Re: Estrangement of Labor

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> I am reading most of Marx's work for the first time. I am currently 
> struggling to grasp the Estrangement of Labor as Marx relates it in the 
> Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Can anyone explain it 
> succinctly and in simple terms? I am interested in the relationship 
> between the estrangement of labor as it is linked to man's relationship 
> to/as nature, and the development of private property. I understand that 
> all of this leads to the development of capital as well as its 
> concurrent philosophies, but something is not clicking for me. I intend 
> to read Engel's The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State 
> next. Will this book help clarify the estrangement of labor idea?
>
> Thanks
>
> Jayson Funke

I don't know. This seems fairly cut and dried to me:

"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."

I should add that I first ran across this quote in John Fowles's "French 
Lieutenant's Woman", where it serves as the epigraph to one of the 
chapters. When I came across it, I typed it out and put it up on my 
cubicle wall at the First National Bank of Boston in 1971.

That was some fucked-up place. I was up in Boston on assignment for the 
SWP. At the bank, which was filled with Harvard graduates, they used to 
say, "Louis is up here from NYC" which somebody once explained to me was 
a way of saying that I was a Jew.

I got a big laugh one day. In the cafeteria there's a big whiteboard 
that was used for business meetings. Somebody wrote "Capitalism destroys 
men's soul" or words to that effect. Underneath it, however, they had 
also written "Do Not Erase". It took a consultation of security guards 
and upper management 3 hours after the words appeared to finally get 
them erased. Says volumes about the corporate mind.



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