Difference between revisions of "Theory of Alienation"

Marxist theory unconditionally supported industrialisation as the major vector of economic progress. Marx took from Hegel a fundamental belief in the "inevitability" of social progress, which Hegel had in turn taken from the French Enlightenment, notably Voltaire. Thus the soviet regimes of the twentieth century promoted unbridled industrialisation, at the price of ecological devastation. Marxist communism created an industrial totalitarianism, as summed up in Lenin's formula: "communism is the soviets plus electrification." Marxist theory as a whole is thus enthusiastic about, rather than critical of, industrialization per se.

However, the Marxist Theory of Alienation does present elements of an interesting critique of industrialisation. According to the Marxist analysis, the worker in the industrial factory produces mechanically an object which is completely defined by someone else, so that the product contains nothing of the worker's own creativity, and the finished product is experienced as something alien. By extension, the entire society and its component parts, including notably the media, are produced in a similar manner, and are thus experienced as something that is alienated from the producers.