SRI GURU NANAK DEV KHALSA COLLEGE

ASSIGNMENT: “DISCUSS MARXIST PRINCIPLES

WITH SPECIAL FOCUS

ON

THEORY OF ALIENATION.”
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“Religion is:
The Sigh of the oppressed creature
The Heart of the heartless World
The Soul of soulless conditions.
It is the Opium of the people”.

..........KARL MARX
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WHAT IS MARXISM?
Marxism refers to a body of doctrine which is based upon a
theory that socialism is not only desirable but also inevitable. It
attempts to explain the history of mankind as nothing but a class
struggle between two classes -the exploitative class which owns the
resources and the exploited class which provides labour to the
exploitative class. It also states this class conflict and inequality in
distribution of resources as the reason for the misery of
downtrodden classes. It originally consisted of three related ideas: a
philosophical anthropology, a theory of history, and an economic and
political program. It was propagated by Karl Marx who was a German
philosopher, economist and political thinker who is usually portrayed
as father of communist ideology.
Marx was initially a university teacher after which he took up
journalism and increasingly became involved with socialist
movement. He migrated to Paris in 1843, later to Brussels for three
years and finally settled in London in 1849. He spent the later part of
his life as an active revolutionary and writer and for this reason was
socially persecuted and lived in abject poverty. The only reason he
was able to complete his writings was due to economic aid of
Fredrich Engels, an English businessman of German origin. At the
time of his death he was a state-less person. The Marxist ideology
was derived from French Socialism, British political economy and
Hegelian philosophy of Materialism.
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HISTORY OF MARXISM:
Marxism in its proper sense first appeared in the middle of
nineteenth century in response to the exploitative nature of the
Capitalist economic model and as a response to the failure of
ideology of liberalism and its’ classical form. The Liberal Doctrine of
Laissez faire economic system which advocated creating conditions
for human freedom had resulted in economic inequalities and social
injustice. The rich capitalist also known as “Bourgeoisie” became
richer and increased their wealth exponentially as they controlled
the resources of their respective nations whereas the poor known as
“Proletariat” became poorer and lived in abject poverty and were
forced to serve the bourgeoisie by providing labour and at times had
to resort to criminal activities and prostitution in order to survive.
Consequently, in response various socialist movements emerged
which opposed laissez faire and other capitalist economic models
highlighting the miseries of the poor and down trodden citizens.
However, these socialist movements differed on the methods to
achieve economic equality. The French socialists like Saint Simon
(1706-1825) and Louis Blanc (1811-1882) advocated a centralised
economy under the command of the State which would implement
pro-poor programmes of social and economic upliftment. In other
words, a welfare state. On the other hand, French Anarcho-
Syndicalists P.J. Proudhon (1809-1865) proposed an Anarchist De-
centralized system od worker’s co-operatives called “Syndicates”
which would bargain for goods and services with each other in a
state-less society to achieve economic equality and up-liftment of
poor sections of society. Robert Owen (1771-1858) of England and
Charles Fourier (1772-1837) produced elaborate plans to set up
model communities which would administer and be administered by
the principle of “free co-operation” rather than capitalist model of
“free-competition”.
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Their economic models were very unrealistic which were though

utopian and aimed for establishing an ideal society, but it could not
be implemented in a society effectively. Karl Marx and Fredrich
Engels highlighted the various impracticalities of these economic
models and sought to replace it with “scientific socialism” through
various books like The Communist Manifesto (1848).

MAIN TENENTS OF MARXISM:

