The fact that most religions have a better idea of what hell is like (exquisitely detailed descriptions exist, complete with ghastly illustrations) than what heaven is like is rather disheartening; we know suffering better than we know happiness which speaks volumes in re the living conditions on earth (hellish). — Agent Smith

Good point. That’s because dissatisfaction is the norm. It’s harder to pinpoint what permanent satisfaction is like. Everything is so based on struggle, we’ve made an art of justifying it, making peace with it, enshrining it, recommending it. You name it.

Nice red herrings there.

Victim or Victimizer; choose! — Agent Smith

And one can't do otherwise. Hence morally disqualifying system/existence.

A person...either gonna hurt or gonna hurt! No point to being born! — Agent Smith

Succinct, but to the point. I like it.

Maybe there's a perspective other than the egological. — Wayfarer

You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need. And this "need" I find to be a problem.. If it simply means "need" as in "needs of survival" that's one thing.. But I think it is a moral claim from St. Mick Jagger.. That is to say, there are certain people whose "needs" are being met more because they don't MIND what is going on versus other people.. It is those other people who do mind that somehow have to shut up and ya know, get what they "NEED". Not self-justifying at all :roll:. Who is in control here? Well the masters who make the rules of course.. and they tell you what you NEED. And thus you get posters in here claiming that those who DO MIND are just being "weird" and "stop being weird" stop having "weird conclusions".. There are things that NEED to happen apparently...And I am contra this NEED.

. Also, he always comes to the discussions prepared with specific positions and arguments, unlike 63.459% of the other members. He writes well.

If I'm not in the mood to cross swords with his brand of pessimism, I avoid the discussion. You can't say you didn't expect what you get. — T Clark

Thank you for the nod. I don't just write something and not defend it. I do try to rebut objections, even if people think it unsatisfactory. I write in good faith.. even when met with complete snark and ad hom from the other side. I might focus on different lenses of understanding philosophically pessimistic topics but I have written on many other topics as well, both on this forum and the previous one.. I don't begrudge someone discussing a topic or taking a position that they especially find to be true- especially if it elucidates yet another angle/or feature of that central philosophy they hold. That is not to say, one must hold onto their views, but that doesn't discount that people can find certain views to be the correct ones, and then because of their truth, be used as a methodology for understanding a whole host of issues ranging from metaphysics to ethics.. If Kant endlessly used the CI to solve ethical issues, I don't resent him for that. If Plato and Socrates endlessly solve problems of metaphysics with the notion of Forms, I don't denigrate them for being consistent. I might find them to be wrong in their conclusions, but I don't resent them for using them if they find them to be true. As long as they are arguing in good faith, I say and willing to defend their positions.. As long as it's not all troll and invective...

Some people endlessly discuss Wittgenstein's points over and over.. I don't especially find it that interesting, but I don't metaphorically throw fecal matter at them in their threads for bringing it up.. Along with several members (e.g. 180proof, Bitter Crank, Jamalrob, Benkei, etc.), I am in the category of one of the longest-participating members.. even if one of the most hated :wink:. At least it's a consistent tradition...Hate on schop1 with his tired old pessimism. You mine as well get the pitchforks and force the hemlock while you're at it.. but don't worry, I'm used to it. As @Bitter Crank characterized it:

We have both gotten used to being voices howling in the wilderness. We wilderness howlers are dismissed out of hand, even if our howled message is right on the money. Dressed in rags, eating locusts, (roasted. salted, nutty, crunchy, nutritious), howling, of course; and harshing the mellow of the bourgeoisie just doesn't make one popular,

"Blessed are the shat upon." Simon and Garfunkel — Bitter Crank

Nice try. "Inner aspects" is all you, schop1. — 180 Proof

So what would you say instead? We don't see red? We don't have emotions? Why would you deny that we have "inner aspects" of "what it's like to be..."?

It's clear now that I don't know what you're whinging about, man, because you don't know what you're whinging about either. — 180 Proof

Existences can be characterized as good or bad.. not just people. If you lived in hellish conditions at all times..you would call it bad. If as part of living in those conditions, everyone had to be immoral.. it can be characterized as an immoral system/existence.

