What, then, constitutes the
alienation of labour?
First, the fact that labour is external to the worker, i.e., it does not
belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not
affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does
not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body
and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his
work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is
not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labour is
therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labour. It is therefore
not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs
external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as
soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labour is shunned like the
plague. External labour, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour
of
self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labour
for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone
else's, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to
himself, but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of
the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates on
the individual independently of him - that is, operates as an alien, divine
or diabolical activity - so is the worker's activity not his spontaneous
activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self.
As a result, therefore, man (the worker) only feels himself freely active
in his animal functions - eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his
dwelling and in dressing-up, etc.; and in his human functions he no longer
feels himself to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human
and what is human becomes animal.
Certainly eating, drinking, procreating, etc., are also genuinely human
functions. But taken abstractly, separated from the sphere of all other
human activity and turned into sole and ultimate ends, they are animal
functions.
We have considered the act of
estranging practical human activity, labour,
in two of its aspects. (1) The relation of the worker to the product of
labour as an alien object exercising power over him. This relation is at
the
same time the relation to the sensuous external world, to the objects of
nature, as an alien world inimically opposed to him. (2) The relation of
labour to the act of production within the labour process. This relation is
the relation of the worker to his own activity as an alien activity not
belonging to him; it is activity as suffering, strength as weakness,
begetting as emasculating, the worker's own physical and mental energy, his
personal life - for what is life but activity? - as an activity which is
turned against him, independent of him and not belonging to him. Here we
have self-estrangement, as previously we had the
estrangement of the thing.
24: We have still a third aspect of estranged labour to deduce from the two
already considered.
Man is a species-being, not only because in practice and in theory he
adopts the species (his own as well as those of other things) as his
object, but - and this is only another way of expressing it - also because
he treats himself as the actual, living species; because he treats himself
as a universal and therefore a free being.
The life of the species, both in man and in animals, consists physically in
the fact that man (like the animal) lives on organic nature; and the more
universal man (or the animal) is, the more universal is the sphere of
inorganic nature on which he lives. Just as plants, animals, stones, air,
light, etc., constitute theoretically a part of human consciousness, partly
as objects of natural science, partly as objects of art - his spiritual
inorganic nature, spiritual nourishment which he must first prepare to make
palatable and digestible - so also in the realm of practice they constitute
a part of human life and human activity. Physically man lives only on these
products of nature, whether they appear in the form of food, heating,
clothes, a dwelling, etc. The universality of man appears in practice
precisely in the universality which makes all nature his inorganic body -
both inasmuch as nature is (1) his direct means of life, and (2) the
material, the object, and the instrument of his life activity. Nature is
man's inorganic body - nature, that is, insofar as it is not itself human
body. Man lives on nature - means that nature is his body, with which he
must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man's
physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is
linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.
In estranging from man (1) nature, and (2) himself, his own active
functions, his life activity, estranged labour estranges the species from
man. It changes for him the life of the species into a means of individual
life. First it estranges the life of the species and individual life, and
secondly it makes individual life in its abstract form the purpose of the
life of the species, likewise in its abstract and estranged form.
For labour, life activity, productive life itself, appears to man in the
first place merely as a means of satisfying a need - the need to maintain
physical existence. Yet the productive life is the life of the species. It
is life-engendering life. The whole character of a species, its species-
character, is contained in the character of its life activity; and free,
conscious activity is man's species-character. Life itself appears only as
a means to life.
The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It does not
distinguish itself from it. It is its life activity. Man makes his life
activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness. He has
conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he directly
merges. Conscious life activity distinguishes man immediately from animal
life activity. It is just because of this that he is a species-being. Or it
is only because he is a species-being that he is a conscious being, i.e.,
that his own life is an object for him. Only because of that is his
activity free activity. Estranged labour reverses the relationship, so that
it is just because man is a conscious being that he makes his life
activity, his essential being, a mere means to his existence.
In creating a world of objects by his personal activity, in his work upon
inorganic nature, man proves himself a conscious species-being, i.e., as a
being that treats the species as his own essential being, or that treats
itself as a species-being. Admittedly animals also produce. They build
themselves nests, dwellings, like the bees, beavers, ants, etc. But an
animal only produces what it immediately needs for itself or its young. It
produces one-sidedly, whilst man produces universally. It produces only
under the dominion of immediate physical need, whilst man produces even
when he is free from physical need and only truly produces in freedom
therefrom. An animal produces only itself, whilst man reproduces the whole
of nature. An animal's product belongs immediately to its physical body,
whilst man freely confronts his product. An animal forms only in accordance
with the standard and the need of the species to which it belongs, whilst
man knows how to produce in accordance with the standard of every species,
and knows how to apply everywhere the inherent standard to the object. Man
therefore also forms objects in accordance with the laws of beauty.
