hey welcome to marx and chill part four today's video is about a strange flavor but hold on let me get into character you know every great revolutionary seems to have this hat so i figured i might as well just get mine and this is of course part four of the economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. if you're behind or if this is the first time on my channel make sure you check out my playlist for marx and chill so you're all caught up marx began its book with the premise of capitalism we accepted its language and loss private property the separation of labor capital and land wages profit rent and competition we have studied how the worker sinks to the level of a commodity and their suffering is an inverse proportion to their production and that the result of competition is the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few which creates monopolies and the entire society falls into two classes the property owner and the property-less worker and because capitalism doesn't explain these connections it was possible to think the competition was the opposite of monopoly it was possible in the past to think that the division of land of property was the opposite of the biggest state however we now know the competition results in monopolies and that the division of landed property results in the increase of big estates so now we have to understand the connection between all these things and the devaluation of human beings the worker becomes more poor the more wealth they produce the worker becomes an even cheaper commodity the more products they create the devaluation of the world of people is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things labor doesn't only produce commodities it produces itself and the worker as a commodity the object which labor produces is a power independent from the work it is something alien the product is labor which has become material it is the objectification of labor the more objects the worker produces the less that he can possess the consequences are that the workers relationship to the product of their labor is one of alienation and based on this idea the more the worker spends the more powerful the world of alien objects becomes the world that they create against themselves and the poorer the workers inner world becomes the less belongs to them the worker puts their life into their object but now their life no longer belongs to them it belongs to the object the alienation of the worker in their product means not only that their labor becomes an external object but the it exists independently from them something alien and the product becomes a power that in its own confronts them as something hostile something alien let's take a closer look at the objectification the production of the worker and in that the estrangement and the loss of the product first of all the worker can create nothing without nature since it's the raw materials for their work but as nature provides labor with the means of life meaning materials it also provides the physical substance for the worker however the more that the worker appropriates the external world through their labor the more that they deprive themselves of the means of life first the more and more the worker ceases to work with nature and second more and more nature ceases to be the means for the workers physical substance and i took that to mean like number one the less and less that we're working with nature literally we less and less of us work the soil for example but also like less and less of us live within the trees next to a river obtaining water from the river especially in our day and age everything's like pre-packaged in both respects the worker becomes a servant to their product they receive an object of labor they receive work and they receive means of substance this means that they exist as a worker first and second as a physical subject the height of this servitude is that only as a worker can they maintain themselves as a physical subject and it is only as a physical subject that they are a worker the estrangement of the worker can be seen as follows the more the worker produces the less that they consume the more value they create the more valueless they become the better form their product the more deformed the worker becomes the more civilized their object the more barbaric the worker becomes the more powerful labor becomes the more powerless the worker becomes the more ingenious labor becomes the less ingenious becomes the worker the more he becomes nature's servant capitalism hides this estrangement inherent in the nature of labor by not looking at the direct relationship between the worker and the production yes it's true that labor produces beautiful products for the rich but for the worker it produces lack it produces palaces for the rich but for the worker the crepit dwellings it produces beauty but for the worker deformity it replaces labor with machines but it throws a section of the worker back into barbaric types of labor and the rest turn into machines themselves it produces intelligence but for the worker stupidity the direct relationship between labor to its products is the relationship between the worker to the objects of the reproduction and until now we have examined the alienation of the worker to their product but the arrangement is manifested not only in the result of their labor but in the act of production itself how could the worker feel like a stranger to their product if it wasn't in the very act of creating that product that was alienated in itself the product is just the summary of the activity if the product of labor is alienation production itself is the activity of alienation so what creates the alienation of labor first the fact that labor is external to a worker it is not a part of their intrinsic nature therefore we don't affirm ourselves in work but deny ourselves through work we feel unhappy and we do not freely develop physical mental energy for work we force our body and our mind we feel at home when we are not working and when we work we do not feel at home our labor therefore is not voluntary but coerced it is forced labor it is not the satisfaction of a need but the means to satisfy external needs lastly the fact that the labor does not belong to us but to somebody else as a result we lose ourselves we belong to another person as a result the worker only feels like themselves freely active in his animal functions eating drinking having sex or at most in his home or in dressing up and in their human functions they no longer feel themselves to be anything but an animal what is animal becomes human what is human becomes animal now of course eating drinking having sex are genuinely human functions but when we separate them from all other human activity and they are used as a means to an end they become animal functions so now we have considered two aspects of estrangement through labor first the relationship between worker and their product and second the relation between labor to the act of producing itself and we have a third aspect of a strange labor let's for a moment consider that humans are a species and like animals we exist with nature physically humans rely on nature for food heating clothes home so they can kind of begin to see nature as part of