2. Early Philosophical and Political Writings

In these texts Marx argued that workers in bourgeois society is alienated in four senses: (1) by the product of their labour, which becomes an alien object holding sway over them; (2) in their work activity, which is seen as turned against them and not belonging to them; (3) by the human race, since human’s species being is transformed into a being alien to them; and (4) by other people, with regard to the labour and the object of the labour of others like themself. In the same group of writings, Marx also pointed to the limits of the co-operation among workers in the capitalist factory. Their association was not a voluntary action on their part but is imposed as an alien power outside their control. Wage labour does not enter into the workers’ life-activity but constitutes a sacrifice of their lives.