Now let's move on to what this text is really known for, which is the articulation of Marx's

theory of alienation.

Let's get into it.

So Marx opens this section showing how he and the previous chapters has proceeded entirely

from the premises of the political economists of his time, like Adam Smith, David Ricardo

etc.

And through their own premises and arguments has shown, quote, that the worker sinks to

the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities.

That the wretchedness of the worker is an inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of

his production, that the necessary result of competition is the accumulation of capital

in a few hands and thus the restoration of monopoly in a most terrible form, and that

finally the distinction between capitalist and landlord, like that between the tiller

of the soil and the factory worker, disappears and that the whole of society must fall apart

into the two classes, property owners and property lists, workers.

He then goes on to make a profound claim that foreshadows so much of what is to come in

the tradition of Marxism.

He says quote, political economy proceeds from the fact of private property, it does not

explain it to us.

In other words, the work of people like Smith and Ricardo are products of capitalism, not

explanations of how it actually operates or how it arises.

In effect, like so much of the economics of our own time, it takes the dominant system

as given and then works backwards to justify it.

...