Reading the Estranged Labour and Wage Labor written by Karl Marx it reminds me of my first job. Growing up I could not wait to be old enough to get a job and start supporting myself. I thought that having a job would give me some type of freedom – financial freedom, social freedom, equality etc.-that all the working people have. I felt accomplished, mature, and successful getting my first job at a young age, until I realized that having a job did not give me the freedom I was hoping for , what it gives me was long hours of work and low pay. In Marxist theory, the capitalist stage of production consists of two classes: property-owners and “property less” workers. Property-owner class are people who gain all the capital and resources through others labor. “Property less” workers are people who have nothing expect their labor.
The labor that the property less worker do is rewarded by money that we use to cover our human needs. Marx labeled property less workers as animals, since their existence is all about work and making sure that job is done so property-owners could reach the production goal and get richer.Marx’s theory of alienation gives us idea of how workers are deprived of all their fundamental human values. Values that as human we all should have an equal right to have but that is not the reality. Alienation is a Marx main focus in Estranged Labour and Wage Labor.
As workers- propertyless owners- we never did or will have a chance of achieving our self-realization or having a chance to realy live a meaningful and fulfilling lives. Many of us will experience some sort of alienation, but the rest will live in self-deception, thinking and rethinking the sense of life, their self-worth, the reason of life itself. Just existing and accepting the circumstances of the situation. Which brings on the question of why is labor a part of human nature? Marx explaines and feels hat alienation is based on class society in general and based on capitalism as well.
Capitalism is an an economic and political system where private entities own the factors of production which brings profit to them. In that capitalism chain we have employer the property-owners and workers the “property less” owners. In exchange for a wage worker gives their talent, power, capability, ideas and in some way values to private owners/employers who manage trade, production, and industry with the goal of profit.
It almost seems that for the time being at work we turn into machines that are punished for being in the low social class and as human nature has adopted to lose a sense of identity for the few hours that we get paid for. Not forgetting that our employer has the control over the wage and employment status at the time. There will never be a solution to alienation as long as social classes exist.
The exploitation and oppression would never be eliminated to the level where all human could live an equal, happy and meaningful life. We live in 21 century and the world is all about the power and money. The rich people get richer, business owners have tax brakes and the low income family are required to pay taxes and still love of off the minimum wage. Our society will never exist on the same level, it is too late to change the world.
