Think about any job that you have ever had (or, if you prefer, your “job” as a college student). To what extent would Marx’s arguments about the basic exploitive relationship between owners and laborers apply to your situation and experiences? In developing your answer, be sure to clearly identify (if you can) who the owner(s) is (are) and how they do (or do not) exploit the workers. Please keep in mind that “owner” means just that, that the person(s) owns the business/organization, etc. Being a manager at a business is not the same thing as being the owner (though an owner could manage a business). Typically, a manager (no matter how highly placed in the organization) is an employee (not owner).
(2) Using the same work example, see if you can find evidence of each of Marx’s four types of alienation. Tell us how these forms of alienation materialized (or did not materialize). If you do not see any of the types of alienation, tell us why you think you don’t. Are there aspects of the work environment that Marx did not foresee? If so, what are they?
(3) Now consider Marx’s views on false consciousness. What evidence might he see of it if he were alive today? What might be some widespread beliefs and/or assumptions that lead people not to question the role that capitalism might play in the production of social problems and human misery? In what ways might he see any of these beliefs being created and sustained?

Topic 5: Karl Marx on Property, Labor, and the Human Condition
We now turn from Comte’s vision of a society someday ruled by a benevolent coalition of scientists and industrialists to the theories of Karl Marx.
Background
Marx is an extremely important figure in the early and continuing development of sociological theory. He was born May 5, 1818 in Trier, Prussia (located in present day Germany, between Frankfurt and the French border). Most of his major theoretical works were published after 1840, during the sociology’s early formative years.
Ironically, Marx did not consider himself to be a sociologist. Moreover, unlike Comte, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber, Marx did not have a professional academic appointment. Although he earned a doctorate in philosophy, his intellectual views were too offensive to the political and academic establishment for him to be considered for a teaching position at a German university. After completing his doctoral studies, Marx worked for a time as a newspaper journalist (for the Rheinische Zeitung). During this time he met and befriended Friedrich Engels, the son of a wealthy textile manufacturer. Engels and Marx would collaborate throughout the rest of Marx’ life. Eventually, Marx’s critical editorials about the Prussian government made it uncomfortable for him to remain in Prussia and he moved to Paris in 1844. While in Paris, the Prussian government brought charges of treason against Marx and he was forced to leave France. He settled in Belgium for a time. In 1848, Marx and Engels returned to Germany to participate in the revolution against the Prussian State. The revolution lost steam and Marx eventually fled Prussia for London, where he lived the rest of his life. He is buried, alongside several other illustrious folks, in London’s Highgate Cemetery.
To fully understand Marx’s theoretical perspective, it is useful to consider his academic experiences at university, as well as the intellectual and political climate within Prussia at the time. Marx did most of his undergraduate and all of his graduate work at the University of Berlin: the flagship university in Prussia (and perhaps Europe) at the time. UB had been home to the philosopher Friedrich Hegel, who was widely recognized as the most influential European philosopher in the late-18th and early 19thcentury era. Hegel’s thought dominated the intellectual atmosphere at UB, as well as within higher education within Prussia. In addition, his ideas were revered by state leaders, who saw Hegel’s philosophy as a source of legitimacy for the Prussian regime.
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Young Karl and the Ghost of Friedrich Hegel
The ideas of young Marx would take shape against the backdrop of Hegel’s philosophy. Marx ultimately would develop a critique of Hegel that would result in the state and intellectual backlash that drove him from Prussia. But despite this critique, Marx’s style of thought and logic closely followed those of Hegel.
Let us begin with a brief outline of Hegel’s philosophy, especially the parts that were most influential for Marx’s work. A simple way to engage Hegel’s work is to consider an important philosophical project of the time: to develop a logical proof (based on reason) for the existence of God. Remember we are in the age of reason and the Enlightenment shift away from religious explanation. Up to that point, the argument that God existed rested completely on faith. The usual explanation in Christian circles (which included Prussia) was that God lived in a perfect world (supernatural and infinite) from which he exerted influence over the world of people (natural and finite). The only way to argue that God existed was to make the leap of faith to believe that his unseen, perfect world actually existed. Well, faith was “irrational” to the Enlightenment philosophers. The ultimate accomplishment for philosophers would be to develop a logical proof for God’s existence that didn’t require the leap of faith, but rested completely on the power of human reason.
