Productive activity is governed solely by most rudimentary needs of physical existence, which could not have been possible under prior forms of productive system. The character of alienated labour does not express a tension between men in nature. For Marx human beings are quintessentially beings who must be productive, who, that is, must interact with nature and other human beings to make things and effect changes in the world around us? By species being is to be distance from our fundamental nature as productive beings. Now how is this possible? How can we, or our lives, be in opposition to or not in the proper relationship to our very nature? To clarify this we must little more closely at what our nature or species being is.
Why is productive activity central to our nature? And what, precisely, does Marx mean by productive activity? For Marx, our productive activity has four essential features.
Firstly, productive activity is necessary if human beings are to survive, we must be productive in some respect in order to live, unless we are so rich that we simply spend our time counting the proceeds of our investments. But doing this is (minimally) productive activity. And buying and eating, food clothing and other goods are, for Marx partly productive. The necessity of productive activity in our lives is, of course, is not distinctive to human beings. It is a trait we share with animals.
Secondly, we are unlike animals because we engage in conscious production activity. Our productive activity is distinct from animal in a number of ways. First, we make our productive activity itself a product of will. We can make choices about what and how to produce. Animals produce only to satisfy their survival. And they produce only in ways that are fixed to the nature. But human beings can produce many kinds of goods in many different ways. As Marx said, ‘’man is capable of producing according to the standards of every species and applying to each object its inherent standard; hence, man also produces in accordance with the laws of beauty’’.
Thirdly, Human productive activity is social in nature. This is true in a number of different respects. Much of what we produce is produced with either directly or indirectly. We produce with other people directly when we work with them to produce particular goods. In addition, we produce only because other people are willing to consume them. As Marx puts it in the Grundyism, ‘’no production, no consumption; no consumption, no production.’’
Lastly, human being find productive activities intrinsically satisfy. In other part, this is because activity allows us to develop and exercises our capacities, faculties, and abilities. Central to Marx’s account of human nature is the notion that human beings are not slugs. Human productive activity is also intrinsically satisfied because it transforms our environment, making what is sometimes a difficult natural habitat into a partly human creation. We work on nature, what Marx call ‘’man inorganic body,’’ transforming to suit our purposes. In doing so we objectify our powers or realise our capacities, faculties and abilities in concrete phenomena around us.
Alienation of species is the human species; Marx contended that human beings as alienated from there own species being. Marx believe that human beings live in an active relation to the natural world and in this sense it have certain characteristic which mark them of from other species. (Ken Morrison, 1995 pp95-96).
Merry Maids- this is act of capitalist for a single person controlling and directing the labour market by using the word maids. This single employer Merry is trying to advertise is labour market that it involves a lot of maid. In the attach Reading A of Barbara Ehrenreich. Marx explained that alienation from productive activity emerged from the labouring process and this is the inability of the workers to control their labour and self-defining characteristics of labour activity. This can abstract from paragraph 3 part 2-question1 essay question; if there are complaints on either side, they are address to the franchise owner; the customer or the actual workers need never interact. To Marx this alienated labour from what he has originated by distances labour, from ongoing activity in the labour market which they create their continue existence by doing the cleaning and scabbing floors in the fashion way. .
Another alienated under capitalism is when workers is divided into various labour market and they don’t have any say with the rules set aside by their employer, good example is on paragraph [5&8] in attach essay question. The writer laid some emphasises on the way the job should be done; when vacuuming, you begin with the master bedroom; when dusting, you should begin with the first room off the kitchen; then you move through the rooms going left to right and top to bottom. This explained how employer alienate the labour from their productive activity, by restricting the maids from using their own method and this will affect their full ranges of labour activity. Sometime when the customer is at home, the homeowner make use of their supervisory skill, [criticisms of their method and demand they perform unscheduled task].
In bourgeois society, men are estranged, in specifiable ways from the ties to society, which alone confer their humanity upon them. As Marx present it, the alienation of a man from his species being is couched in term of capitalism, for example in practice, the life and the need of individual appear as independently of his member of his society. (A.Giddens 1987 p14). In 1844 manuscripts, of man’s being reduced to the level of animals, and man alienated from his species being; under the condition of capitalist production. Paragraph (10) after a week or two on the job, I found myself moving robotlike moving from surface to surface.
Marx believes that man is essentially a creative being whose natural propensities the restrictive character of capitalism denies, examples on attach essay question paragraph (7). They can take break (though this probably ill-advised if the homeowner is on premises). In the similar quote by the writer; at the maids, there were no break except for a daily ten minute stop at convenience for coffee or lunch; something like slice of pizza.
The enormous productive power of the capitalism generates possibilities for the future development of man. In paragraph (14) of the attach reading- if she’d had a college education and this message reinforced by warning to the children that that’s the way they will end up if they don’t try harder in school. This message shows that not all-capitalist action alienated man from his productive activity but brings determination and challenge for the teenager, because they would like to grown up and be in control.
Freedom for Marx means power, which dominate over the circumstances and condition in which individual lives, and capitalist from this point of view, represent the apotheosis of unfreedom. Far from abolishing the relation of dependency’’’ capitalist dissolved them into a general form (1858 p01). Men their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.(D. Mclellan 1975 p45).
Marx explained that money is “a commodity, an external object, capable of becoming the private property of any individual”(Sayer. D 1991 PG 67) Marx means, when you have money, you are in control of your life, and also human species can do whatever they like when ever they want to do it. The money you have determined your capacity in day to day activity likes eating, clothing and recreation activity during your leisure time.
Marx said, he characterises modern society as a world of ‘personal independence based on dependence mediated by things’. Because of purely atomic character commodity production, individual relations to each other assume a material character of the control and conscious individual action. Within capitalist people are just as interdependent as socially related in other society; indeed they are mores, view its globality and the extent of which it has divided labour.
According to Marx Commodity emerged under capitalism and it mode of production and exchange influences the social relations of individual. The owner of commodities find out, that the same division of labour that turns them into independent private producers, also frees social process of production and the relations of the individual producer to each other within the process, from all dependence on the will of those producer, and seemingly mutual. Independence of the individuals is supplemented by a system of general and mutual dependency by means of the production. After production commodities have to be bought and sold and must be capable of satisfying one’s need and exchange value.
The political powers so called is merely the organise owner of one class oppressing other. The executive of modern state is but a committee for managing the affair of the bourgeoisie. (D. Mclellan p60). Marx belief authority in bureaucracy is hierarchical, and according to Marx bureaucracy is a hierarchy of knowledge and authority is the basis of it’s knowledge and the claims to knowledge the basis of it’s authority (Sayer.D 1991 p 78) means individual believe and respect the law of the authority (state).
Finally, the division between private and class individual exists within and compromises the sense of collective identity of both bourgeoisie and the proletariat. According to Marx, hence thy organised power standing over against these isolated individuals, who lived in the conditions daily reproducing this isolation, and can only be overcome after long struggles.
