Marx alienation focuses on the capitalist mode of production and an objective approach resulting from the reality that evolves in an individual’s knowledge in capitalist society (Lavalette & Ferguson, 2018). Alienation is the loss of control over one’s attributes whereby the participant’s relationship with the attribute is disconnected. The product owners are forced to transfer their means of production to someone else called the capitalist. Marx’s four types of alienation based on the capitalist mode of production include alienation of the product labor, alienation of production or labor activity, alienation from the human essence, and alienation from other people or the society.
Alienation from the product of labor is when workers provide labor to the production of commodities to an organization that produces the products for others. For instance, employees involved in the production of particular commodities provide labor and lack ownership of the items produced. The organization that employs these workers produce the commodities for consumers. Therefore, their produced items become alien objects (Lavsssalette & Ferguson, 2018). Workers lack control and rights to the products produced and have no ownership of the exchange value of the final commodity in the market. The increased level of productivity leads to the capitalist who takes control of the product produced, increasing the wealth, power and enjoying the product outcomes of their labor.
Alienation from the production or labor process results from a lack of control over the product labor (Lavalette & Ferguson, 2018). If workers do not control product labor, they do not control activities involved during production, including product organization and design. Also, this type of alienation is reinforced by the lack of control over worker’s job function and association with product production.
Alienation from the human essence is the labor itself whereby humans are creative and objectify themselves by utilizing their conscious life to create a relationship with nature and make real the thoughts and objects through management of nature. The essence of being alienated from conscious thoughts results in creating objects through will and efforts from species-essence (Lavalette & Ferguson, 2018). Therefore, species-essence, including thoughts and experiences, provides humans with the power to produce products based on objective existence.
Alienation from other people or society is the alienation that emerges from oneself or the capitalist society (Lavalette & Ferguson, 2018). People’s social relations are also alienated, including the competitions of workers or society members to emerge as the best performers in their functionality. This type of alienation is experienced between the employed and unemployed individual whereby the unemployed seek similar positions of the employed, leading to competitions to emerge as the best employees.
Confucius’s describes a virtuous leader as the one who does not seek strategic force or military to gain success and does not hesitate to leave the office when the mandate is lost (Van Vugt & Smith, 2019). Confucius’s idea of leadership describes a virtuous leader as the one who shows respectfulness, deference, gentleness, and frugality traits in functionality. Machiavelli state the characteristics of a good leader whereby a good leader should have people’s support because it’s hard to carry out functions or make decisions without their views (Van Vugt & Smith, 2019). A good leader should be feared and loved, and if not, the leaders should be feared rather being loved to circumvent revolt.
Lastly, a leader should have good virtue attributes, meaning that a leader should be a role model to others. Machiavelli’s idea of leadership is the most used and quoted guide to effective leadership. Therefore, a virtuous leader is the one that seeks help from others to make effective decisions towards leadership.
References
Lavalette, M., & Ferguson, I. (2018). Marx: Alienation, commodity fetishism and the world of contemporary social work. Critical and Radical Social Work, 6(2), 197-213.
Van Vugt, M., & Smith, J. E. (2019). A dual model of leadership and hierarchy: Evolutionary synthesis. Trends in cognitive sciences, 23(11), 952-967.