Editing Marx's theory of alienation (section)

=== From a worker's productive activity ===
[[File:1912 Lawrence Textile Strike 1.jpg|thumb|250px|Strikers confronted by soldiers during the 1912 [[1912 Lawrence textile strike|textile factory strike in Lawrence]], Massachusetts, United States, called when owners reduced [[wages]] after a state law reduced the work week from 56 to 54 hours]]
In the [[Capitalist mode of production (Marxist theory)|capitalist mode of production]], the generation of products (goods and services) is accomplished with an endless sequence of discrete, repetitive motions that offer the worker little psychological satisfaction for "a job well done." By means of [[commodification]], the [[labor power]] of the worker is reduced to wages (an exchange value); the psychological estrangement (''Entfremdung'') of the worker results from the unmediated relation between his productive labour and the wages paid to him for the labour. The worker is alienated from the means of production via two forms: wage compulsion and the imposed production content. The worker is bound to unwanted labour as a means of survival, labour is not "voluntary but coerced" (forced labour). The worker is only able to reject wage compulsion at the expense of their life and that of their family. The distribution of [[private property]] in the hands of wealth owners, combined with government enforced taxes compel workers to labour. In a capitalist world, our means of survival is based on monetary exchange, therefore we have no other choice than to sell our labour power and consequently be bound to the demands of the capitalist.

The worker "[d]oes not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself;" "[l]abor is external to the worker,"<ref name=":0">Marx, Karl. [1844] 1932. ''[[Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844]]''.</ref>{{Rp|74}} it is not a part of their essential being. During work, the worker is miserable, unhappy and drained of their energy, work "mortifies his body and ruins his mind." The production content, direction and form are imposed by the capitalist. The worker is being controlled and told what to do since they do not own the means of production they have no say in production, "labour is external to the worker, i.e. it does not belong to his essential being.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|74}} A person's mind should be free and conscious, instead it is controlled and directed by the capitalist, "the external character of labour for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own but someone else's, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another."<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|74}} This means he cannot freely and spontaneously create according to his own directive as labour's form and direction belong to someone else.