Examining Marx: Disproving the Causation Between Wage Labor and Alienation Using Existential Conflict as a Remedy for Social Contagion

In this paper, I will critically assess Marx's argument that wage labor inevitably results in the alienation of the worker from their species being. I will begin by outlining Marx's depiction of the alienation process and its spread throughout society. Subsequently, I will challenge the premise that wage labor is the primary factor driving this alienation. Through the use of historical examples, I will demonstrate how societal shifts, without the upending of the wage labor and capitalist system, can re-establish an individual's connection to their species being. By illustrating two scenarios, both incorporating wage labor, but yielding different outcomes regarding alienation, I aim to show that wage labor itself is not the root cause of alienation.

We will first examine Marx’s definition of the species being through his comparison of the species being of humans as opposed to that of animals. He states: “...animals also produce. They build themselves nests, dwellings, like the bees, beavers, ants, etc. But an animal only produces what it immediately needs for itself or its young” (Marx 76). He asserts that man, by contrast, “produces even when he is free from physical need and only truly produces in freedom therefrom.” Man, says Marx, has the unique ability to produce things that are beyond his immediate needs and then “freely confront his product,” that is to reflect upon it, judge it, determine the beauty of it; and it is this free activity, this “working-up of the objective world,” by which “man first really proves himself to be a species being.”

When individuals become alienated from their labor, their work is reduced to a mere means for survival; no longer does it reflect their creative freedom. In the wage labor system, man is deprived of his connection with the object of his production and the ability to reflect upon it. He is thereby estranged from his labor, which, Marx says, “tears from him his species life, his real species objectivity.” In the modern capitalist system the laborer has no ownership over the product of their labor, nor can they comprehend the tangible impact or higher purpose of their labor. By exchanging their life-activity for mere subsistence, man faces a fate worse than the base survival of the animal in that “his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him” (77).

This sense of alienation is echoed in the sentiment of "living to work" as opposed to "working to live." As an example, consider an entry-level professional (consultant, investment banker) who pours hours into detailed spreadsheets and presentations. They do not directly benefit from their efforts, with most gains reaped by higher-ups or stockholders. Their work's impact is often obscured in a complex chain of productivity, making it challenging to perceive any tangible or meaningful contribution. The professional does not see themselves as shaping nature or creating things of beauty, nor are they even producing freely; they — under a mountain of student-debt, high rents, and even higher-expectations of a successful lifestyle — are locked into “selling their soul” for a six-figure paycheck which they are barely scraping by on. This professional is working to live and has been deprived of their species being.

We have explained how, according to Marx, wage labor leads to estranged labor and the tearing away of man from his species being and given a clarifying present-day example. Now, in order to disprove that wage labor is the root cause of alienation, we must (1) examine how Marx explains alienation spreading through society, (2) establish a theory for how alienation on an individual level leads to a society becoming alienated from its societal being, and (3) describe the process by which a society rediscovers its societal being and how this rediscovery leads to the unalienation of the laborer from his species being. By accomplishing these three tasks, we will describe the process by which alienation both emerges and dissipates at the societal and individual levels with wage labor as a constant, thus disproving the causality of wage labor on alienation.

Marx argues that when an individual becomes alienated from their labor, they also become estranged from others: “the proposition that man's species nature is estranged from him means that one man is estranged from the other, as each of them is from man's essential nature” (77). In the capitalist system filled with alienated laborers “each man views the other in accordance with the standard and the position in which he finds himself as a worker.” Our relations to each other become solely economic (as competitors, bosses, subordinates, and dreadful “colleagues”), and we lose our collective sense of what it means to be human. Frustratingly, Marx ends his line of thinking at the point of man’s estrangement from his fellow man; he does not think through the broader societal implications of this development. Let us continue the philosophical inquiry in the observational manner of Marx.