It is just in his work upon the objective world, therefore, that man really
proves himself to be a species-being. This production is his active
species-life. Through this production, nature appears as his work and his
reality. The object of labour is, therefore, the objectification of man's
species-life: for he duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness,
intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he sees
himself in a world that he has created. In tearing away from man the object
of his production, therefore, estranged labour tears from him his species-
life, his real objectivity as a member of the species and transforms his
advantage over animals into the disadvantage that his inorganic body,
nature, is taken from him.
Similarly, in degrading spontaneous, free activity to a means, estranged
labour makes man's species-life a means to his physical existence.
The consciousness which man has of his species is thus transformed by
estrangement in such a way that species[-life] becomes for him a means.
Estranged labour turns thus:
(3) Man's species-being, both nature and his spiritual species-property,
into a being alien to him, into a means of his individual existence. It
estranges from man his own body, as well as external nature and his
spiritual aspect, his human aspect.
(4) An immediate consequence of the fact that man is estranged from the
product of his labour, from his life activity, from his species-being, is
the estrangement of man from man. When man confronts himself, he confronts
the other man. What applies to a man's relation to his work, to the product
of his labour and to himself, also holds of a man's relation to the other
man, and to the other man's labour and object of labour.
In fact, the proposition that man's species-nature is estranged from him
means that one man is estranged from the other, as each of them is from
man's essential nature.
The estrangement of man, and in fact every relationship in which man
[stands] to himself, is realized and expressed only in the relationship in
which a man stands to other men.
Hence within the relationship of estranged labour each man views the other
in accordance with the standard and the relationship in which he finds
himself as a worker.
25: We took our departure from a fact of political economy - the
estrangement of the worker and his production. We have formulated this fact
in conceptual terms as estranged, alienated labour. We have analyzed this
concept - hence analyzing merely a fact of political economy.
Let us now see, further, how the concept of estranged, alienated labour
must
express and present itself in real life.
If the product of labour is alien to me, if it confronts me as an alien
power, to whom, then, does it belong?
To a being other than myself.
Who is this being?
The gods? To be sure, in the earliest times the principal production (for
example, the building of temples, etc., in Egypt, India and Mexico) appears
to be in the service of the gods, and the product belongs to the gods.
However, the gods on their own were never the lords of labour. No more was
nature. And what a contradiction it would be if, the more man subjugated
nature by his labour and the more the miracles of the gods were rendered
superfluous by the miracles of industry, the more man were to renounce the
joy of production and the enjoyment of the product to please these powers.
The alien being, to whom labour and the product of labour belongs, in whose
service labour is done and for whose benefit the product of labour is
provided, can only be man himself.
If the product of labour does not belong to the worker, if it confronts him
as an alien power, then this can only be because it belongs to some other
man than the worker. If the worker's activity is a torment to him, to
another it must give satisfaction and pleasure. Not the gods, not nature,
but only man himself can be this alien power over man.
We must bear in mind the previous proposition that man's relation to
himself becomes for him objective and actual through his relation to the
other man. Thus, if the product of his labour, his labour objectified, is
for
him an alien, hostile, powerful object independent of him, then his
position towards it is such that someone else is master of this object,
someone who is alien, hostile, powerful, and independent of him. If he
treats his own activity as an unfree activity, then he treats it as an
activity performed in the service, under the dominion, the coercion, and
the yoke of another man.
Every self-estrangement of man, from himself and from nature, appears in
the relation in which he places himself and nature to men other than and
differentiated from himself. For this reason religious self-estrangement
necessarily appears in the relationship of the layman to the priest, or
again to a mediator, etc., since we are here dealing with the intellectual
world. In the real practical world self-estrangement can only become
manifest through the real practical relationship to other men. The medium
through which estrangement takes place is itself practical. Thus through
estranged labour man not only creates his relationship to the object and to
the act of production as to powers
that are alien and hostile to
him; he
also creates the relationship in which other men stand to his production
and to his product, and the relationship in which he stands to these other
men. Just as he creates his own production as the loss of his reality, as
his punishment; his own product as a loss, as a product not belonging to
him; so he creates the domination of the person who does not produce over
production and over the product. Just as he estranges his own activity from
himself, so he confers upon the stranger an activity which is not his own.
We have until now considered this relationship only from the standpoint of
the worker and later on we shall be considering it also from the standpoint
of the non-worker.
Through estranged, alienated labour, then, the worker produces the
relationship to this labour of a man alien to labour and standing outside
it.
The relationship of the worker to labour creates the relation to it of the
capitalist (or whatever one chooses to call the master of labour). Private
property is thus the product, the result, the necessary consequence, of
alienated labour, of the external relation of the worker to nature and to
himself.
