According to Marx, industrial work often leads to alienation. What does alienation mean in this context?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Workers feel disconnected from both work and its final product.
Option (1) Workers are forced to work with alien machines. — Incorrect. ‘Alien’ in alienation does not mean strange machines. Machines are part of industrial work, but alienation is about how the worker feels about the work, not about the kind of machine used.
Option (2) Workers are forced to work with people whom they don’t know. — Incorrect. Industry does replace face-to-face relationships with anonymous professional ones, but that is the loss of personal relationships, a separate feature of industrial society. Alienation is the worker’s distance from the work itself.
Option (3) Workers have no control over management. — Incorrect. Workers rarely control management in any factory, but that is a question of power in the workplace, not of alienation.
Option (4) Workers feel disconnected from both work and its final product. — Correct. Industrialisation brings a detailed division of labour: each worker makes only one small part of a product and often never sees the end result. The work is repetitive and exhausting. Marx called this situation alienation: people do not enjoy work and see it only as something they must do to survive.
NCERT (2025-26): “5.1 Images of Industrial Society … Industrialisation involves a detailed division of labour. People often do not see the end result of their work because they are producing only one small part of a product. The work is often repetitive and exhausting. Yet, even this is better than having no work at all, i.e., being unemployed. Marx called this situation alienation, when people do not enjoy work, and see it as something they have to do only in order to survive, and even that survival depends on whether the technology has room for any human labour.” |