Labour can be productive, in the sense that it produces capital, or unproductive. Marx gives the example of the piano maker, who is productive, and the pianist, who creates no new wealthy, but merely exchanges his services for money. Tthe terms 'subjective' and 'objective' are also often contrasted by Marx. The working class is objectively the revolutionary class, although subjectively it is not so. That is, seen from the viewpoint of history, the proletariat is the class which has the potential for making the revolution, although it may not feel itself to be revolutionary, or have any self-awareness, alias class consciousness. A class's subjective viewpoint can differ from its objective reality because, being within a contradictory situation, it has only partial view of the totality. A scientific theory, as Marx believed his was, which takes account of the whole, can explain that class's objective position. Western commentators who accuse Marx of forgetting the psychological aspects of human life should perhaps see his acknowledgment of subjective viewpoints as a gesture in this direction. (My own personal viewpoint? Where else can you place psychological aspects of human life in your thinking when you are hungry and have no roof under your head!!!). Two other key terms in Marx's analysis are apporpriation and expropriation. From the viewpoint of the capitalist, who is engaged in accumulating profits, he is appropriating this private property, setting aside for himself. But from the labourer's point of view, the capitalist is expropriating him, seizing his goods which he has produced and depriving him of a proper reward for his labour. (Accurately valid statement!!!)
Marx borrowed the term 'objectification' (which some translators render as 'reification') from Hegel, for whom it was part of the dialectical movement of individual consciousness. The dialective begins with a thinking subject, and objectification means that something which is really part of the subject itself is placed outside itself in its mind, and regarded as an object, which results in a distortion of the subject's view of the situation. For Marx, one of the prime causes of the worker's alienation under capitalism is that he is forced to objectify his own creations, the product which he makes, and he then sees them as no longer part of himself, or as not belonging to him, so that his products appear as alien, hostile objects, appropriated by the capitalist. (I have been working in this factory for 15 years, stucked to minimum wage, cannot afford a car or a house while my boss can boast of his Mercedes Benz and three mansions for his daughters). Here Marx may make a mistake what is the aftermath of any kind of creative activity for a specifice property of capitalist production. But the account of alienation is important for his general criticism of the capitalist way of life-Barbara Goodwin, USING POLITICAL IDEAS
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