Private property thus results by analysis from the concept of alienated
labour, i.e., of alienated man, of estranged labour, of estranged life, of
estranged man.
True, it is as a result of the movement of private property that we have
obtained the concept of alienated labour (of alienated life) in political
economy. But on analysis of this concept it becomes clear that though
private property appears to be the reason, the cause of alienated labour,
it
is rather its consequence, just as the gods are originally not the cause
but the effect of man's intellectual confusion. Later this relationship
becomes reciprocal.
Only at the culmination of the development of private property does this,
its secret, appear again, namely, that on the one hand it is the product of
alienated labour, and that on the other it is the means by which labour
alienates itself, the realization of this alienation.
This exposition immediately sheds light on various hitherto unsolved
conflicts.
(1) Political economy starts from labour as the real soul of production;
yet
to labour it gives nothing, and to private property everything. Confronting
this contradiction, Proudhon has decided in favor of labour against private
property. We understand, however, that this apparent contradiction is
the contradiction of estranged labour with itself, and that political
economy has merely formulated the laws of estranged labour.
We also understand, therefore, that wages and private property are
identical. Indeed, where the product, as the object of labour, pays for
labour itself, there the wage is but a necessary consequence of labour's
estrangement. Likewise, in the wage of labour, labour does not appear as an
end in itself but as the servant of the wage. We shall develop this point
later, and meanwhile will only draw some conclusions.
26:
An enforced increase of wages (disregarding all other difficulties,
including the fact that it would only be by force, too, that such an
increase, being an anomaly, could be maintained) would therefore be nothing
but better payment for the slave, and would not win either for the worker
or for labour their human status and dignity.
Indeed, even the equality of wages, as demanded by Proudhon, only
transforms the relationship of the present-day worker to his labour into
the
relationship of all men to labour. Society would then be conceived as an
abstract capitalist.
Wages are a direct consequence of estranged labour, and estranged labour is
the direct cause of private property. The downfall of the one must
therefore involve the downfall of the other.
(2) From the relationship of estranged labour to private property it
follows
further that the emancipation of society from private property, etc., from
servitude, is expressed in the political form of the emancipation of the
workers; not that their emancipation alone is at stake, but because the
emancipation of the workers contains universal human emancipation - and it
contains this because the whole of human servitude is involved in the
relation of the worker to production, and all relations of servitude are
but modifications and consequences of this relation.
Just as we have derived the concept of private property from the concept of
estranged, alienated labour by analysis, so we can develop every category
of
political economy with the help of these two factors; and we shall find
again in each category, e.g., trade, competition, capital, money only a
particular and developed expression of these first elements.
But before considering this phenomenon, however, let us try to solve two
other problems.
(1) To define the general nature of private property, as it has arisen as a
result of estranged labour, in its relation to truly human and social
property.
(2) We have accepted the estrangement of labour, its alienation, as a fact,
and we have analyzed this fact. How, we now ask, does man come to alienate,
to estrange, his labour? How is this estrangement rooted in the nature of
human development? We have already gone a long way to the solution of this
problem by transforming the question of the origin of private property into
the question of the relation of alienated labour to the course of
humanity's
development. For when one speaks of private property, one thinks of dealing
with something external to man. When one speaks of labour, one is directly
dealing with man himself. This new formulation of the question already
contains its solution.
As to (1): The general nature of private property and its relation to truly
human property.
Alienated labour has resolved itself for us into two components which
depend
on one another, or which are but different expressions of one and the same
relationship. Appropriation appears as estrangement, as alienation; and
alienation appears as appropriation, estrangement as truly becoming a
citizen.
We have considered the one side - alienated labour in relation to the
worker
himself, i.e., the relation of alienated labour to itself. The product, the
necessary outcome of this relationship, as we have seen, is the property
relation of the non-worker to the worker and to labour. Private property,
as
the material, summary expression of alienated labour, embraces both
relations - the relation of the worker to work and to the product of his
labour and to the non-worker, and the relation of the non-worker to the
worker and to the product of his labour.
Having seen that in relation to the worker who appropriates nature by means
of his labour, this appropriation appears as estrangement, his own
spontaneous activity as activity for another and as activity of another,
vitality as a sacrifice of life, production of the object as loss of the
object to an alien power, to an alien person - we shall now consider the
relation to the worker, to labour and its object of this person who is
alien
to labour and the worker.
First it has to be noted that everything which appears in the worker as an
activity of alienation, of estrangement, appears in the non-worker as a
state of alienation, of estrangement.
Secondly, that the worker's real, practical attitude in production and to
the product (as a state of mind) appears in the non-worker who confronting
him as a theoretical attitude.
27: Thirdly, the non-worker does everything against the worker which the
worker does against himself; but he does not do against himself what he
does against the worker.