The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power on its own confronting him. It means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien. - Karl Marx
[taken from a passage from Marx’s Political and Economic Manuscripts, which is quoted at length at the very bottom]
aliens.
in the dim lit motel room
in campsites littered with brightly colored plastic carcases
they were here
echoing footsteps in dreary hallways
she sneaks a bathroom break
hushed breath hurries back to
the iron spinning machine
spinning, transmitting
coordinates to far away galaxies
to the boardroom bloodsuckers carving up
the earth with butter knives
they’re getting closer
and we don’t know how or why
but her own loving fingers
clutching children
clutching lovers
betray her.
toil during night hours
sending signals to far away
figures waiting patiently by blinking lights
yelling screaming,
up then low then up then low
sell sell sell
thousands of times a day
she twists the same screw
picks the same grape
irons the same hem
and everyday
empty bellied children cry
fearful of the ufo’s circling outside above
they hear the scratchy voice of machines weaving faster
faster, go faster mom
they’re coming
they hear us
the needles bobbing up and down like violins
fingers weaving stiching pulling yanking
at night the defeaning silence is broken by
starved guilt commanding her to her feet
where she will work
to feed that which brings her closer to despair
she will work to
quiet tears stave off the monster
to bring it closer
she will auction off her limbs
to the highest bidder
and bring quiet one more night
for one more night
Labour Alienation from “The Political and Economic Manuscripts” by Karl Marx
The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size.
The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity – and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities in general.
All these consequences are implied in the statement that the worker is related to the product of labor as to an alien object. For on this premise it is clear that the more the worker spends himself, the more powerful becomes the alien world of objects which he creates over and against himself, the poorer he himself – his inner world – becomes, the less belongs to him as his own. It is the same in religion. The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself.
The worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object. Hence, the greater this activity, the more the worker lacks objects. Whatever the product of his labor is, he is not. Therefore, the greater this product, the less is he himself.
The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power on its own confronting him. It means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien.
According to the economic laws the estrangement of the worker in his object is expressed thus: the more the worker produces, the less he has to consume; the more values he creates, the more valueless, the more unworthy he becomes; the better formed his product, the more deformed becomes the worker; the more civilized his object, the more barbarous becomes the worker; the more powerful labor becomes, the more powerless becomes the worker; the more ingenious labor becomes, the less ingenious becomes the worker and the more he becomes nature’s slave.
Political economy conceals the estrangement inherent in the nature of labor by not considering the direct relationship between the worker (labor) and production.
It is true that labor produces for the rich wonderful things – but for the worker it produces privation.
It produces palaces – but for the worker, hovels.
It produces beauty – but for the worker, deformity.It replaces labor by machines, but it throws one section of the workers back into barbarous types of labor and it turns the other section into a machine.
It produces intelligence – but for the worker, stupidity, cretinism.
