Karl Marx wrote many works throughout his time, but one of the works of his
youth was called On Man and History. This work by Marx was written when he was a
youth and was influenced by the Industrial Revolution and the works of Hegel
philosophy. There are two sections in this document one is the Alienated Man and
the other is History. The first section by Marx talks about how man is alienated
by the process of labor and the product that is made out of the labor. Marx says
that the process of labor is an alienation because man does not do work for
their own pleasure and the labor is not part of the nature of man, but the labor
is forced upon man to gain other satisfaction such as entertainment, money, and
food. In addition, Marx states that the work done by a person is not for him or
herself but for consumers or it belongs to a man other than the worker. The
other part in this section is the relationship between man and the products they
produce. Each “commodity” (product) produced by the worker devalues
themselves even more every time the worker produces it and when the commodity
increases in price. This happens because the worker uses their own energy to
produce the product thus losing the inner self and inner life. Marx also, says
this about religion; when man attributes to god the less they have of
themselves. According to Marx the reason for these, alienation of man is because
of Capitalism related to private property. In the second section, Marx states
that throughout history the ruling ideas are always the ruling society, ruling
class, and ruling intellectual force. The reason that ruling classes rules over
intelligence according to Marx is because that class has the material means to
be dominant. He gives the examples of when the bourgeoisie was the ruling class
freedom and equality would dominant, but when the aristocracy the concepts of
honor and loyalty would dominant society ways of thinking. The reason this kind
of thing happens is that people will listen to people who have power. This is
still clearly shown throughout society today. One example of this is Peter
Warrick and the department store incident. If Peter Warrick was a regular
person, he probably would of not gotten the discount that he got for the colthes
he got, but by being a nationally reconginized star he got the discount that he
got. Another example of this is the O.J Simpson trial. If O.J Simpson was a
regular person the trial would not of gone nationally and might had been a
different outcome, but by being a star, he influenced the national public and
got a not guilty verdict. Throughout this document, Marx clearly showed many
biases. One of them was he was an atheist because in the section of Alienated
Man he says that religion is the same way as labor because once a person
attributes to God the less he is left with themselves. His second bias is
towards communism and his dislike of capitalism. He shows this bias in the last
part of the Alienated Man by saying that private property and capitalism is why
the alienation of man happens. Marx got all these bias when he was young by
reading Hegel and Feuerbach; also by living through the industrial revolution
influence all these biases. This document written by young Marx influenced many
things throughout history: it was one of the starting foundations of later works
by Marx for example The Communist Manifesto and also laid the foundation of
Communism.