The concept of alienation stems from ideas of domination of humans by their own products; material, political, and ideological. The separation of humans from their humanity and the fragmentation of social bonds and community are referred to by some intellectuals while explaining this concept. Liberal definitions of alienation stresses feelings; socialist definitions have more to do with relations and positions in a social order.

Theologicians like Calvin considered alienation in terms of separation from God. The Hegelian view that alienation involves failure to understand objective reality or the Freudian assumption that alienation involves separation between different parts of the psyche. Each view entails a different solution; The first an effort to return to a state of grace by hard work, faith and/or meditation; the Hegelian views calls forth modern, order-oriented science as a solution to alienation, while the Freudian approach requires that one come to terms with one’s own anxieties and compulsions.

In Marx, a variety of terms are used to capture the flavor and variety implicit in the process of alienation: “Trennung” (divorce or separation), “Spaltung” (division or cleavage), “Absonderung” (separation or withdrawal), “Verderben” (spoiled, corrupt), “sich selbst verlieren” (lost to oneself), “auf sich zuruckziehen” (withdrawn into oneself), “ausserlich machen” (externalized), “alle Gattungsbande zerreissen” (ties with others disintegrated), “die Menschenwelt in eine Welt atomisticher Individuen auflosen” (humanity dissolved into fragmented individuals). Taken together these constructs constitute and create the meaning of the term “alienation” (Entausserung, Entfremung).

Alienation literally means “separation from”. This term is often used in literature and Marx has given it a sociological meaning. Marx has conceived of alienation as a phenomenon related to the structure of those societies in which the producer is divorced from the means of production and in which “dead labour” (capital) dominates “living labour” (the worker). Let us take an example of a shoemaker in a factory. A shoemaker manufactures shoes but cannot use them for himself. His creation thus becomes an object, which is separate from him. It becomes an entity, which is separate from its creator. He makes shoes not because making shoes satisfies merely his urge to work and create. He does so to earn his living. For a worker this ‘objectification’ becomes more so because the process of production in a factory is decided into several parts and his job may be only a tiny part of the whole. Since he produces only one part of the whole, his work is mechanical and therefore he loses his creativity.

For Marx, work is the most important and the primary human activity which holds the key to human happiness and fulfillment.  As such, Alienation means that man is cut off from his work. As such he is unable to find satisfaction and fulfillment in performing his labour or in the products of his labour. The idea is that under certain circumstances or in certain societies, the conditions imposed on man are such that he becomes a stranger to himself, he no longer recognises himself in his activity or in his productions.  Unable to express his true nature in his work, he is estranged from himself, he is a stranger to his real self.  Since work is a social activity alienation from work also involves alienation from others.  The individual is cut off from his fellow workers. In shot, Alienation is a situation in which a feeling of estrangement and disentachment is experienced from a group, society, situation and even individual himself.

The course of Alienation rests on the Marx’s assumption of creative humanism.  Marx believe that urge to create something, with which a person can identify himself, is a basic to human nature. By expressing his personality in creation of a product, the workers can experience a deep satisfaction. But if a person fails to find objects in nature which he can consider an the expression of his creativity, he is alienated.

Another course of alienation, provided by the Marx in his famous work “Economic and political manuscript, 1944” is Industrial society.  (In Industrial society or capitalist system, the products of labour are mere objects in the market) Marx argued that the mechanization of production reduces the physical effort involved in work but the lightening of production even becomes a sort of torture, since the machine does not free the labourer from work, but deprives it of al interest.  Mechanization and associated Mars production reduces the need for skill and intelligence and removes from work “all individual character and consequently all charm for the workman.  The products of labour become “objects” in the market, no longer a means of fulfilling the needs of the individual and community.  From an end in themselves, they become a means to an end, a means for acquiring the goods and services necessary for survival.  Goods becomes no longer a part of the individual who produces them.  In this way “the worker is relegated to the product of labour as to an alien object.

Marx also talked of alienation in his another book “Das Capital” in the chapter of “Fetishism of Commodities” where he tries to explain the concept of alienation with the concept of Fetish.  Fetishist any thing which a person consider different and with which he has a relationship of avoidance. In the industrial societies, products become fetish for the workers when he feel that his existence depends on the products and not vice versa, which contribute to his Alienation.

The notion of alienation obviously derives from Hegelian philosophy, where it plays a central side.  But Hegelian alienation is conceived on the philosophical or metaphysical level, whereas Marx sees this in objects and creativity. 

