Bottomore,

Marx. Karl and T. B Bottomore.

and Rubel, T.B.
M (1963).
(Trans.). (1963)
Marx,
Karl Karl.,
Marx Bollomore,
::selected 1.
T. B.
writingsB.in & Rubel,
Rubel, Maximilien. (1956)
Marx,
Karl Karl.,
Marx Bottomore,
selected writings in&sociology
sociology and socialphilosophy.
Maximilien.
& social philosophy.2nd ed.
(1956)
Karl Marx:
Middlesex
Karl Marx : selected
: Penguin.
selected writings
writings in
in sociology
sociology and social philosophy.
and social philosophy.
Harmondsworth. Middlesex : Penguin.
London:
London
Ch. : Walls.
Watts.
IV. "Capitalism and human alienation". pp. 167-177. pp167-177.
4. Marx, Karl. “Capitalism and human alienation”,
Ch.
Ch. 4.
4. "Capitalism
"Capitalism and and human
human alienation",
alienation", pp.
pp. 167-177.
167-177.

IV. OAPITALISM
CAPITALISM AND HUMAN
H U W ALIENATION
POLJTIGAL
POLITICAL economy begins with
economy the fact of private property;
it does
does not explain it.it. ItIt conceives
conceives the processes of of .private
·private
property, as as these occur in reality, in general and abstract
formulas which then Serve
formulas serve it as laws. It I t does not under-
these laws; that is, it does not show how they arise
stand these
out of the nature of private property.pr~perty. Politicd
Political economy
provides no explanation of the basis
provides ba-sis of the distinction of of
labour fromGom capital, of capital from &om land. When, for for"
example, the relation .of of wages to profit is defined, this is
explained in terms of the interests of capitalis&;
capitalists; in other
words, what should be explained is assumed. assumed. Similarly,
competition is referred to at every point, and is explained iin n
terms of external conditions.
terlllS conditions. Political economy tells us
nothing about the extent to which which· these external
enernal and
apparently accidental conditions are simply the expression
of a necessary development. We have seen how exchange
seems an accidental fact. The only moving forces
itself seems
economy recognizes are the lustfor
which political economy lust for gain and
seekers ofter
the war between seekers after gain, comjJetition.
com$etition.
Just because political economy fails fails to understand the
interconnections within this this movement, it was possible to
oppose the doctrine of competition to that of
oppose of monopoly, the
doctrine
doctrine of freedom
freedom of the crafts to that of
of the guilds, the
d o c h e of the division
doctrine division of landed property to. to that of of gxeat
great
fkeedom of the crafts, and the
estates, for competition, freedom
division oflanded
division of landed property were conceived only as accidental
consequences brought about by will and force,
consequences force, rather.
rather. than
as necessary,
as necessary, inevitable, and natural consequences consequ~nces of of
monopoly, the guild system, and feudal property. property.
EPM
EPM (18&)
(1844)
MEGA I/g,
1/3, pp. 81-2
81-Q
167
I 68 SOCIOLOGY OF CAPITALISM
.
. . political economy considers the jroletarian, i.e. the
individual who, without capital or ground rent, lives
entirely by his labour (a narrow, abstract labour), only as a
worker. I t is' ablk, therefore, to assert that the proletarian,
just like a horse, need only receive so much a> enables him
to work. I t does not consider him .in his leisure~time,as a
human being, but leaves such consideration to .th'e magis-
trate, doctors, religion, statistical tables,' p~l;tics, and the
parish beadle.
Let us now place ourselves-at a level above'that of political
economy, and try to answer, from the preceding arguments
given almost in the words of the economists, two questions :
( I ) What is the significance, in the development of humanity,
of this reduction of the greater part of mankind to mere
abstract labour ? (2) What errors do the reformers commit
who want either to raise wages in order to improve the con-
dition of the working class, or (like Proudhon) want to
consider equal wages as the aim of the social revolution?
Labour appears in political economy only in the form of
acquisitive activity.
EPM (1844)
MEGA 11.3,pp. 45-6
The relation of 'the worker to work also produces the
relation of the capitalist (or whatever one likes to call the
lord of labour) to work. Private property is therefore the
product, the necessary result, of alienated labour, of the
external relation of the worker to Nature and to himself. . .