their inorganic body but in astringent from human nature and themselves their active functions their life activity a strange labor alienates the species from the human it changes for them the life of the species into a means for an individual life first it alienates the life of the species and individual life and secondly it makes the individual life in its abstract form the purpose of the life for the species labor life activity and productive life itself appears to be to the worker as a means to satisfy a need they need to maintain physical existence but the productive life is the life of the human species so life itself appears to be only as a means to life however animals are one with their life activity they don't distinguish themselves from it it is their life activity humans however make their life activity the object of their will and consciousness their conscious life activity separates them from animal life activity their own life is an object to them and because of that their activity is free activity but a strange flavor reverses that relationship so that because humans are conscious beings they make their life activity a means to their existence in creating a world of objects humans prove themselves as a conscious species of course but while animals also produce they produce only what is immediately necessary for themselves and their young while humans on the other hand produce even when they're free from physical need animals only produce themselves while humans produce the entirety of nature an animal's product belongs to their physical body while humans confront their product animals produce only in accordance and their needs to their species humans produce in accordance and needs to all the species and all of nature they produce everything that they know how to create and finally humans also form objects in accordance to the laws of beauty it is only in their work the humans prove themselves to be a species nature appears as their work and their reality the object of labor is therefore the objectification of the human species life humans duplicate themselves not only intellectually but in reality they see themselves in the world that they have created therefore a strange labor tears from them their life as species their objectivity as a member of the species and transforms their advantage over animals into the disadvantage that nature is taking from them similarly in degrading spontaneous free activity to a means a strange labor makes their human species a means to their existence it alienates humans from their body nature and their spirituality their human aspect an immediate consequence of the fact that humans are estranged from the product of their labor life activity and from the human species is the alienation from human to human what applies to the workers relation to their work also applies to their relation to other humans and their labor since humans view each other in accordance with the relationship with which they view themselves as workers now let's see how the concept of a strange labor must express and present itself in real life if the product of labor is alien to me it appears as an alien power and to whom does it belong the labor belongs to being other than myself to the one that benefits from the labor and this other person is the master of the products and if humans treat their labor as if performance or coercion then it's labor performed under the service of another person thus private property is the product and the necessary consequence of alienated labor private property appears to be the reason for alienated labor but it is actually the consequence it is the means by which labor alienates itself this sheds light on a few unsolved conflicts first capitalism starts from labor as the real soil production yet capitalism gives nothing to labor and everything to private property we also understand that wages and private property are identical the product pays for the labor itself but wage is a necessary consequence of the labor's estrangement likewise in the wage of labor labor appears as the servant to wage and forced increased wages would only be nothing but better payment for the slave and it wouldn't bring neither a worker nor labor human status or dignity even equality in wages only transformed their relationship of the worker to their labor into the relationship of all humans to labor society is then seen as an abstract capitalist wages are a consequence of a strange labor and a strange labor is a direct cause of private property the downfall of one must involve the downfall of the other and second from the relationship of a strange labor to private property it follows that the emancipation of society from private property from servitude is expressed in the emancipation of the workers the emancipation of the workers contains universal human emancipation because it is the entire human servitude that is involved in the relation of the worker to production and all relations of servitude are just variations of that relation and now for this final part what i understood is that marx is guiding our thoughts to where we're gonna go next we're gonna try to solve two problems to define the nature of private property and its relation to true human and social property and number two how does a human come to alienate their labor regarding the first private property embraces both relations the relation of the worker to work and the product of their labor and the non-worker and then for the second relation the relation of the non-worker to the worker and the product of their labor in relation to the worker who appreciates nature through their labor this appropriation appears as estrangement their spontaneous activity appears as activity for another and a sacrifice of their life production of the object as loss of the object to an alien power and we shall now consider the relation to the worker to labor and its object to this person who is alien to labor in the worker first everything which appears in the workers activity of alienation appears in the non-worker as a state of alienation second the worker's real practical attitude in production into the product appears in the non-worker who confronting him as a theoretical attitude thus the non-worker does everything against the worker which the worker does against themselves but they do not do against themselves what they do against the worker and if you're confused with that so am i and don't worry because we will look at these relations more closely in the future this was the first thing i ever read for marx and what really stood out to me is that one line where he says if you're not affirming yourself by default you're denying yourself because it was something i never heard before up until i read this that sometimes we do things we think we should do but actually they go against our own true values and if something goes against your true values then you're denying who you are and to me that was such a powerful idea that i want to do everything in my power so that i don't do that i don't go against myself and that's all i have for you today thank you for watching if you still are subscribe if you like to continue talking about world domination let me know what you thought about this in the comments of the video i'll see you guys