Jonathan Wolff on Marx on Alienation

Philosophy Bites

Nigel Warburton

Education, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2008

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Karl Marx's theory of alienated labour is the topic of this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. Jonathan Wolff, author of Why Read Marx Today? explains what Marx meant by alienation. He also sheds light on Marx's controversial description of what non-alienated labour would be like.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.
0:07.0	Philosophy bites is available at www
0:09.6	philosophy bites.com
0:11.0	one important reason the revolution was inevitable, Karl Marx thought, was that in the capitalist
0:16.0	society the labour force was alienated. Marx's critique of alienation was developed while
0:22.2	he was in exile in France. The Industrial
0:24.5	Revolution was underway and the young Marx for the first time mingled with workers
0:29.2	and was appalled by their poverty. Jonathan Wolf is a professor at University College London and author of
0:35.4	Why Read Marks today?
0:37.1	Jonathan Wolf, welcome to Philosophy Bites.
0:40.5	It's very nice to be back again.
0:41.5	The topic we're going to focus on today is Karl Marx, but specifically Karl Marx on alienated labor.
0:49.0	I wonder if you could paint the picture of Marx's concerns at the time he was writing about alienation.
0:55.0	Marx's main work on alienation is a work known as the 1844 manuscripts, also known as the Paris manuscripts, also known as the the economic and philosophical manuscripts.
1:07.0	Marx was trained as a philosopher.
1:09.2	He was steeped in German philosophy,
1:11.3	but also post-arest Italian philosophy. He wrote a thesis on
1:14.3	Epicureus and democracies, but he couldn't get a job teaching philosophy in Germany. He was
1:20.9	far too radical, he was an atheist. He kept the wrong company. So he
1:25.9	began as a journalist and as a journalist he had to get very interested in politics. He had to write
1:31.3	about the conditions of the peasants in Mosel, he had to write about
1:35.1	laws against the theft of wood, and so on. Looking at political issues radicalized him to such a degree
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