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[XXIII.]
....Let us now take
a closer look at objectification, at the production of the worker, and
in it at the estrangement, the loss of the object, of his product, that
this entails.
The workers can create nothing without nature, without the sensual external
world. It is the material in which his labour realises itself, in which
it is active and from which, and by means of which, it produces.
But just as nature provides labour with the means of life, in the sense
of labour cannot live without objects on which to exercise itself, so
also it provides the means of life in the narrower sense, namely the means
of physical subsistence of the worker.
The more the worker appropriates the external world, sensual nature,
through his labour, the more he deprives himself of the means of life
in two respects: firstly, the sensual external world becomes less and
less an object belonging to his labour, a means of life of his labour;
and, secondly, it becomes less and less a means of life in the immediate
sense, a means for the physical subsistence of the worker.
....In these two respects, then, the worker
becomes a slave of his object;
firstly, in that he receives an object of labour, i.e., he receives work,
and, secondly, in that he receives means of subsistence. Firstly, then,
so that he can exists as a worker, and secondly as a physical subject.
The culmination of this slavery is that it is only as a worker that he
can maintain himself as a physical subject and only as a physical subject
that he is a worker.
....(The estrangement of the worker in his
object is expressed according to the laws of political economy in the
following way: the more the worker produces, the less he has to consume;
the more value he creates, the more worthless he becomes; the more his
product is shaped, the more misshapen the worker; the more civilised his
object, the more barbarous the worker; the more powerful the work, the
more powerless the worker; the more intelligent the work, the duller the
worker and the more he becomes a slave of nature.)
....Political economy conceals the estrangement
in the nature of labour by ignoring the direct relationship between the
worker (labour) and production. It is true that labour produces marvels
for the rich, but it produces privation for the worker. It produces palaces,
but hovels for the worker. It produces beauty, but deformity for the worker.
It replaces labour by machines, but it casts some of the workers back
into barbarous forms of labour and turns others into machines. It produces
intelligence, but it produces idiocy and cretinism for the worker.
....The direct relationship of labour to
its products is the relationship of the worker to the objects of his production.
The relationship of the rich man to the objects of production and to production
itself is only a consequence of this first relationship, and confirms
it. Later, we shall consider this second aspect. Therefore, when we ask
what is the essential relationship of labour, we are asking about the
relationship of the worker to production.
Until now, we have considered the estrangement, the alienation of the
worker, only from one aspect--i.e., his relationship to the products of
his labour. But estrangement manifests itself not only in the result,
but also in the act of production, within the activity of production itself.
How could the product of the worker's activity confront him as something
alien if it were not for the fact that in the act of production he was
estranging himself from himself? After all, the product is simply the
resume of the activity, of the production. So if the product of labour
is alienation, production itself must be active alienation, the alienation
of activity, the activity of alienation. The estrangement of the object
of labour merely summarizes the estrangement, the alienation in the activity
of labour itself.
....What constitutes the alienation of labour?
....Firstly, the fact that labour is external
to the worker--i.e., does not belong to his essential being; that he,
therefore, does not confirm himself in his work, but denies himself, feels
miserable and not happy, does not develop free mental and physical energy,
but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind. Hence, the worker feels himself
only when he is not working; when he is working, he does not feel himself.
He is at home when he is not working, and not at home when he is working.
His labour is, therefore, not voluntary but forced, it is forced labour.
It is, therefore, not the satisfaction of a need but a mere means to satisfy
needs outside itself. Its alien character is clearly demonstrated by the
fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, it is shunned
like the plague. External labour, labour in which man alienates himself,
is a labour of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Finally, the external
character of labour for the worker is demonstrated by the fact that it
belongs not to him but to another, and that in it he belongs not to himself
but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human
imagination, the human brain, and the human heart, detaches itself from
the individual and reappears as the alien activity of a god or of a devil,
so the activity of the worker is not his own spontaneous activity.
....It belongs to another, it is a loss of
his self.
....The result is that man (the worker) feels
that he is acting freely only in his animal functions--eating, drinking,
and procreating, or at most in his dwelling and adornment--while in his
human functions, he feels to be nothing more than animal. What is animal
becomes human and what is human becomes animal.
It is certainly true that eating, drinking, and procreating, etc., are
also genuine human functions, but when abstracted from other aspects of
human activity, and turned into final and exclusive ends, they are animal.
....We have considered the act of estrangement
of practical human activity, of labour, from two aspects: (1) the relationship
of the worker to the product of labour as an alien object that has power
over him. The relationship is, at the same time, the relationship to the
sensual external world, to natural objects, as an alien world confronting
him, in hostile opposition. (2) The relationship of labour to the act
of production within labour. This relationship is the relationship of
the worker to his own activity as something which is alien and does not
belong to him, activity as passivity [Leiden], power as impotence, procreation
as emasculation, the worker's own physical and mental energy, his personal
life--for what is life but activity?--as an activity directed against
himself, which is independent of him and does not belong to him. Here
we have self-estrangement, as compared with previously the estrangement
of the object [Sache].
[XXIV.]
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