Having established that alienation of the individual leads to the alienation of the individual from others, we can intuit that as an  increasing number of individuals feel alienated from their labor, they begin to view a proportionally increasing number of other individuals as mere economic agents. As the individual views their own life activity as a mere means to subsistence, so too do they view the activities of others as unfree and meaningless. This attitude of self and perceived alienation spreads like a contagion, and suddenly the activity of the whole social collective seems like a stagnant method for the perpetuation of the social status quo. If societal being can be thought of as when a social body freely produces in excess of subsistence, shapes the objective world, and reflects upon the objects of its production, then when a society produces only enough to subsist, when it loses its drive to — through the great collective effort of destruction and creation — shape and reproduce nature, society can then be said to be alienated from its societal being. It is ill.

A sick society lacks a unified purpose or has no clear purpose. It consists of individuals who function like economic automatons rather than humans. Because it is alienated both from its being and its individual members are alienated from their beings, the society is fragmented, feeble, and vulnerable. The cure begins externally: another society which possesses its societal being, has the ability to disrupt, dismantle, or slaughter the weaker, sick social body. This vulnerability becomes immediately apparent when the integrity of the social body is violated, typically through violent incursion. Historical examples include Pearl Harbor and 9/11; a modern day example would be Hamas’ invasion of Israel.

This incursion incites a rapid immune response within the social body: the threat to the body is perceived by each of its individual parts as a threat to themselves, priming every atom in the body for drastic action. The production of the society and the production of every individual shifts towards, and is unified in, defeating the existential threat. To effectively harness the collective will of society and regain the societal being, addressing the threat must not simply aim at reverting to the status quo. Instead, it must aspire to more than just survival: it must forge new societal ideals related to beauty, reshaping the objective world, and balancing acts of creation and destruction, all of which together make a new societal being. Once this new societal being is established, the individual’s labor shifts to no longer being for basic survival but for the achievement of these societal ends. And so through society rediscovering its being does the individual rediscover theirs.

Take the historical example of a U.S. steel worker. In 1905, this worker barely made enough to get by and felt detached from his end product. He neither owned the steel which he produced nor understood the ultimate or higher purpose of his work. He was alienated from his species being. By 1943, amidst World War II, the same worker, while still under a wage-labor system, saw his steel melded into battleships. Economically, he still did not own the product, but the steel he was producing was for the nation, for democracy, for liberty and freedom. His labor became aligned with the ends of the societal being, and he became no longer alienated from his species being. Imagine the present-day example of the Israeli tech worker who, a couple of years ago, was developing AI for image recognition for marketing purposes. He did not own the technology he produced because the IP belonged to the big tech firm he worked for. Additionally, he found the consumerist nature of his product to be contributing to a shallow and meaningless culture of consumption. Nonetheless, he continued his work to keep up his club-frequenting lifestyle. He worked to live. Fast-forward to today. The tragic loss of his brother in the initial attack by Hamas, aligned his personal security with the security of the nation. He transitioned to a role within the IDF, applying his expertise in AI image recognition to identify military targets in the Gaza Strip. Striving for accuracy, he aims to ensure the software distinguishes between military targets and civilians, minimizing potential harm to the latter, in sync with Israel’s stated goal of only performing  just and discriminate killing. Although he is still working for a wage and does not own the technology he produces, his sense of connection to his work has been transformed: every ounce of his being is committed to and fulfilled by his life activity. He lives to work.

In both scenarios wage labor is present in both the pre-threat and post-threat situations; and yet the result for the individual is the opposite: alienation and un-alienation. Based on this continuation of Marx’s thinking, it seems the perceived purpose behind work can evolve, and this perception plays a far more pivotal role in determining whether an individual feels alienated than economic relations. Marx's concept of alienation is not simply the inevitable result of wage labor; it is deeply influenced by broader societal contexts and individual perceptions.

Works Cited
Tucker, Robert C., editor. The Marx-Engels Reader. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1978. Selections from "Grundriss: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy" by Karl Marx, translated by Martin Nicolaus; and "On Revolution" by Karl Marx, edited by Saul K. Padover, pp. 70-81.

This was originally written for my European Social Philosophy midterm with Axel Honneth.

