Answer to Question #184040 in Sociology for Alizah

Question

Capitalism creates alienation “.  Explain Marx’s concept of alienation and how capitalism creates  it ? Discuss with examples

Answer 1

According to Marx, alienation is an unnatural state of a living human. The reason for this state is a class society. A human living in a class society is driven away from his or her real nature by society's pressure to represent not his or her self but to represent a class as its member. In other words, people are alienated from their natural state or from themselves or from some essential aspects of life.

According to Marx, capitalistic society causes alienation by means of alienating people from their labor and products of their labor. That's because these products and labor belong not to the person who made them but to capitalists who own these products and labor because they paid for them and because they own means of production which made labor and products possible.