We have, however, derived the concept of alienated labour
(alienated life) -from political economy, from an analysis of
the mouement of private property. But the analysis of this
concept shows that although private property appears to
be the basis and cause of alienated labour, it is rather a
consequence of the latter, just as the gods are fundamentally
CAPITALISh5. AND HUMAN ALIENATION 169
not the cause but the product of codusions of human reason.
At a later stage there is, however, a reciprocal influence.
EPM (18a)
MEGA 113, pp. 91-2
Every alienation of man from himself and from Nature
appears in the relation which he postulates between other
men and himself and Nature. Thus religious alienation is
necessarily exemplified in the relation between laity and
priest, or, since it is here a question of the spiritual world,
between the laity and a mediator. In the real world of
practice, this self alienation can only be expressed in the real,
practical relation of man to his fellow men. The medium
through which alienation occurs is itself a ' practical one.
Through alienated labour, therefore, man not only produces
his relation to the object, and to the process of production
as alien and hostile men; he also produces the relation of
other men to his production and his product, and the relation
between himself and other men.
EPM ( I 844)
MEGA 113, p. 91
However, alienation shows itself not merely in the resu1.t;
but also in the process, of production, within productive activity
itself. . ..
I n what does this alienation of labour consist? First,
that the work is external to the worker, that it is not a part of
his nature, that consequently he does not full3 himself in his
. work but denies himself, has a feeling of misery, not of well-
being, does not develop fieely a physical and mental energy,
but is physically exhausted and mentally debased. The
worker therefore feels himself at home only during 'his
leisure, whereas at work he feels homeless. His work is noC
voluntary but imposed, forced labour. It is not the satis-
faction of a need, but only a means for satisfying other needs.
Its alien character is clearly shown by the fact that as soon
as there is no physical or other compulsion it is avoided like
the plague. Finally, the alienated character of work for the
worker appears i n the fact that it is not..his w o ~ kbut work
for someone else, that in work he does not belong to himself
but to another person.
Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of human
fantasy, of the human brain and heart, reacts-independently,
that is, as an alien activity of gods or devils, upon the in-
dividual, s; the activity of the worker is not his spontaneous
activity. I t is another's activity, and a loss of his own
spontaneity.
EPM (1844.)
MEGA I/g, pp. 85-6
The more the worker expends himself in work, the more
powefil becomes the world of objects which he creates i n
face of himself, and the poorer he himself becomes i n his
inner life, the less he belongs to himself. I t is just the same
as in religion. The more of himself man attributes to God,
the less he has left in himself. The worker puts his life into
the object, and his life then belongs no longer to him but to
the object. The greater his activity, therefore, the less he
possesses. What is embodied in the product of his labour
is no longer his. The greater this product is, therefore, the
more he himself is diminished. The empping of the worker
into his product means not only that his labour becomes a n
object, takes on its own existence, but that it exists outside
him, independently, and alien to him, and that it stands
opposed to him as an autonomous power. The life which
he has given to the object sets itself against him as an aien
and hostile force.
EPM ( I 844)
MEGA 1/39 PP-83-4
The object produced by labour, its product, now stands
opposed to it as an alien being, as a power independent of the
producer. The product of labour is labour which. has been
embodied in an object, and turned into a physical thing;
this product is an objectzjkation (Vergegenstdndlichung) of
labour. The performance of work is at the same time its
objectification. This performance of work appears, in the
sphere of political economy, as a vitiation of the worker,
objectification as a loss and as sen%ude to the object, and
appropriation as alienation.
EPM ( I 84.4)
MEGA 113, p. 83
Political economy conceives the social life of men, their
active human life, their many-sided growth towards a com-
munal and genuinely human life, under the form of exchange
and trade. Sociep, says Destutt de Tracy, is a series of mu2-
tilateral exchanges. It is this movement of multilateral
integration. According to Adam Smith, societju is a com-
mercial enterprise. . Every one of its members is a salesman.
I t is evident how political economy establishes an alienated
form of social intercourse, as the tmce and original form, and
that which corresponds to human nature.
