What Marx Appear To Mean By The Term Alienation Essay

What Marx Appear To Mean By The Term Alienation - Essay Example His political, economic and social ideas gained rapid acceptance despite the fact that he was largely ignored by other scholars and regimes during his lifetime. His fame rose further after his death in 1883. Marx was a communism’s most zealous intellectual advocate. He made comprehensive writing on the subject which laid the basis and foundation for the political leaders who were to come after him. He studied philosophy but turned to economics and politics in his twenties. Karl Marx’s theories of politics, economics and society, which are collectively referred to as Marxism, argued that all human societies progress through dialectic of class struggles. Such class struggle occurs in a capitalist state. Within such a society, the capitalist classes; the owners of capital compete with the workers. The workers solely have their labour power to offer as a means of obtaining daily bread for their livelihood. Karl Marx referred to the capitalist societies as the â€Å"dictato rship of the bourgeoisie†. Such a society is run by the wealthy class of individuals. Such a management or rule is purely meant to benefit the rich ruling class. A class struggle between the bourgeoisies would lead into a dialectical series which enables the society to be transformed from one state to another. The bourgeoisie would always struggle to maintain and expand their wealth in terms of land and other factors of production. This group of individuals does this by exploiting and exposing the proletariat to harsh conditions characterized by poor wages, less food and poor housing. This would enable to capitalist class to make maximum profit and reduce competition from the proletariat. Alienation basically refers to an act of separation from what is most desired by individuals or from whatever is desirable. Alienation is a discrimination of individuals based on something which is valuable to their existence. A society in which alienation is practiced tends to have some of i ts members get extremely wealthy at the expense of other members of the population. Individual are alienated when they live in conditions which they do not approve of and believe to have been caused and forced into them by external forces. It is a form of discrimination in which individuals are denied or prevented from accessing their rights. Forceful denial of self determination, where individuals lack the power to determine whatever happens to them, is a form of alienation which Karl Marx explained. This paper tries, therefore, to make an analysis into what Karl Marx implied by alienation. Karl Marx and Alienation Karl Marx expresses the meaning of alienation in two words; estrangement and reification. Reification refers to the externalization of aspects of self which there exist a dual sense of lose and identification. This implies that labour became a remote or external action since there is the act of selling one’s self just as a commodity and also an individual no longe r relates or identifies with the outcome of ones labour since it has been an independent action. Estrangement on the other hand refers to a situation in which an individual has a feeling of separation or distance from the society or community. Karl Marx understands the concepts of alienation from a capitalist point of view. His argument of alienation is based on a capitalist context. The capitalist mode of production forms the basis for alienation according to Karl Marx. This focus enables us to look at the source of alienation in its actual context in the human societies that we live in. it also enables us to understand the manner in which all the rest forms of alienation are deeply rooted in the prime cause which is capitalism. Marx identified a mechanism through