Wood Flashcards
(10 cards)
What is the main argument of Wood’s chapter on alienation?
Wood argues that Marx’s concept of alienation is philosophically vague but descriptively powerful—useful for critiquing capitalism’s dehumanising effects, but too metaphorical to serve as a precise explanatory theory.
What does Marx mean by “alienation”
Alienation is the systematic estrangement of workers under capitalism—from their labour, products, fellow humans, and human essence (“species-being”).
What are the four forms of alienation?
From the Product – Workers don’t own what they create.
From the Act of Labour – Work is coercive and unfulfilling.
From Others – Competition replaces cooperation.
From Species-Being – Human creativity and communal potential are stifled.
Why does Wood criticise early Marx’s theory of alienation?
He says alienation is more metaphor than mechanism—Marx fails to show how or why capitalist structures cause these forms of estrangement in a clear, causal way.
What example does Wood give of alienation’s vagueness?
Marx’s claim that alienated labour produces private property is, in Wood’s view, “gibberish” unless further explained. The causal link between labour and ownership isn’t clarified.
How does later Marx (in Capital) use alienation?
Not as a theory, but as a diagnostic lens:
To describe meaninglessness (e.g., life reduced to work)
To highlight powerlessness (e.g., workers made redundant and disposable)
How does Marx’s materialist view of alienation differ from Feuerbach or Hegel?
Hegel/Feuerbach: Alienation is ideological—errors in belief (e.g., religion as misdirection).
Marx: Alienation is material, rooted in exploitative labour relations.
📌 “Religious misery is the expression of real misery.”
What is “species-being” in Marx’s theory?
It refers to humans’ essential nature as creative, social beings who find meaning through purposeful, communal labour.
⚠️ Capitalism alienates this by reducing people to labouring machines.
What’s a counterpoint to Wood’s critique?
Marxist humanists like Erich Fromm argue alienation is essential for understanding existential suffering under capitalism—offering a moral critique, even if it’s not a strict theory.
What’s the key takeaway from Wood’s analysis?
Alienation may fail as a scientific explanation, but it remains a useful metaphor for capturing the degradation of human life under capitalism—bridging Marx’s early moral critiques with his later structural analysis.