Hegel attacked the problem of reconciling the existence of a perfect (infinite) but unseen world with our imperfect (finite) natural world, by exploring the extent to which each needed the other in order to exist. His logic went something like this: one can only know imperfection if there is perfection by which to compare it. Similarly, something can only be infinite if there is also something finite from which we can compare the state of infiniteness. Are we getting confused yet? Another way to think about it is that one does not know the meaning of “light” unless one can also experience “dark.” How else do we know to define anything? If it was always light, we wouldn’t pay any attention to it, so we would not define it. Well, for Hegel, the mere existence of an imperfect, finite world necessarily implied the existence of its opposite (or negation), the perfect, finite realm of God.
Well you may think that Hegel just played around with words, but this logical sleight of hand was convincing in its day. In philosophical jargon, Hegel had made a dialectical argument: noting that a thing could only exist in relation to its own negation (again, think light versus dark, a situation in which neither has meaning without reference to the other). Thus, heaven could not exist without there being, simultaneously, its own negation: our imperfect world. Pushing the argument to its extreme, might lead one to argue that each state is merely one-half of a larger whole. Hegel himself went down that road, arguing that our experience of the “natural, finite” world as “real” was an illusion. From his perspective, we were, in fact, already part of the infinite and perfect realm. Our earthly experience was therefore, not “real” (at least as we conceived of reality) but a dimension of God’s perfect world. In addition, our physical and material experiences were thus illusions. To Hegel, we could only make a connection to God’s world through our mental
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faculties (in his thinking, he had just done it using the tools of philosophy). Therefore, Hegel believed that the abstract realm of ideas was the place to find God and thus was a more important aspect of human existence than our physical experiences and conditions. This line of thought lies squarely within the bounds of what is known as philosophical idealism.
Unsurprisingly, the repressive Prussian government loved this idealistic line of argument. The heavy-handed Prussian political regime made its claim to legitimacy through its close ties to the church, which argued that it was, itself, a reflection of God’s will. Therefore, Hegel’s philosophy supported the view that the political and religious status quo was essentially perfect (since our world was a manifestation of God’s perfection). It was no surprise that the Prussian government gave Hegel a hero’s funeral upon his death, a few years prior to Marx’s arrival on the political and intellectual scene.
From Hegel’s Idealism to Marx’s Dialectical Materialism
Marx had mixed feelings about Hegel’s insights. On one hand, he liked Hegel’s use of dialectical thinking. However, on the other hand, he rejected Hegel’s view that ideas were more important than our physical conditions. Marx believed instead that our material/physical experiences were much more important than our ideas. After all, who can think deeply about philosophical matters while starving to death? In Marx’s view, people needed to satisfy their basic material survival needs before engaging the realm of ideas. Marx maintained this materialist (as opposed to idealist) emphasis throughout all of his writings.
So how did Marx combine dialectical thinking with his preference for materialism (“dialectical materialism”)? He did it by arguing that humans always had to produce the means for their own sustenance. As human communities took shape, their inhabitants would cooperate to produce enough goods and shelter to support life. Marx argued that at some point, people began holding private property (kind of like an “original sin” in Marx’s view). Once that occurred, Marx saw that a relation of power was inserted into the act of producing sustenance. Property (usually land) owners had more power than those who did not own the land. Landowners and the workers who labored on this land became for Marx two sides of a dialectical relationship. The workers needed the landowners to have a means to achieve their sustenance and the landowners needed the workers to work the land.
Marx argued that the dialectic between owners and workers had an embedded tension reflecting the conflicting interests of the two parties. In feudal societies, the landowners were in a position to exploit workers by virtue of their ability to control others’ access to the land. Non-landowning people essentially needed access to the land in order to survive. Without access to land to grow crops and/or raise livestock, a person could only rely on charity or crime to secure the food/shelter/protection needed to survive. Marx merely noted that this precarious position put workers in a position where they could easily be exploited by the landowners. He also saw in his
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reading of history a longstanding pattern of landowners exploiting the laborers that worked for them. Such, then, was the dialectic that Marx saw: owners control the means of production (in this example, land) but need the laborers in order to extract and accumulate as much wealth from the land as possible. The laborers essentially control their bodies, but need to work for the exploitive owners in order to survive.
Ultimately, Marx believed the tensions between exploitive owners and exploited laborers would build to a point where the prevailing system of domination (owner vs. laborer) would be transformed into another dialectical system of domination with new owners and workers in a different economic system. He argued that one can see the sweep of human history as a series of rising tensions between exploiters and exploited, periodically resulting in revolutions that end with new classes of exploiters and exploited (e.g., the shift from Feudalism to Capitalism was seen as one such revolutionary transformation).