Examining Marx: Disproving the Causation Between Wage Labor and Alienation Using Existential Conflict as a Remedy for Social Contagion

In this paper, I will critically assess Marx's argument that wage labor inevitably results in the alienation of the worker from their species being. I will begin by outlining Marx's depiction of the alienation process and its spread throughout society. Subsequently, I will challenge the premise that wage labor is the primary factor driving this alienation. Through the use of historical examples, I will demonstrate how societal shifts, without the upending of the wage labor and capitalist system, can re-establish an individual's connection to their species being. By illustrating two scenarios, both incorporating wage labor, but yielding different outcomes regarding alienation, I aim to show that wage labor itself is not the root cause of alienation.

We will first examine Marx’s definition of the species being through his comparison of the species being of humans as opposed to that of animals. He states: “...animals also produce. They build themselves nests, dwellings, like the bees, beavers, ants, etc. But an animal only produces what it immediately needs for itself or its young” (Marx 76). He asserts that man, by contrast, “produces even when he is free from physical need and only truly produces in freedom therefrom.” Man, says Marx, has the unique ability to produce things that are beyond his immediate needs and then “freely confront his product,” that is to reflect upon it, judge it, determine the beauty of it; and it is this free activity, this “working-up of the objective world,” by which “man first really proves himself to be a species being.”

When individuals become alienated from their labor, their work is reduced to a mere means for survival; no longer does it reflect their creative freedom. In the wage labor system, man is deprived of his connection with the object of his production and the ability to reflect upon it. He is thereby estranged from his labor, which, Marx says, “tears from him his species life, his real species objectivity.” In the modern capitalist system the laborer has no ownership over the product of their labor, nor can they comprehend the tangible impact or higher purpose of their labor. By exchanging their life-activity for mere subsistence, man faces a fate worse than the base survival of the animal in that “his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him” (77).

This sense of alienation is echoed in the sentiment of "living to work" as opposed to "working to live." As an example, consider an entry-level professional (consultant, investment banker) who pours hours into detailed spreadsheets and presentations. They do not directly benefit from their efforts, with most gains reaped by higher-ups or stockholders. Their work's impact is often obscured in a complex chain of productivity, making it challenging to perceive any tangible or meaningful contribution. The professional does not see themselves as shaping nature or creating things of beauty, nor are they even producing freely; they — under a mountain of student-debt, high rents, and even higher-expectations of a successful lifestyle — are locked into “selling their soul” for a six-figure paycheck which they are barely scraping by on. This professional is working to live and has been deprived of their species being.

We have explained how, according to Marx, wage labor leads to estranged labor and the tearing away of man from his species being and given a clarifying present-day example. Now, in order to disprove that wage labor is the root cause of alienation, we must (1) examine how Marx explains alienation spreading through society, (2) establish a theory for how alienation on an individual level leads to a society becoming alienated from its societal being, and (3) describe the process by which a society rediscovers its societal being and how this rediscovery leads to the unalienation of the laborer from his species being. By accomplishing these three tasks, we will describe the process by which alienation both emerges and dissipates at the societal and individual levels with wage labor as a constant, thus disproving the causality of wage labor on alienation.

Marx argues that when an individual becomes alienated from their labor, they also become estranged from others: “the proposition that man's species nature is estranged from him means that one man is estranged from the other, as each of them is from man's essential nature” (77). In the capitalist system filled with alienated laborers “each man views the other in accordance with the standard and the position in which he finds himself as a worker.” Our relations to each other become solely economic (as competitors, bosses, subordinates, and dreadful “colleagues”), and we lose our collective sense of what it means to be human. Frustratingly, Marx ends his line of thinking at the point of man’s estrangement from his fellow man; he does not think through the broader societal implications of this development. Let us continue the philosophical inquiry in the observational manner of Marx.

