Marx Alienation

Question 1

What did Hegel and Marx agree would be the definition for alienation?

Answer 1

The lack of self understanding, which includes one’s relationship to society.

Question 2

What happens as a result of alienation?

Answer 2

It limits the capacity of individuals to control their lives as one must understand their relationship to society in order to pursue their interests

Question 3

Why are mediative categories not necessarily the source of alienation?

Answer 3

Because the prevailing mediative categories do not fully capture our relationship to society.

Question 4

What is Marx’s belief about alienation?

Answer 4

Marx believes that alienation emerges from the material condition of society and that alienation increases over time and reaches its highest form in capitalist society.

Question 5

What are the three dimension of society that happen together in the capitalist mode of production?

Answer 5

1.) Concentration and Centralization
2.) Division of Labor
3.) Increased Alienation

Question 6

What happens in the first dimension of concentration and centralization?

Answer 6

Corporations become larger and more complex

Question 7

What happens in the second dimension of Division of Labor?

Answer 7

Increases specialization. To increase efficiency, capitalists increased the division of labor, which made work more specialized.

Question 8

What happens in the third dimension of Increased Alienation?

Answer 8

As people become more and more specialized in their work, individuals are less able to understand the increasingly complex society. They detach themselves from their homo faber and increase alienation.

Question 9

What are the characteristics of alienation?

Answer 9

Separation from one’s self and separation from one another

Question 10

What does separation from one another mean?

Answer 10

The lack of understanding our relationship to others

Question 11

What is the relationship between society and alienation?

Answer 11

As society become more complex (with advanced and specialized division of labor) people become more alienated

Question 12

What is subject-object inversion?

Answer 12

It is a process in capitalism where individuals begin as a subject with homo faber but overtime humans become transformed into objects

Question 13

Why does subject-object inversion happen?

Answer 13

It is in response to the way in which the labor process is structured. Workers have limited capacity to use their creative capacities in the labor process.

Question 14

What happens to the worker when they sell their labor power?

Answer 14

They lose control of his/her labor

Question 15

After labor power is bought and sold, three things happen?

Answer 15

1.) Human relations are reduced to operations of the market
2.) Human productivity is reduced to the level of adaption
3.) The worker loses control of the disposal of their products including his own labor

Question 16

When human relations are reduced to operations of the market what does that mean?

Answer 16

Workers sell their labor power to capitalist because they have no choice if they want to survive.

Question 17

What does human productivity being reduced to the level of adaption mean?

Answer 17

Workers become detached from their species-being (homo faber) and must adapt to the organization of work.

Question 18

What is the positive moment in the capitalism mode of production?

Answer 18

Emancipation

Question 19

Before emancipation can occur what must happen?

Answer 19

1.) Individuals must understand the source of alienation, which is the MOP itself.
2.) Emancipation entails developing a course of action to restructure society in ways that permit individuals greater freedom to exercise their creative capacities.

Question 20

What are the steps toward emancipation?

Answer 20

1.) Understand their similar economic (class) interests
2.) Develop Class Consciousness
3.) Political unity to advance their interests
4.) Social Change

Question 21

What is class consciousness?

Answer 21

An awareness of themselves as members of a class (similar class (economic) interests)

Question 22

What are the characteristics of a socialist mode of production?

Answer 22

1.) The state can control the production process
2.) The surplus is distributed equally
3.) Workers are still alienated but state controls the production process making it possible for them to engage in a variety of tasks

Question 23

Describe the role of the worker in the socialist mode of production.

Answer 23

The role of the worker is expanded to all people

Question 24

What are the characteristics of the communist mode of production?

Answer 24

The withering way of the state and individuals have opportunities (time) to exercise their creative capacities.