Therefore, Marx’s dialectical materialism represented both an acceptance and rejection of Hegel’s ideas. Marx used Hegel’s dialectical logic, but rejected his idealism. For Marx, human history was not the result of the dialectical tensions between ideas and their negation. Instead, human history was driven forward by the tensions that resulted between propertied (ruling) classes and laborers. In his mind, the exploitation of workers by owners always resulted in rising tensions between classes, which ultimately resulted in some revolutionary change in the economic organization of society. Unfortunately, according to Marx, each revolution did nothing to eliminate the exploitation of laborers by those who owned the means of economic production. The only thing he saw the revolutions accomplishing was to shift somewhat the membership of the exploiter and exploited classes. As long as the ethic of private property reigned, Marx believed we would never escape class conflict between those who owned the means of production (haves) and those who sold their labor to the owners (have-nots). Engels provides an excellent synopsis of this view of history in his introduction to the Communist Manifesto (1848) a book he co-wrote with Marx. Here is a particularly succinct description of Marx’s view of the progression of human history:
“The Manifesto being our joint production, I consider myself bound to state that the fundamental proposition which forms its nucleus, belongs to Marx. That proposition is: That in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contest between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these class struggles forms a series of evolutions in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class–the proletariat–cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class–the bourgeoisie–without at the same time, and
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once and for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinctions, and class struggles.”
Friedrich Engels (1848) Introduction to the Communist Manifesto
So, Marx saw human history as reflecting a long struggle between an exploiter class and exploited class. He argued that human society had reached a critical stage in this evolution of conflict. He believed that capitalism was the most exploiting economic system that the world had seen. He also believed that capitalism would lead to widespread misery, deprivation, and dehumanization on a scale heretofore unseen. Yet, at the same time, he believed that it would be capitalism (and its effects on the social order) that would ultimately lead humans to escape the evils of private property and to achieve a kind of social nirvana.
Widespread misery and extreme dehumanization lead to social nirvana??? How do we get there from here? Marx spent much of his life articulating answers to these questions. His earlier work focused a bit more on describing the various ways he saw capitalism dehumanizing us. His later work focused a bit more on making a “scientific” argument about how the logics of capitalism would lead to both increasing misery and to its own ultimate demise as a system of economic and social organization. Seidman does a good job of discussing Marx’s latter arguments. I present a bit more information on Marx’s earlier arguments about human alienation and false consciousness below. I close with a brief overview of his views on the conditions that would foster the revolution to end all revolutions.
Capitalism and Human Alienation
Marx’ earlier works tended to focus on the negative effects of capitalism on the human psyche. To best understand Marx’s argument, one needs to keep firmly in mind that Marx had a very positive view of human nature. He generally argued that people were born “good” but were corrupted by the social environment (usually one of exploitation). From his perspective, without the corrupting influence of the ethic of private property, people would naturally be cooperative and sociable with one another.
In addition (this is a crucial point), Marx believed that humans both defined and actualized themselves with their labor. According to Marx, humans distinguished themselves from other animals insofar as they could conceive of something and then create it through labor. He went as far as to argue that humans actually define themselves through those things they create through their labor. Here’s an example, let’s say I like to make birdhouses. I gather materials, make plans, and build the birdhouses. Each one represents the product of my essential human skills of thinking, planning, and creating through labor. Each birdhouse is thus a reflection of “me.” I grow as a person through the acts of conceiving of and creating these birdhouses that stand before me. For Marx, each of us has things that we would like to create if left to our own devices. It is only through pursuing these desires that we can fully
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develop and come to know ourselves. [Students of Hegel: this is analogous to his claim that God comes to self-awareness through creating our world]. In the perfect human world, people would be free to pursue these inner desires and create themselves and they create the things of the world.
Marx argued that all systems of economic exploitation upset the ideal relationship between humans and their labor. And he saw capitalism as the worst of the worst in this regard.
How did capitalism negatively affect human labor (and thus human psychic development)? Well, the main problem was that in Capitalism (as in other exploiting systems) workers lost control over their labor. Workers routinely sold their labor to produce things that capitalists (not the individual workers) wanted created. For example, I may love to make birdhouses, but I can’t do that if I’m forced to work in a factory in order to make enough money to feed and shelter myself and my family. My internal cues tell me that I should make birdhouses, but the job market forces me to work in a widget factory or fast food outlet, or…. Moreover, in Marx’s view the logic of capitalism would require that I work longer and longer hours in the factory, leaving me less and less time for the fulfillment that comes from my own internally directed labor (building birdhouses). So, for Marx, the world is becoming inhabited by more and more people who are unable to actualize their humanity through internally- directed labor and are forced to engage in increasingly meaningless forms of “forced” labor. In Marx’s view, it will eventually get so bad that we will have absolutely no time to self-actualize, we will all be dehumanized.
