Capitalism creates alienation, claimed Marx more than a century ago. Since then, Marx's sociological theories have led to remarkable changes in the ways people think about labor, social hierarchies, and systems of power in social institutions. There is nowhere better to think critically about Marx's theories than through the lens of someone who works as a wage laborer for a capitalist enterprise: in my case, literally the Enterprise Rent-A-Car company. My work at Enterprise has been fruitful and rewarding in some ways, but mainly I need the job in order to pay the bills. The work is not deeply fulfilling on any level. Therefore, I can easily see how a person who views this job as their career might become alienated from themselves on a psychological level, by failing to fulfill deeper desires and dreams. Marx did not care as much about humanistic hierarchies of needs as he did for social hierarchies and the need to change them. By discussing four different types of alienation, Marx shows how capitalist enterprises create alienation from the products of labor/fruits of production; from the processes of production, from species being, and from other men and women. While I hesitate to think only in negative terms about my job at Enterprise, I have come to agree with Marx that capitalist systems produce all four of these types of alienation. Alienation from the product of labor is a core component of Marx's theory. When referring to alienation from the product of labor, Marx contrasts the capitalist system in which wage-earners are paid for their time...
Marx noted the "progressive coercion of human labor and the dispossession of the product of labor from its producers," (Calhoun, et al., 2012, p. 138). If Marx had survived into the late 20th or early 21st century, he would not have been surprised to see society devolve more fully into alienating laborers from the product of labor in the service-oriented and post-industrial world. When Marx developed his sociological and economic theories, he wrote based on what he witnessed in the burgeoning age of industry. Now, workers are even further removed from the products of labor because we are in service positions like mine at Enterprise. At Enterprise, the business model is service-oriented. The company does not manufacture or sell cars. It just rents them, providing a temporary service. In this sense, I have no connection at all either with the cars, the experience of driving, the insurance "products" we sell, or the customers.
During his first few months in Paris, Marx became a communist and put forth his views in a plethora of writings known as the Economic and philosophical Manuscripts, that remained unpublished until the 1930s. It was also in Paris that Marx developed his life long association with Friedrich Engels. (Karl Marx, 1818-1883) At the end of 1844 Marx was debarred from Paris and with Engels migrated to Brussels. In the
Sociology: Karl Marx's Theory Of Alienation Sociological Theory: The Concept of Alienation Alienation can be defined simply as the phenomenon whereby people feel like foreigners or aliens in the world or society in which they live (Marx, in Calhoun, 2012; University of California, San Diego, 2006). The concept of alienation is based on the ideology that people were living in harmony at some point in the past before something just happened, creating
Marxist or Neo-Marxist Research Theorist Theory Summary Critique of Theory Max Weber According to Max Weber the state is a special entity that possesses a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Weber believes politics is a required activity of government used in order to influence and control the relative distribution of force and power in the country. Weber wrote of three main types of authority and political leadership domination that is present in society.
In an article titled The Superego, Narcissism and Great Expectations Ingham writes "As [Pip] forlornly gazes at his parent's headstone he is suddenly accosted by an escaped convict, Magwitch, who threatens dreadful consequences unless Pip steals a file and food. Magwitch seems to emerge from the parental grave and to embody primitive menace, dire and horrifying punishments -- the 'ghost' of the lost parents, infused with the abandoned child's
Kite Runner Annotated Bibliography Bennett, Tony. Formalism and Marxism. Routledge, 2003. In the United States, Marxist literary criticism was most important during the Great Depression in the 1930s, especially during the era of the Popular Front up to the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939. Unlike formalists, Marxists were less concerned about the formal devices, construction style and structure of art and literature as opposed to its social and economic context and political relevance (3).
Consumption, Society and Culture Cultural Industry There are two social processes which are linked with each other and provide the basis of popular culture in modern capitalist societies. These two processes are related with production and consumption of cultural goods. In the first step, the commodities are produced in the light of customers' desirable features and packaged in culturally acceptable methods. In the second step, the products are used by their respective
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now