Socially defined relationship of production is what determines freedom of human beings. Work being important and a primary human activity, it is where his/her potential is fulfilled creatively or distorted in the form of alienation. Marx identifies the capitalist mode of production based on private property and private ownership of means of production as against fulfilment of human essence and self-realization. In his ‘On the Jewish Question’ (1843), Marx talked about abolishing private property and social ownership of means of production as only a means of human freedom. However, it was the Economic and Philosophical Manuscript of 1844 (EPM), a draft of Marx’s study of economic pillars of capitalist society and examination of bourgeois economist, that presented his critical view on ‘production as social process’, material basis of society and class relations. However, Marx has devoted a significant portion of the EPM in analysing what he calls, ‘Estranged Labour’.51 Concept of estranged labour is critical and germane to understanding Marx’s view on human freedom. ‘Estranged’ stands for ‘alienation’. Simply, ‘alienation means that man is cut off from his work’.52 As such, one is not happy and satisfied either with the work one is doing or with the product that is one is creating.
How does this happen? Hegel has used alienation as a concept in terms of movement of spirit and its embodiment in the state. However, Marx though influenced by Hegel and also by Feuerbach, used alienation or estrangement to portray the plight of the human being in capitalist society. As we have noted, for Marx, work provided the most important and primary means for fulfilling basic needs and also expressing one’s individuality. As such, in producing an object, one engages in a creative and self-fulfilling manner. Basically, one produces not for earning profit but for the satisfaction of one’s needs and also the needs of others in a social relationship. This is as if one is expressing oneself in the work and its products.
However, this cannot happen in a system of production, which is based on private ownership and is dominated by the profit motive. The labour produces not for his/her and other human beings’ needs, but for profit. The object produced is no more a reflection of a worker’s creative being, but alien objectified labour. This means the object produced is something that is produced for profit on demand of capital. It is the basis of surplus for the capitalist and exploitation of the worker himself/herself. Now, the worker produces not for self-satisfaction and fulfilment of self-needs and needs of fellow beings but for capitalist surplus. Workers’ own products become the basis for his/her exploitation. The product becomes alien to the worker. The labour process loses its creative substance, and is not attractive to the worker because production is not based on universal needs but on the capitalist surplus motive. Marx forcefully states that ‘the worker is related to the product of his labour as to an alien object’.53 The product is no more a creative fulfillment but an alien object.
Thus, in a capitalist system based on private property and ownership and driven by the profit/surplus motive, production and work is not for self-realization and self-fulfilment or creative reflection but for alien cause, surplus making. This is dehumanizing and inimical to human freedom. But how does it affect human freedom? Alienation expresses itself in four ways: (i) alienation from product of labour or the object produced means one does not find satisfaction and self-fulfilment in products of one’s own labour. Further, not able to express one’s true self in the work process, as it is no more a social activity but rather a controlled private activity, there is alienation from work; (ii) Since there is alienation from the work process and it is no more a social activity, one is alienated from other fellow workers; (iii) being an alien activity which is also routinized and monotonous, one is alienated from their human or essential nature also; and (iv) one is also alienated from oneself or true self because of not being able to express one’s true or creative self through the work and product.
As a result of multiple alienation, workers become alienated and lose their true self. Creative and human faculties become subordinated to an alien production process. Essence of human beings is lost and there is no freedom. In the capitalist system, worker is reduced to the domination of the realm of necessity and there is no chance for realizing the true self. Marx attributes this to commodification of products with introduction of money as a medium of exchange. Products of labour become tradable commodities and no more creative reflection of labour. In fact, not only product of labour, labour itself also becomes a commodity. In the capitalist system, a human being loses the human essence and there is no freedom worth its value.
Concept of estranged labour or alienation presents a humanist perspective of Marx. It reflected his concern for degeneration of human beings because of private property and private ownership of means of production. Marx advocated abolition of private property and private means of production as a solution for this. Establishment of socialist means of production would restore the creative freedom of human beings. Freedom also requires leap from the realm of necessity. While the liberal position seeks to present that freedom and liberty is possible within the capitalist mode of production, the Marxian position maintains that there is no possibility of freedom in capitalist system.
However, alienation as a causal factor of restricting freedom did not find much mention in the writings of Engels or Lenin. However, with publication of George Lukacs’s History and Class Consciousness, alienation becomes an analytical concept in the Marxian perspective. Some of the writers, such as Milovan Djilas, maintained that even in the socially owned means of production in communist countries (now ex-communist countries), labour was not free, as there had developed control of a small group of elite. However, Marx’s concern for human freedom as the ‘development of human potential for its own sake’ realized by the experience of creative labour working with fellow beings for the satisfaction of needs, could be treated as a concern for development of a multidimensional human being. His is a humanist perspective and a statement of revival and restoration of human dignity and freedom.
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