Almost everyone's "favored existence" would include being able to live sociably and peacefully with other people. Clearly then, almost every favored existence requires people to accept your so-called "infringement," otherwise known as friendship, loyalty, love, generosity, empathy, compassion, trust, honesty... — T Clark

So are you saying people wish to have other people's preferences thwarted to have these things (love, friendship, loyalty, etc)? If so, more evidence for my case.. preferences had means having other people's preferences thwarted.. Thus morally disqualifying the whole thing (because it is a feature of the system and an intractable conundrum..other people's thwarted preferences allows for our preferences met).

Yeah, well, it's never too late for "some people" to abruptly end their "encounter". :smirk: — 180 Proof

See, your preference for my killing myself is not met.

"Moral" (or not) belongs to existents, not "existence". — 180 Proof

I would have agreed prior but I think that this isn't true anymore even on the face of it.. If there was a world characterized by people being tortured for eternity, that may be characterized as morally disqualifying existence. Perhaps as a feature of that existence, it was such that once born, immediate torture ensued. In that existence you can say all you want, "existences aren't evil, only people", but I would say, the very fact that agonizing torture is a feature of that existence would qualify it as being an evil existence.

Now look at existences that allow for only some evil as a feature of those existences. Just because they are not the most extreme cases of evil, doesn't mean that those existences are not qualified as bad. That is why I characterized them (e.g. our existence) as the "slow burning evil of the squishy middle".. As I said earlier, our existence is:

statistical, and varies in intensity of preferences not satisfied. And this may be for the worse for humans as there will be slow realization of it being morally worse off. It also leads to continual conflict between those whose preferences are being at least minimally satisfied (those who don't mind let's say working to survive), and those who would have never asked for this if the world aligned to their preferences.

With the idea of only SOME people's preferences satisfied, and those preferences entailing the infringement of other people's preferences, this makes this existence morally disqualifying. — schopenhauer1

If that were satisfied you would consider it moral. One would have to accept your concept of having never been born as a preferable alternative to life in order to consider existence immoral. — Joshs

The whole claim is that this existence contains a considerable amount of preferences not met. And if we are to get empirical about it, it isn't just non-trivial things but whole ways of life for whole swaths of people are not met. Some people's tolerances for preferences met are at a minimum.. They will accept anything as long as they are not physically being tortured or starving to death.. Some people would have preferred a completely different mode of living. All that needs to obtain is that at least SOME people do not have preferences met.. and major ones at that.. In fact, as you are pointing out, by default, some preferences CAN NEVER be met.

The slow burning evil of the squishy middle is also an element here. The people whose tolerances (and perhaps preferences) for a world that "doesn't meet other people's preferences" will ALWAYS beat out people who are not tolerant (or have absolutely no preference) of a world that "does NOT have the feature of "doesn't meet other people's preferences"." And thus, that makes this world morally disqualifying..

Remember, morally disqualifying doesn't mean people can't be moral, or that goodness doesn't exist. It just means that this world can never be characterized as a moral/good existence due to these features. There is always "encroaching on other people's preferences". It also means the most tolerant of (or even embracing of) pro-suffering preferences will always win out to those who would prefer that no suffering existed at all.

Most panpsychists criticize physicalism. — Jackson

Right, which is why I said it was odd he seemed to be providing this claim (that matter has inner aspects/conscious aspects). We know inner aspects exist NOT that material thus has inner/conscious aspects. That is jumping to the conclusion before explaining how. At least in @180 Proof debate with me here.

I did not introduce the notion of "inner aspects" – whether or not entities have "inner aspects" – you did, schop1, and thereby the "oddly presupposed panpsychism" is your dilemma / inconsistency not mine. — 180 Proof

You said:

If so, then they are also material; if not, then "inner aspects", with respect to the "material", are a distinction without a difference, no? — 180 Proof

You are the one who seems to be saying "material" has "what it's like" (inner aspect) qualities. I am only working with what you are giving. My guess is anything else you might provide (illusion, map not the territory) has been addressed, but go tell me how I'm not getting something you are saying... Again, working with the responses you are giving me.

For Nietzsche the two sides of this battle are really the same concept, truth and morality as the unchanging , the pure, the perfect. Nietzsche wants to replace this traditional morality with an ethics that recognizes, celebrates and accelerates the incessant differentiating change underlying and overflowing your static notions of the nothing and of suffering. — Joshs

Just seems like more ways to justify suffering. I’m not on board with that. This particular thread is saying that if preferences satisfied are a moral standard than this existence entails it never being moral.

