Question

According to Karl Marx, workers in a capitalist economy are alienated from the product or products they produce because all of the above for the most part they could never afford to buy those products. specialization has them focusing on one small step in a complex production process. they have no part in conceptualizing those products.

Answer 1

Answer:

Living most of his life in Britain during the Industrialization period, Karl Marx noted that the only party who is benefiting from capitalism is Bourgeoisie (Those who own means of productions) not the Proletariat (workers who sell their labor for wages) as he looked at the society which was in contradiction, that is " In the country so rich, how could so many people be so poor ". He in that context blamed capitalism for creating alienation.

Explanation:

He defined Alienation as 'the experience of isolation and misery resulting from powerlessness'. Further, Karl Marx also noted that Proletariat (workers) are nothing more than a source of labor to the capitalist as they can be fired and hired at the will of those capitalists. And said that Capitalism has also made human a machine as they cannot learn much from it because they do sets of repeating similar tasks every day as from day 1 which is also nowadays referred to specialization (getting good at one skill) and results in dissatisfaction of workers and increase their powerlessness (the feeling that they have little or no control over their situation).

There are 4 types of alienation resulted from capitalism.

1. Alienation from products of work: Marx argued that as more efforts a worker put in manufacturing the particular product the more he gets away from it because the product which these workers produce doesn't belong to them they belong to the people who own the resources i.e Capitalists and they sell it to gain profit.
2. Alienation from other workers: Since specialization has created a never-ending cycle of doing the same tasks everyday workers engage in them so deeply that they don't even realize that someone else is working as well in the same field. Workers don't have a sincere bond between them. A good example of this would a big factory where there are many departments and the worker of the marketing department doesn't get to know the worker in the management department.
3. Alienation from human potential: As stated in the first paragraph that capitalism ruins the Gains of the job ( Learning, enjoying, satisfaction ) so the worker doesn't relate to it or is satisfied with it rather he is just fulfilling the requirement of the capitalist i-e producing. In result, he doesn't care for his health or just feels exhausted while trying hard to earn personal and little incentives.
4. Alienation from the act of working: Since workers don't have any say in how to make, what to make, they are not satisfied with the way what they work and have become machines.