Question

What does Marx mean by alienation and what is the role of the state in producing it?

Answer 1

Alienate means cause to feel isolated.Lose or destroy the support or sympathy.Marx used this concept in his political philosophies.In Marx sense,alienation is a result of capitalism.According Marx,alienation refers to the personal demoralization of the individual.The feeling of powerlessness,meaninglessness,rootlessness and isolation.Marx said that the history of mankind is not only the history of class struggle but also the increasing alienationof man.Alienation appears not merely in the result but also in the process of production within productive activity itself .Work can be the expression of human intellect and creative capacity,unless it is alienatedby being either concerned with mere survival or organized in such a way that work is debarred and made into a burden.The condition for true humanity are therefore the conditions which abolish alienated labour.The source of this alienation ,Marx finds in the structure and social relations.

The role of state in producing Alienation :

There are three types of alienation -alienation from oneself,from the other people and from the world. These three alienation are interrelated.The concept of the alienation is deeply embedded in all the great religions and social and political theories of the civilized epoch.,namely,the idea that sometime inthe past people lived in harmony,and then there was some kind pofrupture which left people feling like foreigners in the world. The problem of alienation has marked the condition of a society under the effect of modernism.