But the ideal of representing all people's preferences is something all societies pursue in some way no matter the religion or culture. — Ajemo

Really? Where? Preferences like meeting supply and demands presuppose other preferences like how society goes about doing that.

The point is that an existence with some preference never met means that existence is not moral. Period. That’s if we believe that peoples preferences being met is the moral standard.

If it’s not the moral standard we gotta choose wisely here because now we are positing that a certain way of life is necessary and more important to carry out for those who don’t agree with it. Then that has to be discussed for why it should be THE way. Simply stating that, there is no other way doesn’t negate the moral disqualification of not meeting everyone’s preferences. It simply restates the very problem of that “squishy middle”.

So then perhaps the future we seek isn't just "don't bother me and I won't bother you", but the merging of all our enjoyments and sufferings. — Ajemo

Don't know what this means or looks like. Sounds vaguely transhumanist.. unless you mean we all be empathetic. I am all for empathy, but at the end of the day, I want my "stuff" and that makes other people work.. who may not want to work but have to to survive and vice versa. We are screwing each other over simply by living. Again, existence entails from its very operation moral disqualification. The very fact that some people's views of the world get to dominate whilst others are simply ignored with a shrug also shows this.

Some people would rather not have encountered a world in the first place where people are murdered, physical and mental diseases proliferate, and work takes up most of adult life. Others find this at the least tolerable and some even find it character-building. Those people win out. And as I said:

It also leads to continual conflict between those whose preferences are being at least minimally satisfied (those who don't mind let's say working to survive), and those who would have never asked for this if the world aligned to their preferences.

With the idea of only SOME people's preferences satisfied, and those preferences entailing the infringement of other people's preferences, this makes this existence morally disqualifying. — schopenhauer1

It's not opposed to materialism. It's a call for an expansion of what counts as material. — Tate

True enough, but then we would come to conclusions like panpsychism which normally isn't considered materialism.

What do understand by "material" means in "materialism"? — 180 Proof

Well yeah, obviously this is a main question and what I meant by:

The map becomes confused with the territory. Or perhaps, the territory has no room for the specific kind of territory and we are back to square one. — schopenhauer1

At most (if your terms are coherent), a scientific problem and not a philosophical question. — 180 Proof

If it is, then scientific methods have set up inquiries into why qualitative things like "seeing red" are one and the same with the physical substrates/processes whilst not ADDING IN the consequent in the premise. That is to say, not commit the homuncular fallacy

What does "inner aspects" refer to? Are you implying that these "inner aspects" do not affect the "material"? If so, then they are also material; if not, then "inner aspects", with tespect to the "material", are a distinction without a difference, no? — 180 Proof

I'm not implying that. I'm only saying there is an inner aspect and what is the nature of "inner aspect" as opposed to things that do not have an inner aspect. That is to say, does a plant have an inner aspect? Why not? Does a primitive animal have an inner aspect? Why? If it does, what about that phenomenon makes it have the nature "inner aspect" as opposed to other processes. If you read that correctly I am not saying what processes are indicative of the inner aspect (i.e. these features means consciousness is present) but rather why those features have inner aspect phenomenon while others do not.

Your question oddly presupposes panpsychism.. as you almost assuming that material MUST have inner aspect.

Incoherent muddle. "Physical" =/= "material" (i.e. event-patterns =/= events). — 180 Proof

Don't know how to read this other than you hold some view of events that is supposedly outside the scope of the hard problem, but probably is anyways.

The unalienated employee leaps gladsomely into the air, and sings a roundelay having to do with not being estranged — Ciceronianus

Do we need Marxism for this non-estrangement to come about?

f all "category mistake" ultimately means is that they're just very different things and you can't use the same descriptions for both of them, you've offered no explanation; you've just reiterated without explanation that the two are just two very different things.

