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Soc 101: Spring, 2001
Erling Christensen
Lecture 5: Karl Marx
Alienation
Economic Structure and Social Class
Social Reality as Social Relations and the Making of History
Labour Theory of Value
1. ... The theory of alienation is the intellectual construct in which, Marx analysis the severe and devastating effects of capitalist production on human beings, on their physical being, mental states and on the social processes of which they are a part. In a very clear sense Marx looks at the effects of both physical and mental repression, its causes and areas of devastation. ...
Marx focuses on the whole of society, not on its specific parts; he argues that all classes are alienated, although some suffer its results more than others. ... And for Marx, unalienation is the life people live under communism. So, it is only by looking at the absence of alienation that we begin to get an understanding of the picture of Marx’s concept of communism. ...
Alienation, for Marx, then refers to any state of human existence which is “away from” or “less than” unalienation. The theory of alienation is to some extent a summary of Marx’s conception of human beings, that is, of what people are capable of given a state of unaliention.
Marx talks specifically about 4 types of alienation. ... This takes Marx back to his starting point: human relations in capitalism tend to become reduced to operations of the market. ... Expand
Marx saw alienation as existing within all prior historical periods, starting with the first instance of alienation, that being the separation of the species intro family units, where one family became pitted against another for resources. ... Marx breaks up historical periods by analyzing the forces of production and relations of production. Depending on the specific forces and relations, Marx could then divide and identify separate modes of production. ... For, according to Marx, “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness”. ... To Marx “ “the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. ... To Marx, the ‘subject’ is always social man, the individual viewed in his actual relationships with groups, classes, and society as a whole. ...
For Marx, people make history. ... Marx states the case plainly: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. ... Marx makes it clear that while history determine our circumstances, we can change those circumstances, people have the ability to alter the course of history. ... This aphorism clearly shows that Marx see people as active participants, and not passive, in the creation of history. ... Marx has an action-oriented view of the historical process.
Approximate Word count = 3029
Approximate Pages = 12.1
(250 words per page double spaced)
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