According to Marx, throughout history, alienation in each mode of production has increased.  It was least in Primitive Communism, increased in Ancient and Feudal mode of production and reaches at its peak in the capital mode of production. In capitalist mode of production, a first form of alienation may be imputed to private ownership of the means of production and a second to the anarchy of the market.

The alienation imputable to private ownership of the instruments of production manifest itself in the fact that work, the essentially human activity which defines man’s humanity has lost its human characteristics, because for the wage earner it has become merely a means of obtaining the wage necessary to maintain his existence.  Instead of works being the expression of man himself, work has been degraded into an instrument, a means of livelihood.  Like the commodities he manufacturers, the workers is at the mercy of market-forces, of the law of supply and demand.

According to Marx, trapped within this system, both  capitalists and worker are alienated from their true selves. The entrepreneur becomes a slave to an unpredictable market which is at the mercy of the hazards of competition.  Exploiting, the wage earner, his is not thereby humanized in his work, since he himself is alienated in the interests of the anonymous mechanism of the market.  Thus, the non-realization of humanity in the world is alienation.  The source of this alienation is in the economy and more specifically, in private ownership.

In Marx’s sense alienation is an action through which (or a state in which a person, a group, an institution, or a society becomes (or remains) alien:

•          To the results or products of its own activity (and to the activity itself), and/or
•          To the nature in which it lives, and/or
•          To other human beings, and-in addition and through any or all of (a) to (c)-also
•          To itself (to its own historically created human possibilities) self-alienation, i.e., one’s alienation from  oneself through one’s own activity

Thus , the bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production causing alienation. At the same time, the production forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material condition for the solution of that antagonism and alienation. This social formation constitutes, therefore, the closing chapter of the “prehistoric” stage of human society.

For Marx, alienation is the most fundamental force behind social change.  It denotes the level of conflict in the society, because individual is dissatisfied due to alienation.  Change from ancient mode of production to Feudal mode of production rests on the alienation and not due to any revolution. Whereas change from Feudal to capital mode of production was due to increase in alienation which led to French Revolution.  It must be noted that the source of alienation in primitive communism is nature i.e. epidemics, Droughts, Flood etc,

Mere criticism of alienation was not the intention of Marx. His aim was to clear the path for a radical revolution and for accomplishing communism understood as “the re-integration of one’s return to oneself, the suppression of one’s self-alienation”. More abolition of private property cannot bring about de-alienation of economic and social life.  

Marx’s solution to the problem of alienation is radical i.e. the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by communism. In a communist society workers would at one and the same time produce goods for themselves and the community and so satisfy both individual and collective needs.  His conception of De-Alienation relates to his concept of Total Man.  Concept of Total man has been clarified by the statement of Karl Marx.  “It is possible fro me to do one thing today, other tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening and criticize after dinner. I have a mind but without becoming a hunter, fisherman herdsman and critic”.

For Marx, total man is the one who would not be mutilated by the division of labour i.e. who is not cut off from certain of his aptitudes by the exigencies of the division of labour. Total man cannot be man who is capable of doing everything,  but man who truly realizes his humanity, who performs those activities which define man.  This shows his emancipatory concern.

Critical analysis

Marx's contribution was to provide a systematic analysis of alienation, and show how it had material origin, being rooted in the organization of labour and private property.  His theoretical approach is also evident in the study of alienation, with a dialectical analysis combining elements from various other writers, but developing a new approach to the study of alienation.

Marx's approach to the study of alienation helps explain a lot of what does occur in labour markets, and alienation is an important concept in the sociology of labour.  At the same time, living and working conditions and the structure of the labour market have changed considerably since the time when Marx was writing.  The worst conditions he describes are felt by some, but not by all workers.  The division of labour has vastly expanded, with different types of effects for different segments of working class, and with different working classes in different countries.Stateof capitalism  today is not substantiating Marx’s belief of the essentiality of exploitation and antagonism.  Labour movements like trade unions, law, welfare state has been given independent existence apart from the interests of capitalist.

Marx deals only with work for capitalists, seeing the roots of alienation only in exchange of labour and private property.  Similar feelings and causes of estrangement and alienation may be related to ethnicity or race (alienation from the economic system, by being left out of the system), region (Prairie or western alienation, which may be tied more to the distribution, rather than production, of the surplus) or other aspects of society that are not directly tied to production.  In addition, by considering only labour in the market, Marx ignores all aspects of life other than this -- in the home, relations between sexes, relations between those of different ages, etc. 

