Marx outlined four components of alienation; (I) alienation from the product of labour; (ii) alienation from productive activity; (iii) alienation from the human species; and, (iv) alienation from fellow human beings. Alienation from products…. Productive activity, or the work process, is another aspect of alienation. It is traditionally highly hierarchised, routinised, segmented and seemingly meaningless. However in the very machinery and processes created by Modernity he saw a means of human liberation; “What matters to him (Marx) is the processes, the powers, the expressions of human life and energy: men working, moving, cultivating, communicating, organising and reorganising nature and themselves - the new and endlessly renewed modes of activity that the bourgeoisie brings into being” (Berman, 93)
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(Durkheim, 101) People rely on each other because they are interdependent rather than linked by one belief system or shared history. Durkheim states in “The Division of Labour in Society” that “not only does [the division of labour] possess no moral character, but no reason for its existence can be perceived.” Interestingly, he also notes that the division of labour shapes human interests and character in ways which otherwise would not develop; “it is because the division of labour is accompanied by an increase in fatigue that man is constrained to seek after, as a compensatory increase, those goods of civilisation that otherwise would present no internet for him.” (Durkheim, 16) This thought is both similar to and profoundly different to Marx’s ideas on workplace alienation; both contend that work in its current form is unnatural, but
(Durkheim, 101) People rely on each other because they are interdependent rather than linked by one belief system or shared history. Durkheim states in “The Division of Labour in Society” that “not only does [the division of labour] possess no moral character, but no reason for its existence can be perceived.” Interestingly, he also notes that the division of labour shapes human interests and character in ways which otherwise would not develop; “it is because the division of labour is accompanied by an increase in fatigue that man is constrained to seek after, as a compensatory increase, those goods of civilisation that otherwise would present no internet for him.” (Durkheim, 16) This thought is both similar to and profoundly different to Marx’s ideas on workplace alienation; both contend that work in its current form is unnatural, but