Anushka Kahandagama, Assistant Lecturer, University of Colombo
“I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.”
A.E. Housman
Introduction
The modern concept “development” is very closely related to the notion “alienation”. Consequently, with more development in progress, alienation also increases with development. When man creates and produces things for the sake of development, alienation increases at the same pace. According to Aron, the idea of alienation is that under certain circumstances or in certain societies, the conditions imposed on man are such that he becomes a stranger to himself; he no longer recognizes himself in his activity or in his production (1965: 147). In general alienation is a concept used by Marx, but different writers have interpreted the concept in different ways. According to Jordan, the concept of alienation is frequently cited as an idea put forward by Marx. However, Jordon claims that it is not introduced or coined by Marx and also states that Marx only discussed the idea of alienation in his early writings (Coser 1971: 15-17). However, some writers have grasped the ideas of Marx in an erroneous way and Marx clearly and repeatedly used the idea of alienation in his earlier writings as well as later writings and particularly in his masterpiece “Das Capital” (Coser 1971: 52). Marx uses the idea of alienation, very prominently in the “Experts notes of 1844” and “Economic and philosophic manuscripts” and also he uses the concept of alienation in “Das Capital”. He uses this idea to analyze the labour and economic relationships of existing society and to refine the idea of socialism.