How are they different? — Hanover

:up: Yep. See my similar response here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/699747

So let's think of different things.. We have the Marxist model of taking over resources and capital. What does that really look like though? I brought this up in another thread about how we can never know even a sliver of the technology that we rely upon. So there will still be "experts", and access to the capital will then have to go through the de facto "gatekeepers" of the knowledgeable. I use a computer, It relies on circuit boards, programming, monitors, electrical components, etc. It relies on materials, plastics, etc. All of which I have no idea about.. So I am stuck in my "realm of expertise".. Whatever that is. Only that is what I can effect, not the whole. So basically I run things by democratically led councils rather than managers.. And I don't know, things just start looking more of the same. I don't see alienation going away any time soon. — schopenhauer1

@Bitter Crank

Also, along with this it should be said that we can't just start collectives from the "ground up" in some commune-like society because mining, manufacturing, and logistics etc. are just too complex to simply "trade". Too complex, too much coordination. There can seemingly never be a situation, for example, where a computer is made by "ground up" collectives of people pooling their time. The resources needed for such products are just too vast and interconnected with webs of webs of networks that cannot be coordinated other than as they are now it seems.

These "collectives" are then thus hobby-projects like trading various goods and services on a very minimal scale.. I'll mow your lawn, you get the vegetables kind of thing. But making the lawnmower and extracting the metal for tools are mainly out-of-reach in such a setup.

The only other choice becomes lowering demand for such products. That's not happening any time soon. Voluntary asceticism is not going to be in high demand as far as a solution to the problem.

So we are stuck with the "squishy middle" of @Hanover where we keep the current situation. Squishy middle wins :meh:. This is nothing more though than sclerotic victory. That is to say, not a victory. No change. Just sit back and let the current situation keep going...

I don't think there are as many people who are "happy" as you think.

From 2013 but still:

It's a disturbing number, to say the least.

According to just-released data by Gallup, only 13 percent of employees are "engaged" in their jobs, or emotionally invested in their work and focused on helping their organizations improve.

The data, which are based on nationally representative polling samples in 2011 and 2012 from more than 140 countries, show that 63 percent are "not engaged"—or simply unmotivated and unlikely to exert extra effort—while the remaining 24 percent are "actively disengaged," or truly unhappy and unproductive.

While that's discouraging, it's actually a little better than the last time Gallup issued a global report. In data collected in 2009 and 2010, just 11 percent of workers reported being invested in their jobs, while 27 percent had actively checked out. The small improvement is due to an upswing in the global economy since those two recession years, when unemployment rates were even worse and when people were even more likely to settle for jobs they didn't like because options were so limited. — Washington Post Article

But anyways, taking away the empirical aspect here, what is moral about putting people in a situation where they have to comply with various dictates of X organization because if they don't they will lose out on the dictates of survival (money to stay alive)? Whether workers are happy or not under this system doesn't mean the system itself is good or bad. I have had whole threads on this with the idea of the "happy slave" and such. Making the best of a crappy situation is fine and dandy, I am not here to discuss how to make the best of a crappy situation but to improve the crappy situation.

There are people wrongly convicted. Because you are wrongly convicted doesn't mean that you can't try to make the best of your situation in jail.. Read, walk outside, workout, whatever. You can just sit in your cell and get even more depressed, true.. And I wouldn't blame them. However, that situation itself is systemically wrong.

Forcing you into a game and telling you to play better is not an answer, just a dodge.

That is why I start from the root cause. The root is birth itself. You know this. I know this. The penalty of birth is life, and then death. It's a penalty we did not / could not ask for, yet here we are, being punished. So what we must do is "banish" that problem from our consciousness and get on with "things" because we cannot do anything about that, so then what? Well, we are stuck with the comply (with socioeconomic realities of survival) or die.

So let's think of different things.. We have the Marxist model of taking over resources and capital. What does that really look like though? I brought this up in another thread about how we can never know even a sliver of the technology that we rely upon. So there will still be "experts", and access to the capital will then have to go through the de facto "gatekeepers" of the knowledgeable. I use a computer, It relies on circuit boards, programming, monitors, electrical components, etc. It relies on materials, plastics, etc. All of which I have no idea about.. So I am stuck in my "realm of expertise".. Whatever that is. Only that is what I can effect, not the whole. So basically I run things by democratically led councils rather than managers.. And I don't know, things just start looking more of the same. I don't see alienation going away any time soon.

"The hard problem" is a pseudo-problem due to assuming an unwarranted confusion / conflation of an ontological duality with semantic duality compounded subsequently by observing that polar opposite terms "subjectivity" and "objectivity" cannot be described in terms of one another, which amounts to framing the "problem" based on a category mistake. There isn't an "hard problem" to begin with, schop. — 180 Proof

Why is that framing the problem based on a category mistake? There exists qualitative aspects to things. This exists in what we know (ourselves), more broadly (humans), and even more broadly (other sentient life forms). How is it that that phenomena fits into the structure of material processes?

