Hossein Jorjani
First publication: 2026 – 07 – 23
Marx did not invent the concept of alienation (Entfremdung). Rather, he inherited it through the German philosophical tradition and fundamentally transformed its meaning.
The immediate philosophical source was Hegel, for whom alienation (Entäußerung or Entfremdung) denoted the externalization of Spirit. In Hegel’s system, Spirit objectifies itself in nature, institutions, and history before ultimately recovering itself through self-consciousness. Alienation therefore represented a necessary moment in the dialectical development of consciousness rather than a permanent human condition.
Ludwig Feuerbach secularized this conception. Instead of Spirit becoming alienated from itself, Feuerbach argued that human beings project their own highest qualities—reason, love, and morality—onto God. Religion thus becomes a form of self-alienation, in which humanity unknowingly worships its own essence as something external.
Marx accepted Feuerbach’s secularization but relocated alienation once again. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and later in Capital, he argued that alienation is rooted not in religion but in the organization of industrial production. The worker becomes alienated from the product of labor, from the labor process itself, from fellow workers, and ultimately from human creative potential.
This interpretation reaches its clearest expression in Chapter 15 (“Machinery and Modern Industry”) of Capital, Volume I. There Marx contrasts the traditional craftsman with the modern factory worker. The craftsman possessed the knowledge and skills required to carry out an entire production process, or at least a substantial part of it. With the rise of machinery, large-scale industry, and the detailed division of labor, this integrated knowledge became embodied in the machinery and the organization of production itself. The worker was reduced to performing isolated operations within a process whose overall design and purpose lay beyond his understanding and control. Instead of directing the production process, the worker became a component of it.
Marx regarded this condition as an inevitable consequence of capitalist ownership of the means of production and therefore concluded that alienation could ultimately be overcome only through the abolition of private ownership.
A distinction may, however, be drawn between ownership and control. Alienation need not arise from the legal ownership of productive assets as such, but from the worker’s exclusion from knowledge of, participation in, and influence over the production process. Modern enterprises frequently separate ownership from management, and workers may participate meaningfully in planning, problem-solving, and decision-making without becoming owners. Conversely, collective ownership alone does not eliminate alienation if decision-making remains concentrated in the hands of a managerial or bureaucratic elite.
From this perspective, Marx’s enduring contribution lies less in his critique of private property than in his recognition that meaningful work requires understanding, participation, and influence. Alienation is therefore best understood not primarily as a problem of ownership but as a problem of exclusion from knowledge and decision-making. The remedy consequently shifts from abolishing private property toward democratizing management and, more broadly, democratizing economic life.
Hossein Jorjani 