Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

This essay begins midsentence on its 40th page, and the first 39 pages have never been found. Capital is the reason that human beings have become alienated from themselves, as they have become capital assets: “[T]he worker produces capital-capital produces him” (121). Capital is alien to the natural aspects of human existence, but because workers are now no different than capital, they become alienated from themselves. Political economy has reduced human beings to the status of a worker, whose only purpose is to keep themselves alive and in suitable condition to work. Wages are a function of what is necessary for the owner to maximize profits. Marx provides the example of English factory owners who saw that workers were receiving public assistance and deducted that exact amount from their wages. Capitalism treats people like commodities and trains them to think of themselves in the same way by dehumanizing them through work. The more miserable the workers, the better off the capitalists.

Marx then turns to private property, considered as both labor and capital. As labor, private property drives workers “into the absolute void” (122) where they essentially cease to function as human beings. As capital, it dissolves all meaningful connections between human beings by measuring value by labor.