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The Significance Of The Alienation Of Labour In Karl Marx
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1.5 Division of Work
In
order to justify the aim and scope of study, this work is divided into
five chapters. Chapter one deals with the introductory details of the
work while chapter two describes alienation, its forms and the theory
of surplus value. In chapter three, the researcher clearly exposes the
situation of Nigerian workers. The significance of alienation of labour
in Nigeria context forms the subject of chapter four. Lastly, chapter
five critically reviews the Marxian theory of alienation of labour, its
merits and demerits and the possible solution to the situation of
Nigerian workers. After this comes the conclusion
1.6 LITERATURE REVIEW
It
is a common belief in nature that every existing situation or event has
an organic link to something that existed earlier. Hence, there is
always a background to any subject under study.
History has it that
Karl Marx, though very famous and influential in his time, could not be
identified with a particular philosophical system. Instead, what later
emerged, as his philosophical thought was the synthesis of his
predecessors’ philosophical thoughts. Perusing through his method, the
Hegelian categories of dialectics as detected by scholars was purged out
of its idealism. Likewise, Feuerbach’s materialism lost its metaphysics
and contemplative approach in place of socio-political struggle and in
refutation of idealism and religion.
This specifically brought the idea of materialism in Karl Marx. Thus,
Marx’s
achievement in social and political thought was based on a
transformation and synthesis of two traditions: German idealism as
exemplified in the work of Hegel, and philosophical radicalism as
expressed in the materialism of Feuerbach5.
Nonetheless, such
philosophers like Heraclitus, Democritus, Epicurus, Kant, Francis Bacon,
Machiavelli, and his father, as a lawyer and intellectual with strong
rational inclinations, and of Ludwig Von Westphalia, a distinguished
Prussian government official, all had influences on Marx.
From F.
Bacon, Marx was able to see knowledge from the practical perspective,
and from Machiavelli; he saw that, “the end justifies the meansâ€. Kant’s
ethics, which admonishes that one, should always act in a way that
one’s action could be universalized and that human beings should not be
used as a means to an end also caught the sight and interest of Marx.
From these different philosophical thoughts, Marx was exposed into the
psychological and social humps of alienation in labour, which accounts
for the historical change.
Tracing the historical process of
formation in economic factors, according to Karl Marx which have gone
through the economic stages, ranging from “primitive communal, slave
society, feudal society, and capitalismâ€, one could assert that Marx’s
study of this process of formation of economic factor in various
pre-existed epochs that necessitated his view of the classless society
(communism) as forthcoming, enormously contributed in the make-up of
Marx philosophical thought. Hence, the researcher wishes to view the
aspects of the above-mentioned epochs that outstandingly seem very
influential in Karl Marx.
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