In the manuscript “Estranged Labour”, Marx used the concept of alienation by Hegel and puts forth the idea that individuals are vulnerable to lose synchrony with other people of the world. Marx elaborates this idea further by putting forth the argument that alienation or estrangement arises due to the ill-treatment of labours by other persons and noticeably by the property owners. Capitalism is based on the principle of privately owned property and disregards the efforts and work by the property-less labours. The people without property; that is the labourers in factories and mills must work for the people owning the property; that is the owners of factories and mills. This leads to the handing over of the efforts, their productive capabilities and their hard work to the rich capitalists. This process leads to dissatisfaction and frustration in the labour along with alienating them from the world.
The major cause of the alienation as defined by Marx is the consideration of the product of efforts as the alien object. Labours hard work, efforts and dedication is invested in producing the product and when it sees it yielding benefits for the capitalists, the labour grows to detest the product all the more and as it works more hard to produce, more grows the feeling of alienation. The product of his hard work makes the life better for others, whereas his life remains same. The first type of estrangement is alienation of the worker for his work product leading to further estrangement to the activity involved in the production. The labour’s alienation progresses to the human identity and grows to alienation of human to other humans.
This alienation makes the labours disregard the capitalists and infuse frustration in them towards the whole system of property.
