ABSTRACT
Political economy conceals the alienation in the nature of labor in so far as it does not examine the direct relationship between the worker (work) and production. Labor certainly produces marvels for the rich, but it produces privation for the worker. The alienation of the object of labor merely summarizes the alienation in the work activity itself. Alienated labor reverses the relationship in that man, because he is a selfconscious being, makes his life activity, his being, only a means for his existence. Alienated labor turns the species-life of man, and also nature as his mental species-property, into an alien being and into a means for his individual existence. Private property is thus derived from the analysis of the concept of alienated labor—that is, alienated man, alienated labor, alienated life, and estranged man. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification.