Economic studies fro& Marx's Nottbooh (1844-45)
MEeA 1/32 PP- 536-7
n/Iill's description of money as the intermedia? of exchange
is an excellent conceptualization of its nature. The nature
of money is not, in the Grst place, that i n it property is
alienated. but that the mediatie activity of human social action
by which man's products reciprocally complete each other,
is alienated and becomes the characteristic of 'a material thing,
money, which is external to man. When man exteriorizes
this mediatigg activity he is activ.e only as an exiled and de-
humanized being; the relation between things, and human
1'/2 S O C I O L O G Y OF CAPITALISM
activity with them, becomes the activity of a being outside
and above man. Through this alien intermediary-whereas
man himself should be the intermediary between men-
man sees his will, his activity and his relation to,pthers as a
power which is independent of him and of them. His
slavery therefore attains its peak. That this intermediav
becomes a real god is clear, since the intermediary-is the real
power over that which he mediates to me. His cult becomes
an end in itself. The objects, separated from this inter-
mediary, have lost their value. Thus they only have value
in so far as they represent it, whereas it seemed originally
that it only had value in so far as it represented them. This
reversal of the original relationship is inevitable. This
intermediary is thus the exiled, alienated essence of private
property, exteriorized private property, just as it is the
alienated exchange of human production with human pro-
duction and the alienated social activity of man. All the
qualities involved in the Goduction of this activity, which
really belong to man, are attributed to the intermediary.
Man himself becomes poorer, that is, separated from this
interniediary, as the intermediary becomes richer.
Economic Studiesfrom M&'S Xotebooks (18%-45)
MEGA 113, P. 531
Money, since it has the property of purchasing everything,
of appropriating objects to itself, is therefore the object par
excellence. The universal character of this property corre-
sponds to the omnipotence of money, which is regarded as
an omnipotent essence . . . money is the pander between
need and object, between human life and the means of
subsistence. But that which mediates my life, mediates also
the existence of other men for me. I t is for me the other
person. . . .
CAPITALISM-AND H U M A N A L I E N A T I O N I73
" Gold? yellow, glittering, precious gold? NO, gods,
I am no idle votarist : roots, you clear heavens !
Thus much of this will make black white; foul, fair;
Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant.
. ..
. . . . . . . . Why, this
Will lug your priests and servants from your sides ;
Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads :
This yellow slave
Will knit and break religions ; bless th'accurst ;
Make the hoar leprosy ador'd; place thieves,
And give them title, knee, and approbation,
With senators on the bench: this is it
That makes the wappen'd widow wed again;
She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores
Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices
To &'April day again. Come, damned earth,
Thou common whore of mankind, that putt'st odds
Among the rout of nations, I will make thee .
Do thy right nature."
(Tinzon of Athens, Shakespeare)
EPM (1844)
MEGA 1 3, pp. 145-6
Shalcespeal-e attributes to money two qualities :
I. I t is the visible deity, the transformation of all fiuman
and natural qualities into their opposite, the universal
confusion and inversion of things; it brings incom-
patibles into fraternity.
2. It is the universal whore, the universal pander between
men and nations.
The power to confuse and invert all human and natural
qualities, to bring about fraternization of incompatibles, the
diuine power of money, resides in its essence as the alienated
and exteriorized social life of men. I t is the alienated power
of Izuumanity.
What I as a man am unable to do, what therefore all my
individual faculties are unable to do, is made possible for
me by means of money. Money therefore turns each of these
faculties into something which in itself it is not, into its
ojjosite.
EPM (1844)
AGGA 113, pp. 147-8

I74 SOCIOLOGY OF CAPITALISM
The division of labour implies from the outset the division
of the prerequisitex of labour, tools and materials, and thus the
partitioning of accumulated capital among different
owners. This also involves the separation-of capital and
labour and the different forms of property *itself. The
more the div$ion of labour develops and accumulation
increases, the w e sharply this differentiation emerges.
Two facts aye revealed here. In the first place, ?the pro-
ductive forces appear to be completely independek and
severed f i o a the individuals and to constitute a self-sub-
sistent world alongside the individuals. The reason for
this is that the individual, whose forces they are, themselves
exist separated and in opposition to one another, while on
the other hand these forces are only real forces in the inter-
cause and association of these individuals. Thus there is
on the one hand a sum of productive forces which have, as it
were, assumed a material form and which are for the in-
dividuals concerned the forces, not of these individuals, but
of private property, and consequently of the individuals only
in so far as they are owners of private property. Never, i n
any earlier period, did the productive forces assume a form
so indifferent to the intercourse of individuals as individuals,
because in these periods their intercourse was still limited.