1.DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM:
Dialectical materialism is a Marxist philosophical approach. For
Marx and Engels, materialism meant that the material world,
perceptible to the senses, has objective reality independent of mind
or spirit. They did not deny the reality of mental or spiritual
processes but affirmed that ideas could arise, therefore, only as
products and reflections of material conditions. They understood
materialism as the opposite of idealism, by which they meant any
theory that treats matter as dependent on mind or spirit, or mind or
spirit as capable of existing independently of matter.
In opposition to the “metaphysical” mode of thought, which viewed
things in abstraction, each by itself and as though endowed with
fixed properties, Hegelian dialectics considers things in their
movements and changes, interrelations and interactions. Everything
is in continual process of becoming and ceasing to be, in which
nothing is permanent but everything changes and is eventually
superseded. All things contain contradictory sides or aspects, whose
tension or conflict is the driving force of change and eventually
transforms or dissolves them. But whereas Hegel saw change and
development as the expression of the world spirit, or Idea, realizing
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itself in nature and in human society, for Marx and Engels change
was inherent in the nature of the material world. They therefore held
that one could not, as Hegel tried, deduce the actual course of
events from any “principles of dialectics”; the principles must be
inferred from the events.

2.HISTORICAL MATERIALISM:
The historical materialism constitutes the nucleus of Marxist
philosophy. In Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, Engels defines
historical materialism in the following words: historical materialism is
“that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause
and the great moving power of all important historic events in the
economic development of society in the changes, in the modes of
production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into
distinct classes and in the struggle of these classes against one
another.”
Historical materialism or the materialistic interpretation of
history is simply dialectical materialism applied to the particular field
of human relations within society in simple words as defined by
R.N.C. Hunt.
It is called historical materialism because the starting point of
human history from the materialist point of view is the struggle with
nature, the sum total of means employed by man to compel nature
to serve his needs, which grow as they are satisfied. Historical
materialism studies the laws of interrelationship between matter
and consciousness and the general laws of being in their specific
manifestations in the social life and discovers the general laws
governing the functioning and development of society as a specific
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form of the motion of matter.

3.THEORY OF CLASS CONFLICT:

Class, for Marx, is defined as a social relationship rather than a
position or rank in society. The relationship between classes is a
contradictory or antagonistic relationship, one that has struggle,
conflict, and contradictory interests associated with it. The structure
and basis of a social class may be defined in objective terms, as
groups with a common position with respect to property or the
means of production. However, Marx may not be primarily
interested in this definition of class. Rather, these classes have
meaning in society and are historical actors only to the extent that
they do act in their own interests, and in opposition to other classes.
Marx inherited the ideas of class and class struggle from utopian
socialism and the theories of Henri de Saint-Simon. These had been
given substance by the writings of French historians such as Adolphe
Thiers and François Guizot on the French Revolution of 1789. But
unlike the French historians, Marx made class struggle the central
fact of social evolution In Marxist view of society, the dialectical
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nature of history is expressed in class struggle. With the

development of capitalism, the class struggle takes an acute form.
Two basic classes, around which other less important classes are
grouped, oppose each other in the capitalist system: the owners of
the means of production, or bourgeoisie, and the workers, or
proletariat.
According to Karl Marx, through history since the decline of
primitive communism, there have always been two classes-one
which owns the means and modes of production through access of
financial and natural resources thus gaining them political and
economic domination in the society which they safeguard with the
help of state and thus become an exploitative class. The other class is
the exploited class, which has no ownership over means and modes
of production because of which they are subject to exploitation by
the class which owns the means and modes of ownership and are
thus forced to provide services to the exploitative class.
Marxism advocates abolition of classes through revolution for
creating an equal society for all classes without political and
economic exploitation by and of any class.

4.THEORY OF SURPLUS VALUE:

Surplus value is Marxian theory that professed to explain the
instability of the capitalist system. Adhering to David Ricardo’s labour
theory of value, Karl Marx held that human labour was the source of
economic value. The capitalist pays his workers less than the value
their labour has added to the goods, usually only enough to maintain
the worker at a subsistence level.
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Of the total worth of the worker’s labour, however, this

compensation, in Marxian theory, accounts for only a mere portion,
equivalent to the worker’s means of subsistence. The remainder is
“surplus labour,” and the value it produces is “surplus value.”
To make a profit, Marx argued, the capitalist appropriates this
surplus value, thereby exploiting the labourer.