Having established that alienation of the individual leads to the alienation of the individual from others, we can intuit that as an  increasing number of individuals feel alienated from their labor, they begin to view a proportionally increasing number of other individuals as mere economic agents. As the individual views their own life activity as a mere means to subsistence, so too do they view the activities of others as unfree and meaningless. This attitude of self and perceived alienation spreads like a contagion, and suddenly the activity of the whole social collective seems like a stagnant method for the perpetuation of the social status quo. If societal being can be thought of as when a social body freely produces in excess of subsistence, shapes the objective world, and reflects upon the objects of its production, then when a society produces only enough to subsist, when it loses its drive to — through the great collective effort of destruction and creation — shape and reproduce nature, society can then be said to be alienated from its societal being. It is ill.

A sick society lacks a unified purpose or has no clear purpose. It consists of individuals who function like economic automatons rather than humans. Because it is alienated both from its being and its individual members are alienated from their beings, the society is fragmented, feeble, and vulnerable. The cure begins externally: another society which possesses its societal being, has the ability to disrupt, dismantle, or slaughter the weaker, sick social body. This vulnerability becomes immediately apparent when the integrity of the social body is violated, typically through violent incursion. Historical examples include Pearl Harbor and 9/11; a modern day example would be Hamas’ invasion of Israel.

This incursion incites a rapid immune response within the social body: the threat to the body is perceived by each of its individual parts as a threat to themselves, priming every atom in the body for drastic action. The production of the society and the production of every individual shifts towards, and is unified in, defeating the existential threat. To effectively harness the collective will of society and regain the societal being, addressing the threat must not simply aim at reverting to the status quo. Instead, it must aspire to more than just survival: it must forge new societal ideals related to beauty, reshaping the objective world, and balancing acts of creation and destruction, all of which together make a new societal being. Once this new societal being is established, the individual’s labor shifts to no longer being for basic survival but for the achievement of these societal ends. And so through society rediscovering its being does the individual rediscover theirs.

Take the historical example of a U.S. steel worker. In 1905, this worker barely made enough to get by and felt detached from his end product. He neither owned the steel which he produced nor understood the ultimate or higher purpose of his work. He was alienated from his species being. By 1943, amidst World War II, the same worker, while still under a wage-labor system, saw his steel melded into battleships. Economically, he still did not own the product, but the steel he was producing was for the nation, for democracy, for liberty and freedom. His labor became aligned with the ends of the societal being, and he became no longer alienated from his species being. Imagine the present-day example of the Israeli tech worker who, a couple of years ago, was developing AI for image recognition for marketing purposes. He did not own the technology he produced because the IP belonged to the big tech firm he worked for. Additionally, he found the consumerist nature of his product to be contributing to a shallow and meaningless culture of consumption. Nonetheless, he continued his work to keep up his club-frequenting lifestyle. He worked to live. Fast-forward to today. The tragic loss of his brother in the initial attack by Hamas, aligned his personal security with the security of the nation. He transitioned to a role within the IDF, applying his expertise in AI image recognition to identify military targets in the Gaza Strip. Striving for accuracy, he aims to ensure the software distinguishes between military targets and civilians, minimizing potential harm to the latter, in sync with Israel’s stated goal of only performing  just and discriminate killing. Although he is still working for a wage and does not own the technology he produces, his sense of connection to his work has been transformed: every ounce of his being is committed to and fulfilled by his life activity. He lives to work.

In both scenarios wage labor is present in both the pre-threat and post-threat situations; and yet the result for the individual is the opposite: alienation and un-alienation. Based on this continuation of Marx’s thinking, it seems the perceived purpose behind work can evolve, and this perception plays a far more pivotal role in determining whether an individual feels alienated than economic relations. Marx's concept of alienation is not simply the inevitable result of wage labor; it is deeply influenced by broader societal contexts and individual perceptions.

Works Cited
Tucker, Robert C., editor. The Marx-Engels Reader. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1978. Selections from "Grundriss: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy" by Karl Marx, translated by Martin Nicolaus; and "On Revolution" by Karl Marx, edited by Saul K. Padover, pp. 70-81.

This was originally written for my European Social Philosophy midterm with Axel Honneth.