Marx refers to this state of dehumanization as “alienation.” He sees four different ways in which Capitalism leads to alienation.
First, capitalism leads to alienation from the products of our labor. Remember, part of the process of self-actualization through labor occurs when we gaze at our creations and reflect on our relation to them. But what happens if you’re working on an assembly line or at a fast food restaurant? The second you make something it is taken away from you, moving down the assembly line or into the customers’ hands. We may not be making what we would really like to be making, but even this product of our labor is taken away before we can realize any small sense of our own worth in it.
Second, capitalism leads to alienation from our creative desires. Remember, Marx believes that we each have something that we really like to create through our labor. The existence of the capitalist labor market forces many of us to be blind to this side of us–we never explore it because it doesn’t pay! From this perspective, we learn to “want” to do what makes sense within the available opportunities in the capitalist system. So, instead of making zithers (my bliss), I learn to want to become a lawyer or human relations manager, or…
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Third, capitalism alienates workers from their human potential. Marx believes we can only reach our full human potential by following our inner-directed urges to create ourselves through our labor. When we engage in personally meaningless work for the capitalists, we are never able to reach our full human potential.
Fourth, capitalism alienates workers from one another. In a capitalist system, workers are pitted against one another as competitors for jobs, wages, and prestige. Marx argues that although workers should see capitalists as their enemies, they tend to focus on other workers as rivals. Marx sees this competition between workers as benefiting capitalism insofar as it keeps wages down and productivity up. Let’s say you’re working in the widget factory. The capitalist knows that there are other unemployed or lower paid workers that would be willing to do your job. S/he can use that knowledge to pressure you to meet performance expectations. You tend to comply because you need the money you get from the job and you know that the capitalist can easily replace you if you don’t comply. Moreover, you are usually working next to other workers who are willing to meet and/or exceed the minimum standard (“rate busters”), which then puts more pressure on you to meet or exceed the standard. Thus workers tend to see each other as rivals, rather than the capitalist system as oppressive. Productivity goes up, along with profits, and mistrust of other members of the oppressed labor force.
False Consciousness
This tendency among workers to not see their predicament as the logical consequence of an exploitive capitalist system is seen as false consciousness. This is a tendency to see existing exploitive relationships as “natural” or “normal.” Marx argued that false consciousness was necessary for capitalism to persist. As long as workers blamed their predicaments on their own failings or on unfair competition from other workers, the capitalist system would not be threatened by revolution. Marx believed the “true” consciousness would lead one to see the capitalist system itself (and private property) as producing the misery that workers were feeling. But the effects of false consciousness were difficult to transcend–almost as difficult for fish to “see” water. According to Marx, all of the institutions of society worked to reinforce the “normalcy” and legitimacy of the capitalist system. Particularly important in this regard were familial, educational, governmental, and mass communications institutions. In Marx’s view children were indoctrinated into a capitalist-centric worldview by their parents (falsely conscious) and in schools. Moreover, these views were further reinforced by laws and government policies. Finally, mass communication institutions also reinforced false consciousness by framing local and world events in terms that were uncritical of capitalism.
The Expected Revolution
Marx believed that capitalism would ultimately prove beneficial to the course of human happiness. That seems a bit ironic, doesn’t it? On the one hand, he claimed
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that the logic of capitalism would lead to widespread misery and the degradation of the human psyche. Yet, on the other hand, he argued that only capitalism could bring about its own destruction. How could that be?
Marx’s argument went like this: by creating such a broad division between the many “have-nots” and the very few “haves,” capitalism would create the conditions under which the impoverished masses would see through the false consciousness that entrapped them. Once they realized that they controlled the means of production, workers would revolt against the capitalist class that ruled society. The success of the revolution was assured due to the tremendous difference in the numbers of poor and rich. The revolution would not need to be violent, insofar as workers would just stop working and the social order would be overturned.
So, now the workers are in control. What’s to stop them from becoming the next tyrannical class, exploiters of the old rulers? Marx argued that the widespread and abject misery that workers experienced in the days of capitalism would lead them to see the problems inherent in private property, profit motives, and ruling classes.
The proliferation of Marx’s ideas would also give the proletariat some of the conceptual tools to see the problems inherent in each of these practices. Following Marxian theory, the newly liberated proletariat would develop a political-economic system that conferred ownership of the means of production to the collective, rather than private entities. Collective ownership would ensure that all members of the former proletariat would now be owners and beneficiaries of the massive productive capacity developed under capitalism (another benefit of capitalism). This productive capacity and universal ownership structure would allow for a kind of utopia wherein people would be able to work where their hearts led them and to receive the things they truly needed from the economy.