Hello , I have to write answers in the exam to questions like this with a technical vocab and i dont want to miss certain points . I have understood the themes but when i have to produce the answer on the paper , i am at a loss . So help me with a system i can use to have atleast the bold part committed to memory and i could build the answer around that.
I have to do this exercise for a lot of other answers in political science. Please help me create a system for this .
Below is a sample question .
Ques: According to Karl Marx, how human beings get alienated from their human
potential and what can be done to change this?
Ans.‘Alienation’ was one of the most important & widely debated themes of the 20th century,
and Karl Marx’s theorization played a key role in the discussions. In theological
discussion, the term ‘alienation’ refers to the distance between man and the god.
However, for Marx, the **history of mankind is not only the history of class antagonism,
**
but also the increasing alienation of man.
Marx’s theory on alienation is based upon his theory of human nature. The essential features of human nature includes—
i. Man is social by nature: It is a natural requirement of human being **to be in
**
company with others.
ii. Man is creative by nature: Man feels pleasure in the process of creation and by
the product of his creation.
According to Karl Marx, capitalism has resulted into alienation of man. He argues that
capitalism isolates man. It doesn’t allow human beings to realize their true nature and
thus, leads to alienation.
According to Marx, alienation can be seen as having four basic forms—
i. Alienation from the object produced : The estrangement occurs because the
workers relates to the product of his work as an object alien to him. The product
of worker’s labour strengthen the capitalist order because capitalists control the
profit of the firms they own and are enriched by it. Workers don’t determine
what is to be produced.
ii. Alienation of workers from the act of labour or activity of production : In a
capitalist system, the work that workers perform doesn’t belong to the workers,
but is a means of survival that the workers are forced to perform for capitalists.
As such, his working activity doesn’t spring simultaneously from within as a
natural ‘act of creativity’ but rather exists outside of him and signifies a loss of his self. According to Marx the activity of workers is degraded to a necessity for
self-survival.
iii. Alienation from society : Being alienated from and antagonistic towards the
entire capitalist system, though which the capitalist appropriates the objects of production for his own enrichment at workers’ expanse, the **proletariats see
**
other human beings as competitor who can deprive him from his work. This
produces a sense of alienation and estrangement from the whole society.
iv. Alienation from himself or human identity: The cumulate effect of all forms of
alienation is that man gets alienated from **essential nature of human identity or
**
‘species being’ and wholeness as a human being. Thus he gets alienated from
himself.
The means recommended for overcoming alienation or reaching the
stage of de-alienation depends on the core theme of economic determinism,
interlinking situation of alienation with the problem of social transformation.
For economic determinist, individuals are the products of social organization,
which in itself determined by the organization of economic life. This
interpretation logically leads to the conclusion that **de-alienation of the
**
individual and reorganization of society are closely connected. In order to end
alienation and reach a stage where individual fulfills himself as a free, conscious
and creative being of praxis a revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system
replaced by a socialist society in which the means of production would be
controlled by the community.
As Marx diagnosed faults in the economic system and class society to be the sense of
every social evils including alienation, he presented communism as a classless society in which people work according to their ability and gain according to their needs. On
one hand, this leads to satisfaction of individuals creative urge and on the other, it
provides social remedy to estrangement or alienation of an individual by ensuring freedom from necessities in order to achieve essential source of human identity or
‘species-essence’.