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Mains Prelims

Q4(a) · UPSC Civil Services Mains 2018 · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks · 2 min read

← Q3(b) Q5(a) →

According to Marx, how are human beings alienated from their human potential and what does he suggest to change this?

Topic: Sociology. Syllabus: Sociology — The Discipline: Modernity and social changes in Europe and emergence of sociology; Scope of the subject and comparison with other social sciences; Sociology and common sense. Same official PYQ from year-wise 2018 and Sociology.

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Revision summary

Human potential for Marx is free, social, creative labour. Capitalism alienates workers from product, process, species-being, and others. Wage labour and fetishism produce that split. Change is practical transformation of property, not moral advice. Shorter hours and associated production are the direction, not a full blueprint.

Model answer

Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.

Introduction

For Karl Marx, human potential is conscious, social, creative labour that makes a world. Under capitalism that activity is alienated. Change requires transforming property in the means of production, not a moral pep talk to the worker.

Body

Species-being and potential

  • In the 1844 Manuscripts, humans are species-beings: they produce freely, in society, and can treat the product as their own objectification.
  • Potential is not a hidden soul. It is uncrippled productive life.

Four moments of alienation

  • From the product: the object belongs to another and confronts the worker as capital.
  • From the labour process: work is external, commanded, often deskilled later as Harry Braverman showed.
  • From species-being: labour becomes a means to wages, not a free life-activity.
  • From other humans: class relation replaces cooperative production.

How capitalism produces this

  • Wage labour and private ownership split conception from the worker’s control.
  • Commodity fetishism in Capital hides social relations behind things.
  • The more productive the worker, the more capital faces her as a foreign power.

What Marx suggests

  • Practical, revolutionary transformation of property, not only interpretation, as the Theses on Feuerbach insist.
  • Association of producers: abolish the wage-capital relation that makes alienation routine.
  • Shorter working day and collective control as preconditions of free time, already political in Capital.
  • He did not offer a detailed factory blueprint. He offered a change of social relations.

Indian echo

  • Informal and gig work extend alienation without a classic mill. The product and the app still confront the worker as another’s.

Flow diagram

flowchart TD
  POT[Species-being creative labour] --> AL[Alienation]
  AL --> PR[Product]
  AL --> PROC[Process]
  AL --> SP[Species-being]
  AL --> OTH[Others]
  CH[Change property association] --> POT

Conclusion

Marx’s humans are alienated from product, process, species-being, and others when labour is sold to capital. He proposes changing that property relation through collective practice. Potential returns only when production is again a social, self-directed activity.

Quick related

Students also ask

  • Is the theory of cultural lag valid in present times? Discuss

    Next question on this syllabus topic (2018 · Q5(a)). View answer →

  • Is alienation only a feeling?

    It is a structure of property and command. Feelings follow.

  • Does a kind boss end alienation?

    No. The product and the process still belong to capital.

Same topic · past papers

UPSC has asked this before

These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.

  1. 2021 · Q3(c) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks

    Do you agree with Max Weber's idea that bureaucracy has the potential to become an iron cage ? Justify your answer

    View answer →

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