Tag: Marx’s theory of alienation

“Money is the jealous god of Israel…”

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities. Money is the universal self-established value of all things. It has, therefore, robbed the whole world – both the world of men and nature – of its specific value. Money is the estranged essence of man’s work and man’s existence, and this alien essence dominates him, and he worships it.


On The Jewish Question

UK: A Working Class Experience of Alien Abduction! (18.11.2025)

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)2 Comments

The capitalist will say (and do) anything that justifies the endless accumulation of profit. To this end, the emphasis of individualism is vital – as it is through this loss of collective identity that humanity learns to routinely brutalise its own existence and being. Inflicting pain and harvesting gain is the only permitted exchange which locks out all other modes of possible interaction. Love becomes a limited commodity which can be bought for a short time period before the clock runs out and its flow dries up.

UK: A Working Class Experience of Alien Abduction! (18.11.2025)

Read More »

A Permanent Arms Economy

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The background to the article reprinted here is the “long boom” of western capitalism during the 1950s and 1960s. It first appeared in International Socialism journal in Spring 1967. On the surface it appeared that the capitalist system had stabilised itself, had broken out of the boom-slump cycle and was now able to offer the workers of Western Europe and North America a steady increase in living standards.

This was a frustrating world for Marxists, who found themselves subject to two temptations. One was to surrender to the claims poured out by the system’s apologists that capitalism had solved its problems and that the path of gradual reform offered a sure road to socialism. The other was to deny the obvious signs of stability and prosperity and assert that capitalism was on the verge of imminent, catastrophic collapse. If these temptations were to be avoided, and Marx’s analysis of capitalism’s contradictions was to hold, then the long boom must be explained.

A Permanent Arms Economy

“The more of himself man attributes to God, the less he has left in himself.”

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Estranged Labour

All these consequences are implied in the statement that the worker is related to the product of labor as to an alien object. For on this premise it is clear that the more the worker spends himself, the more powerful becomes the alien world of objects which he creates over and against himself, the poorer he himself – his inner world – becomes, the less belongs to him as his own. It is the same in religion. The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself. The worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object. Hence, the greater this activity, the more the worker lacks objects. Whatever the product of his labor is, he is not. Therefore, the greater this product, the less is he himself. The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power on its own confronting him. It means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien.

Related:

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

[03-08-1987] Thomas Sankara: The revolution cannot triumph without the emancipation of women

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The revolution cannot triumph without the emancipation of women

The specific character of women’s oppression

Woman’s fate is bound up with that of the exploited male. This is a fact. However, this solidarity, arising from the exploitation that both men and women suffer and that binds them together historically, must not cause us to lose sight of the specific reality of the woman’s situation. The conditions of her life are determined by more than economic factors, and they show that she is a victim of a specific oppression. The specific character of this oppression cannot be explained away by setting up an equal sign or by falling into easy and childish simplifications.

Read More »

DeepSeek: What Would Lenin and Marx Say About Romantic Love

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Vladimir Lenin, as a revolutionary and Marxist thinker, approached most topics through the lens of class struggle, materialism, and the broader social and economic systems. While he did not write or speak extensively about love as a personal or romantic concept, his views on human relationships were likely shaped by his Marxist perspective.

Here’s how Lenin might conceptualize love, based on his ideological framework:

Read More »