Really, I see the hard problems as a direct critique at Materialism. Materialism proposes that everything is material or abstractions of material. There is no room for "inner aspects" because that itself is not material. The map becomes confused with the territory. Or perhaps, the territory has no room for the specific kind of territory and we are back to square one.

If you go and say "but material can be inner aspects" the question is "how". If you say "illusion" that has to be accounted for. If you say that physical is qualitative, then you become a sort of panpsychist or idealist and no longer a materialist. It's more tricky than you are letting on.

If you know a way to get the food to jump on the plate, I'm all ears. — Hanover

Good start..

We are slaves to our material existence and survival requires work. How we choose to emotionally respond to that reality is our choice. — Hanover

But it is not simply by fiat that we "choose to respond".. We respond within environs and situatedness that is already laid out for us in the form of the current socioeconomic structures and ways-of-life in place.

Of course survival and material acquisition are only the rudimentary elements of our existence, and I would only buy into the generally pessimistic view that life is a series of harsh experiences followed by an unceremonial death if that's all there was. — Hanover

Being squishy middle ground about life doesn't make it by way of BEING a middle ground a good thing. I only feel alienated SOME of the time doesn't mean, thus alienation good.

schopenhauer1's antinatalist logic is valid. Life sucks, and having children perpetuates life's suckiness. I agree that life sucks, but not so much that no body should have more children. Similarly, I agree that many people do not seem to be alienated from their work, their product--whatever that is, be it nuts and bolts or legal services. — Bitter Crank

Thanks for at least acknowledging my position as a valid one!

"Managing to get through one's day without going berserk" is not an endorsement of the existing system. Workers' vision becomes much clearer when they experience the harsh side of capitalism, the side where there is no negotiation towards a tolerable middle ground. It is also the case that capitalism works very hard to portray itself positively. The positive portrait is the one hanging in most Americans' living room. — Bitter Crank

So this "squishy middle-ground capitalism" (as I'll call it), is also wrong. There is something about being cowed into other people's demands that seems off in general. Now, you can throw invectives of "that is reality.. we need shit done and we need people to follow dictates of organizations to do the shit that needs gettin' done", but this whole position itself can be questioned. The idea that it cannot be or should not be questioned is what I question.

Well, I'll just dialogue with myself then.. I find this passage interesting from SEP article on Karl Marx:

Marx holds that work has the potential to be something creative and fulfilling. He consequently rejects the view of work as a necessary evil, denying that the negative character of work is part of our fate, a universal fact about the human condition that no amount of social change could remedy. Indeed, productive activity, on Marx’s account, is a central element in what it is to be a human being, and self-realisation through work is a vital component of human flourishing. That he thinks that work—in a different form of society—could be creative and fulfilling, perhaps explains the intensity and scale of Marx’s condemnation of contemporary economic arrangements and their transformation of workers into deformed and “dehumanised” beings (MECW 3: 284).

It was suggested above that alienation consists of dysfunctional separations—separations between entities that properly belong together—and that theories of alienation typically presuppose some baseline condition whose frustration or violation by the relevant separation identifies the latter as dysfunctional. For Marx, that baseline seems to be provided by an account of human flourishing, which he conceptualises in terms of self-realisation (understood here as the development and deployment of our essential human capacities). Labour in capitalism, we can say, is alienated because it embodies separations preventing the self-realisation of producers; because it is organised in a way that frustrates the human need for free, conscious, and creative work.

So understood, and returning to the four separations said to characterise alienated labour, we can see that it is the implicit claim about human nature (the fourth separation) which identifies the other three separations as dysfunctional. If one subscribed to the same formal model of alienation and self-realisation, but held a different account of the substance of human nature, very different claims about work in capitalist society might result. Imagine a theorist who held that human beings were solitary, egoistic creatures, by nature. That theorist could accept that work in capitalist society encouraged isolation and selfishness, but deny that such results were alienating, because those results would not frustrate their baseline account of what it is to be a human being (indeed, they would rather facilitate those characteristics). — Karl Marx SEP

And that is basically what I am positing.. What if there is no ending problems related to alienation? That the root of the problems aren't even the problems? That is to say, that some people will just always not like certain forms of work that are deemed "necessary" for the running and maintaining of a certain kind of society? His view seems to be very positive about how people will just "do what they have to" because it is basically "natural". I'm not so sure that "species-essence" is so fixed.

