Karl Marx: Concepts of Value, Profit, and Alienation

Karl Marx: Value, Profit, and Alienation

Value and Profit

• Merchandise has a use value and an actual exchange value, which is an amount of money that depends on the working time necessary to produce the goods.
• Goods also have a market exchange value, which depends on the law of supply and demand.
• The difference between the market value of the product and its real value (or cost price) is the capitalist's profit.
• There is also a profit that comes from the difference between the actual value of work and the wages paid to workers.

Alienation

Marx believes that alienation occurs particularly within a specific social class: the proletariat. For Marx, there are historical and socioeconomic conditions that cause alienation.

Marx's concept of man is active, productive, and practical. It is characteristic for humans to transform their environment to survive through their tools, transforming nature through the creation of goods for their livelihood – this is labor. Man is projected into the product of his labor. In this way, the producer acknowledges himself reflected in his work. However, the product no longer belongs to the producer but to the owner of the means of production, the capitalist. This makes the producer alienated. This alienation is not natural but the consequence of the relations of production of a historical moment, and it occurs especially under capitalism.

Forms of Alienation

1. Economic Alienation: The worker suffers in various ways:
   • In relation to their own essence. The creative work that distinguishes humans from animals is suppressed in capitalist society.
   • In relation to their own activity. Labor is forced and repetitive, preventing self-realization. It is an activity not chosen, making the worker feel like a commodity in the hands of the capitalist.
   • In relation to the product of their labor. The product eventually enslaves the workers and increases inequalities.
   • In relation to the bourgeois capitalist who profits from their work.
2. Social and Political Alienation: Economic alienation forms the basis for the division of society into classes and the separation between citizens and the State. The State always represents the interests of the ruling class.
3. Religious Alienation: Religion, says Marx, is "the opium of the people" because it offers consolation for misery and injustice, but does so in a world beyond this, acting as a brake on the transformation of life here and now.