![]() The first form of alienation is that of man from the product of his labour. This commodification of labour forms the basis of alienation or estrangement. Therefore, this signifies that the result of labour is not simply the production of commodities but also the production of the worker as a commodity. In hierarchical terms, the commodities produced by the worker are placed higher than the worker himself. His value diminishes to such an extent that the worth of the commodity becomes more than the worth of the worker, that is, the commodity that the worker produces overpowers him and gains more value. The more a worker produces, the lesser his value becomes. He states that the monopolization of the society has led to the accumulation of wealth in a few hands which has further facilitated the division of the whole society into two classes- “property owners and property-less workers” (Longhofer & Winchester, 2016) This is the “actual economic fact” that he proceeds from, for building his argument. He states that the aftermath of this commodification is the demise of the worker in a proportion inverse to his labour. Commodification essentially implies the transformation of objects, ideas, or cultural elements into a commodity, to facilitate their entry into the market for sale. In the paper, Marx describes how the political economy forms the basis for the commodification of the workers. ![]() In this paper, I will summarize the text of Karl Marx, throw light on the key arguments put forward by him, and include a critical review of the text, comprising of my reflections and scholarly critique. He explains their origin and how they fall under the overarching domain of political economy. In his text, he introduces the four distinct kinds of alienation, that is, alienation of the worker from the product, from the production activity, from self and from other men. This suggests that either Western Marxism applies to him in a very loose sense or, alternatively, the term can be empirically falsified in Schmückle’s case.In Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Karl Marx aims to introduce the concept of ‘estranged labour’ and provide an expansive explanation of how it is interlinked with the concept of alienation, private property, monetary system, and the political economy. The way Western Marxism would read Schmückle leads to the conclusion that Schmückle was a Westerner and a Marxist, but hardly a Western Marxist. My main contention is that Western Marxist historiography potentially excludes much of what stands and falls with Schmückle’s intellectual biography and political identity. To this end, it first investigates the theoretic, geological and social patterns of Western Marxism and then detects similarities and differences between Schmückle and some pioneering figures of Western Marxism. This article examines whether Schmückle can be called a Western Marxist. In particular, the theme of alienation and its overcoming is embodied in the concepts of abstract labour and fetishism which have a prominent place in Capital and play a central role in the critique of capitalism in that work.īorn in 1898 in South-West Germany, the son of a lumberjack, a student of Karl Korsch in Jena, a colleague of Georg Lukács in Moscow, a militant of the Communist Part of Germany (KPD), and later a member of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (VKPB), Schmückle was a prominent Marx expert, a literary critic and an editor of the first Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA1). In his later work the language of alienation is for the most part discarded, but not the fundamental ideas first expressed in 1844. On the contrary, it embodies the beginning of Marx’s attempt to understand and analyse the nature of capitalism in economic and social terms. It is wrong to see the concept of alienation in the early works as purely ethical. The idea of a sharp break in the development of Marx’s philosophy leads to a seriously distorted understanding of it. ![]() In this chapter I will extend this argument by showing that, even where the language of `alienation’ is not explicitly used, the concept is present in Marx’s later works. He shows that the Hegelian influence on Marx extends into his later work, and that the concept of alienation continues to play a major role in his thought. ![]() One of David McLellan’s most important contributions to Marxist scholarship is his insistence and his demonstration, particularly in his edition of Marx’s Grundrisse, of the continuity between Marx’s early and later work. ![]()
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