Marx Response

The concept that stuck out to me most while reading the Marx was the concept of “estranged labor.” I was thinking of how strange it was for people to create things for the good of the whole rather than for him or herself, but at the same time it seems to be what sets humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom.

The concept of community is one that has grown from colonies and packs into states and countries and has come to be the basis for all that we know as humans today. We all work together, particularly in a democracy like the United States, in order to better form the democratic state. It isn’t to the degree of a communist state, but there is something inertly American in the concept of a factory that we have all come to terms with. We all work in order to pay taxes and to better ourselves in the strange class system that is the hidden whisper of the country. As much as America promotes the concept of being able change our place in society, it seems like something that is impossible to actually change.

In reading Marx many aspects of communism in our country became inertly apparent. The concept of all of us working for the better of the whole and the better of our own niche within society is something that I find to be strangely inherent in the way we live. We are so often put into sects but it is generally without any sort of acknowledgement. We also don’t seem to have a problem with working for the concept of the whole. It is in our human instinct to often work for the better of the whole, even if we aren’t realizing it while it is happening.

Y’see, I had never really seen it that way. But it oddly makes perfect sense.