Marxist Alienation Theory: Critique of Capitalism

Marx's Critique of Feuerbach and Hegelian Idealism

Marx's critique of Feuerbach challenged the Hegelian idealistic philosophy in their interpretation of dialectics, replacing the *spirit* with *matter*.

Religious Alienation According to Feuerbach

Feuerbach understood that the starting point for a philosophical explanation of reality in its development is not the Spirit, but Nature. He posited that human beings have created God in their own image and likeness. This God, created by humans, becomes objectified. Feuerbach termed this process "religious alienation," giving it a negative connotation.

Marx was more radical than Feuerbach, seeing Feuerbach's materialism as still abstract for maintaining religious sentiment.

Socioeconomic Alienation in Capitalist Production

In the system of capitalist industrial production, human labor becomes wage labor. Under these conditions, the worker sees their work as an alien force that opposes them, something foreign, as their work is for another. In this situation, Marx argued, the relationship between humans and their work is reversed. The analysis of political and economic alignment contains a negative sense.

Political Alienation

To understand and transform, we must analyze the relationship between humans and reality. The analysis of human activity is needed to develop a new scientific theory of society. According to Marx, political systems must meet the basic needs of humans and promote the common good.

The Concept of Alienation

The term "alienation" has come to mean the general sense of estrangement from others, of losing control over oneself. It refers to the process by which human activity and the products of this activity escape the control of humans and dominate them. People should also be able to decide on the outcome of their activity. Historically, alienation is the loss of control over oneself.

Alienation and the Relations of Production

The only possibility left is to put one's work capacity at the disposal of others. The relations of production pit the bourgeois owners of the means of production against the proletariat, who only provide labor. From this perspective, the Enlightenment's emphasis on the ideas of freedom and progress is not only the ideological reflection of the bourgeois interest in exploiting the worker.

Political, Philosophical, and Religious Alienation

Politically, humans are alienated and dispossessed of their responsibility because the state machinery only defends the interests of the ruling class. Similarly, philosophical and moral systems, as well as religion, are present in a life of alienation, of which they are servants.