Paper Summary:

The following paper will argue that Freud's conclusion that people do not look at work as a pathway to happiness is something Marx can easily explain using his concept of "alienation"; that is to say, Marx believed to his dying day that the separation of the worker from the products of his labor, the relentless monotony of the shop floor, and the dehumanizing nature of being simply one more cog in a huge industrial machine producing mass-consumption goods at a break-neck pace all made "work" the last thing any laborer wanted to deal with; with their wages meager and with the opportunities for advancement slender (if not outright non-existent), being an every-day "worker" or "laborer" brought with it low-level desperation, frustration and unhappiness. Interestingly, as the first part of this paper will make abundantly clear, Freud does not seem to share the same convictions of Marx when it comes to the evils of the capitalist order - especially when the matter turns to whether or not private property should exist. In the end, Karl Marx would find it perfectly understandable why people hate work - and he would no doubt find it odd that Freud could not conceive of private property as being a major reason why this is so.

From the Paper:

How Marx Would Explain Freud's Contention that People Do not Look at Work as a Pathway to Happiness The following paper will argue that Freud's conclusion that people do not look at work as a pathway to happiness is something Marx can easily explain using his concept of "alienation"; that is to say, Marx believed to his dying day that the separation of the worker from the products of his labor, the relentless monotony of the shop floor, and the dehumanizing nature of being simply one more cog in a huge industrial machine producing mass-consumption goods at a break-neck pace all made "work" the last thing any laborer wanted to deal with; with their wages meager and with the

Visitors who viewed this Essay also liked these:

• Analytical Essay # 138377 : "Freud's Psychoanalytical Theory"
• Essay # 83486 : "Applications of Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams"
• Term Paper # 131909 : "Analysis of Freud's Works"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: