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Empowered Consumer And Alienation

In the "Estranged Labor" chapter of the Paris Manuscripts, Karl Marx exposes his theory of alienation. Marx states that wage labor system corresponds to the most profound form of alienation. Since wage workers sell their labor power to earn a living, and the capitalist owns the labor process, the product of the workers' labor is in a very real sense alien to the worker. It is not the workers' product but the product of the capitalist. He adds that "Labor produces not only commodities: it produces itself and the worker as a commodity – and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally." (EPM, p.71, Prometheus Books)

As labor becomes commoditized, Marx argues that man becomes disillusioned and enslaved. Man is reduced to a subsisting animal void of any capacity of freedom except the will to labor. In such a state of the world where "labor is external to the worker – i.e. does not belong to his essential being that he, therefore, does not confirm himself in......


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Approximate Word Count: 929
Approximate Pages: 4 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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