As per Marx, alienation is separating the employees from their work as well as separating the labor goods from the laborers. The two ends up in the control of the employers who control and dominate these critical factors of production. Marx also discovered how the states were dealing with the interest of those who owned private properties instead of making it a matter general interest. However, Marx did not come up with the idea that the state was acting as an instrument that would show the potentiality and ability to dominate the social class. Marx used alienation to describe distinct issues of life such as religion and economic society. In this paper, the main discussion will focus on Marx’s argument from alienation and David Schweickart’s model of economic democracy.
In his theory of alienation, Marx indicates that employees are alienated from the goods they produce as they are alienated as species throughout the production process and from their workmates (Brenner 56). The alienation from the products takes place when people are denied control over the goods they produce. In capitalism, what people produce is likely to enter in the process of exchange in the economic market where they are sold or purchased. According to Marx, what employees produce does not belong to them once it gets to the system of exchange. For instance, a person who works in an industry that produces blankets, the employees do not own all of the blankets that they produce. On the other hand, works are alienated from the colleagues where each person is assigned a different task. Moreover, Marx improves his theory by indicating that the more the employees work hard the more they are alienated as only little belongs to them. In this case, the employees are reduced as the inability to identify themselves with the goods which are the same as starvation (Brenner 63).
According to Schweickart, economic democracy is a different structure system that is viable, practical, and superior to capitalism which is concerned with six issues. These issues include poverty, lack of democracy, excessive inequality, unemployment and environmental degradation which are essential contributors of its structural features that are distinctly structured system. He moves on to indicate that the standard ethical justifications in capitalism’s favor cannot be argued in its defense but it can have an alternative that can be indicated to be superior. Therefore, changing capitalism with economic democracy should turn to be the aspiration of those having difficulties in fighting system evils. He creates an argument that transiting from capitalism to the economic democracy no social restructuring is required and can only be done on a national scale while utilizing few main reforms that are used by an elected radical government (Schweickart 15). Furthermore, capitalism is a society that contains three primary components. These components include; the hardships of the process of production that are privately owned by the private organizations; organizations owned by individuals, goods are altered in a market where products and services are purchased and sold at a cost that is commonly determined by the completion faced by the organization and not the government pricing authorities. Private organizations compete with each other in providing products and services to their clients and in turn, they earn a profit. Therefore, competition is the main determinant of pricing. Schweickart identifies and describes the challenge to capitalism as “counter project”. When he mentions this he means that capitalism not only involve economic problems but it as well includes the issues of environmental sustainability and social justice. Schweickart presents his argument with a hope to bring capitalism to an end. He indicates that a capitalist economy is ingeniously structured and almost everybody has a desire to maintain the spirit of its ruling class hence making this being one of the features that provide capitalism with its remarkable resiliency (Schweickart 27). Schweickart’s model of economic democracy tries to solve alienation by creating equal opportunities for all employees. It indicates that employees should be given freedom on their work. Moreover, the model provides reform strategy that contains government regulations that can be improvised before the end of capitalism. The strategy he provides will be legislation supporting and encouraging employer’s cooperatives, employee’s buyouts and employee’s participation in the organizations decision making.
Yes, there are visible alternatives to a capitalist economic structure because present day social orders have generally picked an industrialist to manage production. In capitalism, private proprietors develop organizations and select their managers who pick what, the way and place to produce from and the activities to do with the net revenues earned from selling their products. This little humble pack of people settles on each one of those economic decisions for greater people who do the major work of production. The overwhelming ought to recognize and live with the consequences of all the directorial decisions made by the genuine investors and the board of executives they choose. These positions are easy to change representatives as they are not permanently employed. In this case, private enterprise involves and reproduces a profoundly undemocratic association of production within the organization.
According to researchers like Marx, there are no other options to such entrepreneur associations of production that exist or could work so well, as far as yields, productivity, and work forms are concerned. The lie of that claim has effortlessly appeared. Moreover, employees should not be separated much with the products they produce because it will motivate them once they know the kind of work or output they have provided. More so, the employees should be allowed to interact with each other as this will enable them to learn new ideas that may help them to increase their production. If all organizations change their capitalist economic structure production will increase hence increasing profitability.