Marx has failed to take into account the positive aspects of alienation as argued by Karl Popper. Who considers alienation as a farce behind the creativity.

It can be argued that sources of alienation may not only be located in economic infrastructure but the different aspects of superstructure may also cause alienation e.g. law, education system may alienate the person as argued by Ivan Illich.  According to him, in his book “ Deschooling society” ,present education system smothers the creativity of child may bring alienation.

Marx gives little indication of how the specialization division of labour can be abolistied in communist society. Marx’s solution to the problem of alienation was radical, i.e. change in mode of production, Durkheim believed that the solution to “anomie” can provided within the existing framework of industrial society. Self interest which dominates business and commerce should be replaced by a code of ethics which emphasizes the needs of society as a whole.

In a famous study entitled “Alienation and Freedom”, the American sociologist Robert Blauner examines the behaviour and attitudes of manual workers in the printing, textile, automobiles and chemical industries. He sees production technological as the major factor influencing the degree of alienation that workers experience rather than the “production process” itself as pointed out Marx.

Other sociologists like , Weber used rationalization and bureaucracy to describe some of the ways that people feel trapped.  Durkheim used the division of labour and anomie to describe the sense of rootlessness and disconnection that people felt from society.  What is interesting is that many of the same types of effects that Marx observed were important for later sociologists to explain as well -- although these later sociologists used different terms and had different explanations for these same or similar phenomena. Most American sociologists reduce alienation to psychological states: feelings of loneliness, powerlessness, and hopelessness. For socialist sociology, happy and well paid workers can be alienated; they can be fired tomorrow, they can lose their pensions overnight, they can be re-assigned from friends and family, they must be polite and helpful to those defined as ‘superior’ in the table of organization of the firm in which they work .

Weberian views

Marx Weber a major part of whose work was an analysis of Marx’s theory, modified this concept of alienation.

According to Weber, the wageworkers separation from the means of production is merely one special case of universal bend. The modern soldier is equally separated from the means of violence the scientist from the means of enquiry and the civil servant from the means of administration. Weber specially focused on the alienation of the bureaucrat who bound by discipline, rules and impersonal atmosphere. He becomes a patty, routine creature lacking in human spontaneity and inventiveness. He is alienated from his very nature.Unlike Marx who thought alienation would decline in socialist and communist societies, Weber believed that with increased bureaucratization, alienation is bound to increase.

Relevance of the Theory of Alienation

In spite of these weaknesses, the concept of alienation has proved to be a very useful and fruitful one.  It is widely used today in politics, in social psychology, studies of labour and work, and so on.  The problem of capitalism highlighted by him in his theory of alienation helped to saved the capitalism by facilitating adjustment within the capitalism. It introduced a strong emancipatory concern in his theory of alienation by providing a solution to end the  alienation. Through his theory, he motivated research in new areas e.g. sociology of work i.e. study of work environment. By giving his theory of alienation, he provided an alternative approach to study society.  Marx showed that alienation of the society and of the individual is integrally connected.  Therefore, the de-alienation of neither can be carried out without the other, nor can one be reduced to the other. Hence, even his theory is criticized on number of accounts yet the contribution of the alienation to sociological theory cannot be ignored.  His concept of alienation played an essential part in the formation of modern sociology.  Thinkers like Hegel, Fewrback etc. greatly influenced Marx yet he gave his theory of alienation in a more precise and above all more empirical fashion than did his predecessors. Through his theory of alienation, he elaborated his conception of the nature of the individual of the appropriate means to study it.  Not only he talked about the problem of alienation but moved one step further by providing solution to it in the socialist or communist society.

In the 1950s and 1960s, alienation was incorporated into mainstream sociology by purging it of its evaluative connotations and recasting it in a more operational and empirical form. For Marx alienation was as much a structural feature as psychological. However, in the 1950s it began more and more to be regarded as a socio-psychological condition of the individual. This began with Seeman’s germinal work. Faced with what he regard as the vagueness and unclarity of the literature, Seeman isolated the various uses of the term and recast them in a way which would allow them to be operationalised and measured. The first meaning so isolated, ‘powerlessness, was that of alienation as a feeling on the part of the individual that he cannot influence the social situations in which he interests.