Gonzales, Timothy Joseph C.

4PHL1

The concept of alienation in the early works of Karl Marx

Oliver Christ, Dr.

Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland,

School of Management and Law Winterthur

The article written by Dr.Oliver Christ discussed how the concept of alienation affects an
individual in relation to himself, to his fellow individual and to the society where he belongs, this
happens when an individual is integrated into the system of labour. First, He analysed it by
using Karl Marx’s four forms of alienation and then proceeds on a brief discussion of how
alienation detaches man from the reality, society and to his own identity. According to Dr.Christ,
workers are unconsciously generating alienation once they are already put into the process of
production since they do not have the capacity to choose what kind of work they wanted to do or
what kind of job they would be comfortable to work on, but rather it is the system who tells,
categorizes and determines it for them. For Marx, it already manifests different kinds of
alienation and they are alienation from the product, activity, as a social-being, and as a
communal being. Each kind of alienation is interconnected to one another, starting from the
least condition, and it is when a worker gets alienated from the product he creates, this is due to
the fact the more the worker puts his time and power in creating products, the more the product
becomes independent from the worker itself. It means that workers create products that
sometimes they cannot afford it, like for example, workers and employees of Apple produce
every year different models of iphone, ipad and Macbook and all other kinds of technology
devices, but in the end only a small percent of them get a chance to buy one of their products
because of the high price imposed to them, it is a clear presentation that the products that have
been created by workers becomes more powerful and given more priority over the people who
have actually created them.

The second type of alienation which is the alienation from the activity tells us that the workers
due to excessive and endless hours of work in factories, workers lose a lot of their time to
actually live like humans, we are talking about here activities like spending time with their
families, parents playing with their children and having dinner together are the things that
workers get deprived of due to the requirement of hours imposed both by the management and
owners of businesses and factories. Whenever they are deprived of these activities, instead of
feeling excited to go to their work, they would already feel exhausted and the lack of
compassion to do their job because they are treated as commodities and objects to be used and
not as humans who are also in need of time and space to be able to fulfil their needs as human
beings and social beings.
The third and fourth type of alienation talks about a worker deprived of his chance to get a social
communication of their co-workers since only a few amount time to rest were given to them
whenever they are at work, they would rather use this ample time to other things like eating and
resting so they already forgot that they are living in a society where social interaction and
communication is needed for them to keep afloat.

Dr. Christ emphasized here the importance of man as a social being and specie meant to
socialize and interact with another individual for a society could not live long if all individuals
living in it are alienated to each other. He also mentioned that while all workers are busy doing
in they can to produce more products every day, the owners of the factories are the ones who
benefit the most not only in the money that they earn, but more importantly, they get the chance
to spend their time in anytime they want. This kind of system which is oppressive and inhumane
is what Capitalism endorses and promotes, a system in which every country in the world would
prefer, a system that enslaves and makes the poor even poorer and the rich become more
richer. Philippines is one among of those countries where free market system is hypocrite in
itself since the growth of Capitalism in here also increases the number of people imprisoned to
the hands of those few who monopolizes everything including the basic needs of human being.

In summary, Capitalism will continue to rise and many more will continue to become alienated
and oppressed, the question is, how long are we going to allow these people to oppress us?