‘Marx saw all social life as bearing the imprints of material conditions’ (Ritzer 2002:107) 3, workers are alienated from others and their natural environment. In this alienated type of work place, workers are not only indifferent but are continually in competition which replaces forms of cooperation, everyone tries to survive as best they can. Like the capitalist who controls the workers productivity while maximising their own profits for only their benefit as capitalists are in competition of what they sell and not in the interest of the workers.4 lastly the worker is alienated from their each individual creativity and we
Marginalization refers to the actions or tendencies prevailing in societies whereby groups or persons without desirability or function are excluded from the prevalent systems of protection and integration, limiting their social mobility and means for survival. Iris Young defines marginalization as a process in which “a whole category of people is expelled from useful participation in social life and thus potentially subjected to severe material deprivation and even extermination” (53). Marginalization is thus the act of relegating or confining a group of people to a lower social standing or outer limit or periphery of society. Marginalization has far reaching connotations in sociological, economic and political debates. Marginalization
Capitalism polarizes a society economically: the very rich and the very poor. Capitalism creates large scale economic inequality which, in turn, can engender grievances among members of a society fueled by the haves and not haves. Capitalists argue that, open/free market provides the opportunity for anyone to freely compete and pursue their desired choices; however, the religious moral argument castigates the capitalist economic order mainly because of the moral implications for members of a society as a whole. Greed – natural or nurtured – obliges individuals to accumulate excessive wealth. These patterns can be clearly observed in the capitalist economic environment where persons with higher economic capital dominate persons with lower capital.
People are excluded from a particular society: it depends on a particular place and time (p.13). The concrete implementation of any criterion for exclusion has to take account of the activities of others since social exclusion often manifests itself in terms of communities rather than individuals. The second element is “agency” since exclusion implies an act, with an agent or agents. For instance, people may refuse jobs preferring to live on benefit; or they may
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. Karl Marx used the word “struggle” repeatedly for the social changes in describing how society move forward. In his theory, a commodity is something that is bought and sold, or exchanged in a market. It has a “use – value” determined by the qualities of things and the purposes or needs because the commodity can satisfy human’s need and it also has a “exchange – value” determined by quantities of things and what can be gotten for them. As use – values, commodities have all of different qualities, but in terms of exchange – values, they are just different quantities and do not contain the use – value.
In the theory of alienation, Marx gives the answer on how do the ways in which people earn their living affect their bodies, minds and also their daily lives. Workers in capitalist society do not have the machines, raw materials, factories which they use in their work. It is owned by the capitalists to whom the workers must sell their "labor power", or ability to do work, in return for a wage (Bertell Ollman, 2004). This system of labor displays four relations that lie at the core of Marx 's theory of alienation. Firstly, the worker is alienated (or cut off) from his or her productive activity, playing no part in deciding what to do or how to do it.
“The reason we have classes is due to a group sharing a common interest and economic position” (McIntosh, 1997:133). Class is determined on possession of wealth; together with the occupation are the principal bases for class difference. The main classes in Western societies are the upper class who was the wealthy, employers and factory owner, the middle class who were white collar workers and professionals and the lower class who were the ones in the blue-collar or manual jobs. In the developed countries there was also a fourth class, the peasants who were occupied in traditional types of agricultural production. The most well-known and important theories of class are those developed by Karl Marx and Max Weber.
Marx’s definition of alienation was when the workers felt isolated and didn’t have a connection to their labor or the products they were making which led to the feeling of being controlled and exploited. He presents the concept of species-being and how workers are alienated from that due to
Thus there is the alienation of the worker in the capitalist economy; the worker lacks control over the' disposal of his products, since what he produces is appropriated by others, so that he does not benefit from it. It is the core principle of the market economy that goods are produced for exchange; in capitalist production, the exchange and distribution of goods are controlled by the operations of the free market. The worker is alienated in the work task itself: if the product of labour is alienation, production itself must be active alienation; the alienation of activity and the activity of alienation. The work task does not offer intrinsic satisfactions which make it possible for the worker ‘to develop freely his mental and physical energies ', since it is labour which is imposed by force of external circumstances
The labor of workers becomes a commodity that only profits the owner. Marx compares the worker to the owner using the terms proletariat and bourgeoisie. Because of the structure of capitalism, there is always an intrinsic conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Capitalism demystifies human relationships, “the bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation” (Marx 161). Once the labor of a worker is no longer needed, they will be dismissed