5.THEORY OF ALIENATION:
Alienation as a concept was developed by several classical and
contemporary theorists; it is “a condition in social relationships
reflected by a low degree of integration or common values and a
high degree of distance or isolation between individuals, or between
an individual and a group of people in a community or work
environment”.
The development of the notion of alienation may be traced to
Hegelian idealism. But it was Marx who first made use of the concept
as a powerful diagnostic tool for sociological inquiry. For Marx, the
history of mankind is not only a history of class struggle but also of
the increasing alienation of man.
In early society, there was a very simple form of the division of
labour, perhaps by sex and age. People may not have specialized in
particular occupations; rather there were often group or communal
activities. As the division of labour developed, and as people began
to specialize in different occupational activities, a surplus began to
develop. Exchange of products became necessary, and this created
the possibility of alienation. At this stage, production was generally
small scale and exchange mostly at a local level, so that control over
production was close to the producer.
The development of private property creates a different
situation. With private property and a system of exchange that
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expands to create a money economy, the possibility of gain becomes

vastly expanded. As capitalism developed, some became property
less and had to work as wage labourers.
After the middle ages, the alienation of the peasantry from
their land becomes a key part of this process. Once capitalism
became more fully developed, the different forms of alienation
became part of the normal functioning of a capitalist system.
The introduction of modern manufacturing technology results
in the accumulation of surplus/profit by the capitalist through
exploitation of labour. Though they produce the surplus, yet they do
not benefit from it. Accumulation means increase in demand of
labour; therefore, one may think that increase in demand of labour
may result in the increase of wages.
But the contradiction is that wages go down due to high
unemployment created by technology. This is where Marx talks
about the unemployed reserved army. When there is so much
unemployment it creates a condition called pauperization. Till the
time there is chronic pauperization in society it leads to polarization
i.e. convergence of wealth on one end of the pole and an
accumulation of poverty on the other.
In his early works Marx called the distortions of human nature
that are caused by the domination of the worker by the “alien will”
of the capitalist alienation. Although it is the worker who feels
alienated in capitalist society, Marx’s basic analytical concern was
with the structures of capitalism that cause alienation.
Marx offers a theory of alienation rooted in social structure.
The general idea of alienation is simple: something is alienating when
what is or what should be familiar and connected comes to seem
foreign or disconnected. Because our species-being is our essence as
human beings, it should be something that is familiar. To the extent
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that we are unable to act in accordance with our species-being, we

become disconnected from our own nature. So, if work in a capitalist
society inhibits the realization of our species-being, then work is to
that extent alienating. And since we are being alienated from our
own nature, alienation is not merely a subjective feeling, but is about
an objective reality. While alienation is commonplace in capitalistic
society and dominates every institutional sphere such as religion,
economy and polity, its predominance in the work place assumes an
overriding importance for Marx.

Alienation involves the following aspects:

1. Workers are alienated from other human beings:
In a capitalist economy, workers must compete with each other
for jobs and raises. But just as competition between businesses
brings down the price of commodities, competition between workers
brings down wages. And so, it is not the proletariat who benefits
from this competition, but capitalists. This is not only materially
damaging to workers; it estranges them from each other.
Humans are free beings and are able to not only transform the
world themselves, but to cooperate in order to transform the world
in more sophisticated and helpful ways. As such, they should see
each other as allies, especially in the face of a capitalist class who
seeks to undermine worker solidarity for its own benefit.
But under capitalism workers see each other as opposing
competition. Since capitalism reduces labour to a commodity to be
traded on the market rather than a social relationship, workers,
often strangers are forced to work side by side. Even if workers on
the assembly line a close friend, the nature of the technology makes
for a great deal of isolation. The workers are often forced into
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outright competition with each other in order to extract maximum

profit and to prevent development of any social relationship.

2. Alienation from the product itself: -

The product of their labour does not belong to the workers, to
be used by them in order to satisfy basic needs. Instead, the product,
like the process that resulted in its production, belongs to the
capitalists, who may use it in any way they wish. Thus, the workers
are alienated not only from the productive activities but also from
the objects of those activities.
Capitalists need not do any labor themselves asby owning the
means of production, they control the profit of the firm they own,
and are enriched by it. But they can only make profit by selling
commodities, which are entirely produced by workers. Thus, the
products of the worker’s labor strengthen the capitalists, whose
interests are opposed to that of the proletariat. Workers do this as
laborers, but also as consumers:
Whenever labourers buy commodities from capitalists they
strengthen the position of the capitalists. This again stands in
opposition to the workers’ species-being. Humans produce in
response to our needs; but for the proletariat at least, strengthening
the capitalist class is surely not one of those needs.