O n the other hand, confronting these productive forces is
the majority of individuals from whom these forces have
been sundered and who, robbed in this way of all the real
substance of life, have become abstract individuals, but who
by this very fact are enabled to enter into relation with each
other as individuals.
The only connection which they still have with the pro-
ductive forces and with their own existence, labour, has lost
for them any semblance of personal activity, and su~tains
their life only while stunting it. While in the earlier periods
personal activity and the production of material life were
separated in that they devolved upon different persons,
CAPITALISM ARD HUMAN ALIBNATION
I75
and while the production of material life because of the
limitations of the individuals themselves was still regarded
as a subordinate kind of personal activity, 'they now diverge
to such. .an extent that material life generally appears as the
aim while the production of this material life, labour (which
is now the only possible but, as we have seen, negative form
of personal acti~ty)appears as the means.
GI (184.5-6)
MEGA Xj5, pp. 56-7
. . , the mutual relations of the producers, within which
the social character of their labour affirms itself, take the
form of a social relation between the products.
The mystery of the commodity f o m , therefore; consists
in the fact that in it the social character of men" labour
appears to them as an objective characteristic, a social
natural quality of the labour product itself, and that con-
sequently the relation of the producers to the sum. total of
their own labour is presented to &em as a social relation,
existing not between themselves, but between the products
of their labour. Through this transference the products
of labour become commodities, social things whose qualities
are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by
the senses. In the same way the light from an object is
perceived by us not as the subjective excitation of our optic
nerve, but as the objective form of something outside the eye
itself. But, in the act of seeing, there is at all events, afi
actual passage of light from one thing to another, from the
external object to the eye. There is a physical relation
between physical things. But it is different with com-
modities. The commodity form, and the value relation
between the products of labour wbich stamps them as com-
modities, have absolutely no connection with their physical
properties and with the material relations arising therefrom.
I t is simply a definite social relation between men, that
1 7 ~ S O C I O L O G Y OP CAPITALISM CAPITALISM -AND IlUMAN A L I E N A T I O N I77
assumes, i n their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between that the social characteristics assumed by objects, or the
things. To find. an analogy, we must haxre recourse to the material forms assumed by the social qualities of labour 011
nebulous regions of the religious .world. .., I n that world the basis of a defiqite mode of production, are mere symbols,
the productions of the human brain appear as &dependent it is .at the same time asserted that these characteristics are
beings endowed with life, and entering i n t i r.elation both arbitrary fictions produced by human imagination. This
suiil~one another and with the human race. So it is, i n the was the mode of explanation in favour during the eighteenth
world of commodities, with the products of men's hands. century. Unable to account for the origin of the puzzling
This I call the fetishism which attaches itself to tkie products forms assumed by the social relations between men, people
of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and sought to deprive them of their strange appearance by
which .is therefore inseparable from the production of ascribing to them a conventional origin.
com&odities. Cu@itulI (1867)
This fetishism of commodities has its origin, as the fore- VA 1, PP. 96-7
going analysis has already shown, in the peculiar .social
character of the labour that produces them.
I t follows, &om the relation between alienated labour
Cu$ital X ( I 867)
and private property, that the emancipation of society from
VA 1, PP. 77-8
.private property, from servitude, takes the political form of
the emancipation of the working class, not in the sense that only
We have seen that the money-form is only the reflection,
the latter's emancipation is involved, but because this
in a single commodity, of the value relations between all
emancipation includes the emancipation of humanity as a
commodities. That money is a commodity is, therefore, a
whole. For all human servitude is involved in ale relation
new discovery only for those who, when they analyse it,
of the worker to production, and all the types of servitude
start fiorn its f d y developed form. The process of exchange
are only modifications or consequences of this relation.
gives to the commodity which is converted into money, not
EPM ( 1 8 4 )
its value, but its specific value-form. By confounding these MEGA 113, pp. 92-3
two distinct things some writers have been led to hold that
the value of gold and silver is imaginary. The fact that
money can, in certain functions, be replaced by mere
symbols of itsel& gave rise to that other mistaken notion,
that it is itself a mere symbol. Nevertheless, behind this
error lurked a presentiment that the money-form of an
object is not an inseparable part of that object, but is
simply the fsrm under which certain social relations manifest
themselves. I n this sense every commodity is a symbol,
since, in so far as i t is a value, it is only the material envelope
of the human labour spent upqn it. But while it is asserted