@ZzzoneiroCosm is there ANYTHING from those sources you have to discuss then?

In fact, however, when the limited bourgeois form is stripped away, what is wealth other than the universality of individual needs, capacities, pleasures, productive forces etc., created through universal exchange? The full development of human mastery over the forces of nature, those of so-called nature as well as of humanity’s own nature? The absolute working-out of his creative potentialities, with no presupposition other than the previous historic development, which makes this totality of development, i.e. the development of all human powers as such the end in itself, not as measured on a predetermined yardstick? Where he does not reproduce himself in one specificity, but produces his totality? Strives not to remain something he has become, but is in the absolute movement of becoming? In bourgeois economics – and in the epoch of production to which it corresponds – this complete working-out of the human content appears as a complete emptying-out, this universal objectification as total alienation, and the tearing-down of all limited, one-sided aims as sacrifice of the human end-in-itself to an entirely external end. This is why the childish world of antiquity appears on one side as loftier. On the other side, it really is loftier in all matters where closed shapes, forms and given limits are sought for. It is satisfaction from a limited standpoint; while the modern gives no satisfaction; or, where it appears satisfied with itself, it is vulgar. — Marx- Grundrisse

"It is of course very simple to imagine that some powerful, physically dominant individual, after first having caught the animal, then catches humans in order to have them catch animals; in a word, uses human beings as another naturally occurring condition for his reproduction (whereby his own labour reduces itself to ruling) like any other natural creature. But such a notion is stupid – correct as it may be from the standpoint of some particular given clan or commune – because it proceeds from the development of isolated individuals. But human beings become individuals only through the process of history. He appears originally as a species-being [Gattungswesen], clan being, herd animal – although in no way whatever as a ζῶον πολιτιϰόν [4] in the political sense. Exchange itself is a chief means of this individuation [Vereinzelung]. It makes the herd-like existence superfluous and dissolves it. Soon the matter [has] turned in such a way that as an individual he relates himself only to himself, while the means with which he posits himself as individual have become the making of his generality and commonness. In this community, the objective being of the individual as proprietor, say proprietor of land, is presupposed, and presupposed moreover under certain conditions which chain him to the community, or rather form a link in his chain. In bourgeois society, the worker e.g. stands there purely without objectivity, subjectively; but the thing which stands opposite him has now become the true community [Gemeinwesen], [5] which he tries to make a meal of, and which makes a meal of him."

The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power on its own confronting him. It means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien.

In creating a world of objects by his personal activity, in his work upon inorganic nature, man proves himself a conscious species-being, i.e., as a being that treats the species as his own essential being, or that treats itself as a species-being. Admittedly animals also produce. They build themselves nests, dwellings, like the bees, beavers, ants, etc. But an animal only produces what it immediately needs for itself or its young. It produces one-sidedly, whilst man produces universally. It produces only under the dominion of immediate physical need, whilst man produces even when he is free from physical need and only truly produces in freedom therefrom. An animal produces only itself, whilst man reproduces the whole of nature. An animal’s product belongs immediately to its physical body, whilst man freely confronts his product. An animal forms only in accordance with the standard and the need of the species to which it belongs, whilst man knows how to produce in accordance with the standard of every species, and knows how to apply everywhere the inherent standard to the object. Man therefore also forms objects in accordance with the laws of beauty.

It is just in his work upon the objective world, therefore, that man really proves himself to be a species-being. This production is his active species-life. Through this production, nature appears as his work and his reality. The object of labor is, therefore, the objectification of man’s species-life: for he duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he sees himself in a world that he has created. In tearing away from man the object of his production, therefore, estranged labor tears from him his species-life, his real objectivity as a member of the species and transforms his advantage over animals into the disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him.

Similarly, in degrading spontaneous, free activity to a means, estranged labor makes man’s species-life a means to his physical existence.

The consciousness which man has of his species is thus transformed by estrangement in such a way that species[-life] becomes for him a means.

