Questions on Karl Marx Alienation, and J.S.Mill on Liberty Dissertation

Questions on Karl Marx Alienation, and J.S.Mill on Liberty - Dissertation Example For them to survive, the labourers had to submit to wage labour, a new form of exploitation. Capitalism involved a fundamental adjustment in the relations between men, the materials of production, and the instruments of production. These fundamental adjustments meant that every aspect of human life underwent transformation (Allan 2004, p. 3). In the modern world, the reality of alienation is prevalent and can be seen everywhere. In simple terms, alienation means the separation from what is desirable or desired. Marx analyzes the alienation idea in the context of capitalist means of production with a goal of making profits. Marx identified the process of individual finding valuable things in nature and then taking them since they were freely available. The people modified these natural resources through working on them, thus enhancing their usefulness. Alienation has origins of the production of surplus value after satisfaction of all the immediate and basic needs. Surplus value impli ed wealth, and it became a product when some individuals realized that it could be used as an exchange for commodities if there is a shortage in supply of commodities (Allan 2004, p. 6). According to Karl Marx, there are four aspects of man’s alienation that arise in a capitalist society. The aspects include the product of labor, fellow human beings relations, the labor process, and human nature. Marx argued that the product of labor of the employee is alienated from the object he or she produces since it is bought, possessed and disposed off by somebody else (the capitalist). In all societies, individuals employ their creative capabilities to produce commodities, which they exchange and sell amongst themselves. Marx believes that, in capitalism, this becomes an alienated activity since the worker cannot utilize the products that he or she produces to engage in other productive activities. Marx argues that there is the intensification in the alienation of the labourer from wh at he produces, when the products of labour begin to dominate the labourer (Allan 2004, p. 12). The worker is paid less than the value he creates. He argues that a portion of what the labourer produces is appropriated by his employer leading to exploitation of the worker. Workers employ creative labour in the products they produce, but they cannot obtain any creative labour to replace it. Marx also describes the labour process as the second factor of alienation. Marx recognized this as a lack of control over the production process. He argues that lack of control in the process of work transforms the capacity of workers to work innovatively into the opposite and the laborer experiences activity as passivity. The worker views his or her actions as independent of himself or herself and does not consider these actions as belonging to him or her any longer (Allan 2004, p. 15). The fetishism of commodities refers to individuals’ misconceptions of the products of labour once they en ter the exchange; this misconception accords to forms of leading roles. The metamorphosis of value is a story about the man, his productive capacity and products, and what happens to these products in a capitalist society. Misreading this tale as one about the activities of inanimate objects, attributing them qualities which could only be possessed by human beings, positing living relations for what is dead, is what Marx refers as the fetishism of co