3. Workers are alienated from the act of labour:

Because capitalists own the firms that employ workers, it is
they, not the workers, who decide what commodities are to be
made, how they are made, and in what working conditions they are
made. As a result, work is often dreary, repetitive, and even
dangerous. Such work may be suitable for machines, or beings
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without the ability to consciously and freely decide how they want to
work, but it is not suitable for human beings.

Enduring this for an extended period of time means that one

can only look for fulfilment outside of one’s work; while “the activity
of working, which is potentially the source of human self-definition
and human freedom, is degraded to a necessity for staying alive.”
Such that the work becomes a meaningless activity, offering little or
no intrinsic satisfaction. The workers do not work for themselves in
order to satisfy their own needs. Instead they work for capitalists,
who pay them a subsistence wage in return for the right to use the
workers in any way they see fit.

Impact of Alienation:

 Structure of manufacturing turns workers into crippled

monstrosities by forcing them to work on minute details rather
than allowing them to use all their capabilities.
 Natural relationship with head and hand is broken in capitalism
so that only few do headwork and most do handwork.
 The monotony of doing the same specialized task over and over
again because of which human beings especially workers are no
longer creative but are oriented solely toward owning and
possessing objects.
 According to Marx alienation can be seen as the opposite of
what people can potentially be. Marx argued that capitalism is
an inverted world, in which those who should be on the top are
relegated to the bottom.
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 The reality of life in capitalism is hidden while illusion is seen as

a fact. Therefore, we can say that the worker is the victim of
exploitation at the hands of the bourgeois.
 The worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes
indeed the most wretched of commodities. The more the
works spends himself, the less he has of himself. The worker
puts his life into the object he creates but the very object
becomes an instrument of alien purpose and strengthens the
hand of his exploiters.
 In short, the worker spends his life and produces everything not
for himself but for the powers that manipulate him. While
labour may produce beauty, luxury and intelligence, for the
labourer/worker it produces only the opposite-deformity,
misery and uncertainty.

Solution to alienation:
 In order to end alienation, it is necessary to abolish private
property and abolish the relationship between private property
and wage labour. For Marx, the abolition of private property
removes the cause of alienation, and to accomplish this the
workers have to be emancipated from a system of private
property and wages.
 Since other forms of inequality and servitude are a result of
this, as workers emancipate themselves, this creates "universal
human emancipation. Marx connects alienation with the
division of labour, wages and private property.
 Marx did discuss alienation in his later writings, partly because
of the way that other writers used the term and partly because
he developed other concepts. Marx objected to the philosophic
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view of alienation, instead seeing alienation as rooted in actual

historical developments. In the Manuscripts Marx wrote about
labour, political economy and alienation, moving back and forth
between the approaches of Feuerbach and the political
economists.
 In his later writings, political economy becomes the dominant
form of analysis, and some writers have argued that the
concept of alienation becomes transformed into the concept of
surplus value. Alienation is the expression of what happens in
the labour process, but the objectification also takes on a
concrete form, that of surplus value. That is, surplus labour is
extracted from the worker, the products created by this surplus
labour are taken away from the worker, and the value created
by this labour is transformed into profits and capital. These
latter come to dominate the worker. It was only later that Marx
worked out this more systematic political economic approach.