Estranged labor turns thus:

(3) Man’s species-being, both nature and his spiritual species-property, into a being alien to him, into a means of his individual existence. It estranges from man his own body, as well as external nature and his spiritual aspect, his human aspect.

(4) An immediate consequence of the fact that man is estranged from the product of his labor, from his life activity, from his species-being, is the estrangement of man from man. When man confronts himself, he confronts the other man. What applies to a man’s relation to his work, to the product of his labor and to himself, also holds of a man’s relation to the other man, and to the other man’s labor and object of labor.

In fact, the proposition that man’s species-nature is estranged from him means that one man is estranged from the other, as each of them is from man’s essential nature.

The estrangement of man, and in fact every relationship in which man [stands] to himself, is realized and expressed only in the relationship in which a man stands to other men.

Hence within the relationship of estranged labor each man views the other in accordance with the standard and the relationship in which he finds himself as a worker.

||XXV| We took our departure from a fact of political economy – the estrangement of the worker and his production. We have formulated this fact in conceptual terms as estranged, alienated labor. We have analyzed this concept – hence analyzing merely a fact of political economy.

Let us now see, further, how the concept of estranged, alienated labor must express and present itself in real life.

If the product of labor is alien to me, if it confronts me as an alien power, to whom, then, does it belong?

To a being other than myself.

Who is this being?

The gods? To be sure, in the earliest times the principal production (for example, the building of temples, etc., in Egypt, India and Mexico) appears to be in the service of the gods, and the product belongs to the gods. However, the gods on their own were never the lords of labor. No more was nature. And what a contradiction it would be if, the more man subjugated nature by his labor and the more the miracles of the gods were rendered superfluous by the miracles of industry, the more man were to renounce the joy of production and the enjoyment of the product to please these powers.

The alien being, to whom labor and the product of labor belongs, in whose service labor is done and for whose benefit the product of labor is provided, can only be man himself.

If the product of labor does not belong to the worker, if it confronts him as an alien power, then this can only be because it belongs to some other man than the worker. If the worker’s activity is a torment to him, to another it must give satisfaction and pleasure. Not the gods, not nature, but only man himself can be this alien power over man.

We must bear in mind the previous proposition that man’s relation to himself becomes for him objective and actual through his relation to the other man. Thus, if the product of his labor, his labor objectified, is for him an alien, hostile, powerful object independent of him, then his position towards it is such that someone else is master of this object, someone who is alien, hostile, powerful, and independent of him. If he treats his own activity as an unfree activity, then he treats it as an activity performed in the service, under the dominion, the coercion, and the yoke of another man.

Every self-estrangement of man, from himself and from nature, appears in the relation in which he places himself and nature to men other than and differentiated from himself. For this reason religious self-estrangement necessarily appears in the relationship of the layman to the priest, or again to a mediator, etc., since we are here dealing with the intellectual world. In the real practical world self-estrangement can only become manifest through the real practical relationship to other men. The medium through which estrangement takes place is itself practical. Thus through estranged labor man not only creates his relationship to the object and to the act of production as to powers [in the manuscript Menschen (men) instead of Mächte (powers). – Ed.] that are alien and hostile to him; he also creates the relationship in which other men stand to his production and to his product, and the relationship in which he stands to these other men. Just as he creates his own production as the loss of his reality, as his punishment; his own product as a loss, as a product not belonging to him; so he creates the domination of the person who does not produce over production and over the product. Just as he estranges his own activity from himself, so he confers upon the stranger an activity which is not his own.

We have until now considered this relationship only from the standpoint of the worker and later on we shall be considering it also from the standpoint of the non-worker.

Through estranged, alienated labor, then, the worker produces the relationship to this labor of a man alien to labor and standing outside it. The relationship of the worker to labor creates the relation to it of the capitalist (or whatever one chooses to call the master of labor). Private property is thus the product, the result, the necessary consequence, of alienated labor, of the external relation of the worker to nature and to himself.

Private property thus results by analysis from the concept of alienated labor, i.e., of alienated man, of estranged labor, of estranged life, of estranged man.

True, it is as a result of the movement of private property that we have obtained the concept of alienated labor (of alienated life) in political economy. But on analysis of this concept it becomes clear that though private property appears to be the reason, the cause of alienated labor, it is rather its consequence, just as the gods are originally not the cause but the effect of man’s intellectual confusion. Later this relationship becomes reciprocal.

