Marx’s Alienation- A Philosophical Perspective: Why Marx Cannot Give Up the Hunt for Alien Life in Capitalism?

Abstract

Marx’s alienation theory asserts that the untrue appearance of humans is a form of inflictions of human beings detached from their essential nature as species-being with the power to make, which Marx alludes to as use-value, qualitative formation, practicing and creating work relation, creativity, and collective objectification amid a production realm of productive being’s own making’s. He examines human history by examining the production realm, its impact on social formations, intercourse, and the organization of social power that constrains and enables human nature. This realm can be organized according to human’s essential nature or transcend it, leading to alienation as an alien power that supersedes or expropriates the power of original producers. Freedom amid the production realm is central to Marx’s argument about alienation. This article investigates two interrelated subjects: alienation arising from transcending human nature and freedom evolving amid the production realm. The researcher in this article argues that freedom is the free development of individuals and society’s power, rather than “receiving freedom” that arises from detaching producers from their realm. Part I of this article provides an overview of Marx’s philosophical science on species-being, Part II focuses on his characterization of alienation in his works including; On the Jewish Question, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts 1844 and Capital Volume I, and Part III highlight selected aspects in Hegel’s and Robert Nozick’s philosophies that is of relevance to Marx’s alienation. Marx distinguishes between estrangement/alienation and objectification, with the latter referring to the relation with the object as either objectification to species-being life or loss of the thing and bondage through abstract labor objectified in commodities in capitalism. The former is “appropriation as estrangement, as alienation.”