious species-being, i. Admittedly animals also produce. They build themselves nests, dwellings, like the bees, beavers, ants, etc. But an animal only produces what it immediately needs for itself or its young. It produces one-sidedly, whilst man produces universally. It produces only under the dominion of immediate physical need, whilst man produces even when he is free from physical need and only truly produces in freedom therefrom.

An animal produces only itself, whilst man reproduces the whole of nature. An animal forms only in accordance with the standard and the need of the species to which it belongs, whilst man knows how to produce in accordance with the standard of every species, and knows how to apply everywhere the inherent standard to the object.

Man therefore also forms objects in accordance with the laws of beauty. It is just in his work upon the objective world, therefore, that man really proves himself to be a species-being.

This production is his active species-life. Through this production, nature appears as his work and his reality. In tearing away from man the object of his production, therefore, estranged labor tears from him his species-life , his real objectivity as a member of the species and transforms his advantage over animals into the disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him. The consciousness which man has of his species is thus transformed by estrangement in such a way that species[-life] becomes for him a means.

It estranges from man his own body, as well as external nature and his spiritual aspect, his human aspect. When man confronts himself, he confronts the other man. The estrangement of man, and in fact every relationship in which man [stands] to himself, is realized and expressed only in the relationship in which a man stands to other men. Hence within the relationship of estranged labor each man views the other in accordance with the standard and the relationship in which he finds himself as a worker.

XXV We took our departure from a fact of political economy — the estrangement of the worker and his production. We have formulated this fact in conceptual terms as estranged, alienated labor. We have analyzed this concept — hence analyzing merely a fact of political economy.

Let us now see, further, how the concept of estranged, alienated labor must express and present itself in real life. If the product of labor is alien to me, if it confronts me as an alien power, to whom, then, does it belong?

The gods? To be sure, in the earliest times the principal production for example, the building of temples, etc.

However, the gods on their own were never the lords of labor. No more was nature. And what a contradiction it would be if, the more man subjugated nature by his labor and the more the miracles of the gods were rendered superfluous by the miracles of industry, the more man were to renounce the joy of production and the enjoyment of the product to please these powers. The alien being, to whom labor and the product of labor belongs, in whose service labor is done and for whose benefit the product of labor is provided, can only be man himself.

If the product of labor does not belong to the worker, if it confronts him as an alien power, then this can only be because it belongs to some other man than the worker. Not the gods, not nature, but only man himself can be this alien power over man.

Thus, if the product of his labor, his labor objectified, is for him an alien , hostile , powerful object independent of him, then his position towards it is such that someone else is master of this object, someone who is alien, hostile, powerful, and independent of him.

If he treats his own activity as an unfree activity, then he treats it as an activity performed in the service, under the dominion, the coercion, and the yoke of another man. Every self-estrangement of man, from himself and from nature, appears in the relation in which he places himself and nature to men other than and differentiated from himself.

For this reason religious self-estrangement necessarily appears in the relationship of the layman to the priest, or again to a mediator, etc. In the real practical world self-estrangement can only become manifest through the real practical relationship to other men. The medium through which estrangement takes place is itself practical.