Only at the culmination of the development of private property does this, its secret, appear again, namely, that on the one hand it is the product of alienated labor, and that on the other it is the means by which labor alienates itself, the realization of this alienation.

This exposition immediately sheds light on various hitherto unsolved conflicts.

YOU posted about Marxism... Why don't YOU post some passages from MARX??

I'm still in the reading phase. The phase you skipped over. Have fun. — ZzzoneiroCosm

You're fuckn ridiculous then.. Then wait till you're done and don't post anything. No use saying anything. You don't have anything to say, yet you post stuff. "I am going to the bathroom" isn't interesting. I am reading this manual about car insurance.. isn't interesting.

If it's a reading group then select pages, passages that you specifically want to discuss. Don't just say, "Here are books.. read this corpus and get back to me". There are whole courses on Marxism, politically, economically, historically, and so it is too broad to make a thread of "Study Marxism". Rather, you should focus on something you want in particular.. Alienation let's say.. Pick some passages that are most meaningful about alienation from Marx himself, explain how it is misinterpreted, and then restate its true meaning..

If you think I am wrong, then tell me using actual passages that prove me wrong. But the thing is, it's not that it's wrong as you think that they will work. I am saying the ideas don't pan out in a hypothetical world.. If you think that is an error of understanding, then tell me how in your own words and analysis.

Dude, you made a whole thread to read something. That isn't doing anything on a forum like this. I should make a thread too.. "Read Schopenhauer".. So what? Do you have anything to add yourself. Do you have any debates, any passages to analyze? No? So who cares.

Alienation isn't primarily a "feeling". It's an objective circumstance. How unhappy employees may feel depends to a large extent on their expectations. I've worked in temp jobs where I had very few positive expectations, and wasn't oppressed by the meagre quality of work life. Landing in a job where one lacks competence to perform leads to many unhappy experiences, and may not be the fault of the employer. I've found myself in a couple of jobs where I was not competent to handle loathsome detailed paper processing systems and failed. Not the employer's fault -- more mine for lack of self knowledge. — Bitter Crank

I understand it enough.. The species-being notion that we are working for humanity and that will be enough to clean toilets and do paperwork, and make ball bearings etc. There are people who won't like any work, no matter what. There are people who might like some work, but it's not very useful to the species-being. There are so many problems.. It just takes a few "bad apples" and the system breaks down as a "worker-led" thing and then becomes a top-down, disciplinary apparatus which then goes right back to being alienating.. And of course you got your work camps and re-education camps and simply slave labor.. And of course, none of this was initially intended, but it does become a prominent "bug" to a system where not everyone cares about the "species-being" of others, but it is insisted that this system remain intact in some capacity.. And then you just have totalitarianism.

It just seems like an incoherent position to me that there could be relations without non-relations (stuffs, or "inner aspects", as you call them). — litewave

Yeah but why are non-relations necessarily experiential, other than we know that experience exists in animals?

The above is surely a description of alienating work overcome by the fellowship of patriotic common cause? Changing my baby's diaper is not alienating to the same extent as changing my granddad's. Self-realisation, in this sense is a personal development in a social world that makes drudgery non-alienating. Thus in the Zen monastery, only the Zen master has the self-realisation to be qualified to clean the toilets, the acolytes would be alienated by such work. Nothing alienates the enlightened. — unenlightened

Right, but then if one can just "will" their way to unalienation, Marx's WHOLE PROJECT is wrong as far as his specific Marxism.

And I don't think that just "willing our way to liking certain work" is really that feasible.. @Albero's source seems correct:

Marx believed that alienated labor will be eliminated under communism. But the truth is that it will be a feature of all modes of production.

Seems rude. — Jackson

It seems foolish to say there is no "inner and outer" but maybe prove me wrong. It's as if someone said, "I do not see colors" when they clearly show evidence they do.. Thus misconstruing perhaps what I am asking.. and if evaluated further would realize, "Oh yea, I see this red color when I look at X thing (apple, fire truck, etc.).

This is, again, confusing the how with the why question by those who answer the question that way. They're answering the how thinking they're providing the why answer. Philosophically, we cannot answer why humans have sensations, consciousness, and feelings. We can only answer the how humans became this way -- through mutation, evolution, etc. — L'éléphant

Yep, I agree.