Criticisms of Theory of Alienation: -

(i) The explanation was not well worked out in terms of its
implications and how it might be eliminated. The solution of
communism has not occurred, and does not seem a likely prospect in
the near future.
(ii) Marx's approach to the study of alienation helps explain a lot of
what does occur in labour markets, and alienation is an important
concept in the sociology of labour. At the same time, living and
working conditions and the structure of the labour market have
changed considerably since the time when Marx was writing. The
worst conditions he describes are felt by some, but not by all
workers. The division of labour has vastly expanded, with different
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types of effects for different segments of working class, and with

different working classes in different countries.
(iii) Marx deals only with work for capitalists, seeing the roots of
alienation only in exchange of labour and private property. Similar
feelings and causes of estrangement and alienation may be related
to ethnicity or race (alienation from the economic system, by being
left out of the system), region (Prairie or western alienation, which
may be tied more to the distribution, rather than production, of the
surplus) or other aspects of society that are not directly tied to
production. In addition, by considering only labour in the market,
Marx ignores all aspects of life other than this -- in the home,
relations between sexes, relations between those of different ages,
etc.
Many of these social relations have effects that are very similar to
the aspects Marx is discussing. Work and labour as alienating refer
only to work done in the capital-labour relationship. But work in
general and production may be alienating in some of the same
senses as Marx discusses.
(iv) Weber used rationalization and bureaucracy to describe some of
the ways that people feel trapped. Durkheim used the division of
labour and anomie to describe the sense of rootlessness and
disconnection that people felt from society. What is interesting is
that many of the same types of effects that Marx observed were
important for later sociologists to explain as well -- although these
later sociologists used different terms and had different explanations
for these same or similar phenomena.
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CONCLUSION:
In spite of weaknesses, the concept of Alienation has proved to
be a very useful and fruitful one. It is widely used today in politics, in
social psychology, studies of labour and work, and so on. For Marx's
system itself, the analysis of alienation is associated with the early
stage of his writings. The analysis of alienation allowed him to pull
together his philosophical background, his observations of early
nineteenth century capitalism, his interest in political issues, and his
first forays into a discussion of political economy.
In the Marxian system, alienation becomes transformed into
exploitation and surplus value, and it is the latter that the late Marx’s
contribution was to provide a systematic analysis of alienation, and
show how it had material origin, being rooted in the organization of
labour and private property.
His theoretical approach is also evident in the study of
alienation, with a dialectical analysis combining elements from
various other writers, but developing a new approach to the study of
alienation. One may find great inspiration in the idea that true
fulfilment can come from creative and meaningful work. Marx’s
theory of alienation provides a conceptual framework for
understanding the nature and cause of these experiences, and
assures us that these subjective experiences are about an objective
reality – and, crucially, a reality we can change.
Thus, the theory of alienation like other tenants of Marxism,
gives a scientific way to implement socialism. But we have to be
careful while implementing Marxist views since this philosophy has
been used by totalitarian governments which view themselves as
“vanguard of Marxist revolution” to initate mass atrocities by the
state in order to remove political opponents.
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Karl Marx’s political and philosophical thought left a mark in the

subsequent intellectual, economic and political history. His
entire life was spent in writing and fighting against class conflict
in the society, Capitalism and the unequal distribution of wealth.
Till today, many intellectuals, labour unions, artists and political
parties worldwide are influenced by Marx's work, with many
modifying or adapting his ideas. Marx is believed to be one of
the principal architects of modern social science.

Today, when 0.6% of the world population holds 39.3% of the

world wealth, Marx is needed more than ever before. Focusing
specifically on India, top 10% of India holds 77% of the total
national wealth of the country. These facts prove that Marx ‘was’
required, ‘is’ required and will be ever required until a day comes
when everyone will have an equal share of everything.
It can be safe to conclude that, A state must thus, retain
democratic welfare values while implementing Marxist
administration.

“In a higher phase of communist society, ... — only then then can
the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and
society inscribe on its banners:

From each according to his ability, to each

according to his needs!”
…………….KARL Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program (1875)
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BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1.INTRODUCTION TO POLITICS BY ANDREW HEYWOOD

2.ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA-ARTICLE ABOUT MARXISM
3.CHROME IAS.COM
4.1000WORD PHILOSOPHY.COM

-----------SUBMITTED BY: -R BHASKAR CHAITANYA RAO

ROLL NUMBER-1702
CLASS-B.A. (HONOURS) POLITICAL SCIENCE
SEMESTER-1
SUBMITTED TO: -INDERJIT SINGH SIR
SUBJECT-UNDERSTANDING POLITICAL THEORY
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