tion that man is alienated from his labour because he is not the reaperof what he sows. Because he is never the recipient of his efforts the labourer lacks identitywith what he creates. For Marx then labour is "alien to the worker...[and]...does notbelong to his essential being." Marx identifies two explanations of why mans lack ofidentity with labour leads him to be estranged from labour. (1) "[The labourer] does notdevelop freely his physical and mental energy, but instead mortifies his mind." In otherwords labour fails to nurture mans physical and mental capacities and instead drainsthem. Because the worker is denied any nurturing in his work no intimacy between theworker and his work develops. Lacking an intimate relation with what he creates man issummarily estranged from his labour. (2) Labour estranges man from himself. Marxargues that the labour the worker produces does not belong to him, but to someone else.Given this condition the labourer belongs to someone else and is therefore enslaved. As aresult of being enslaved the worker is reduced to a "subsisting animal", a condition aliento him. As an end result man is estranged from himself and is entirely mortified. Marxpoints to these to situations as the reason man is essentially estranged from his labour.The incongruency between the world of things the worker creates and the world theworker lives in is the estrangement.Marx argues that the worker first realizes he is estranged from his labour when it isapparent he cannot attain what he appropriates. As a result of this realization theobjectification of labour occurs. For the worker the labour becomes an object, somethingshapeless and unidentifiable. Because labour is objectified, the labourer begins to identifythe product of labour as labour. In other words all the worker can identify as a product ofhis labour, given the condition of what he produces as a shapeless, unidentifiable object,is labour. The worker is then left with ...
