A REVIEW OF MARX’S WRITINGS ON ESTRANGED LABOR AND INSIGHTS FROM AMARTYA SEN

ONE OF THE WAYS IN WHICH MARX can be interpreted within the Development Field is that he was one of the last great optimists or believers in the dream that mankind could change its present course for the better. What would probably set Marx apart from other thinkers is his special concern on the manner by which man's material conditions profoundly affected man's individual and social life. This prompts him to begin his work with a scientific attempt at describing the world based on empirical facts with the overarching goal of changing the world for the better. In the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, his concern is precisely to show the status of man within the “Capitalist” mode of production (political economy) which can be read as follows: We have shown that the worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities; that the wretchedness of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production; that the necessary result of competition is the accumulatio n of capital in a few hands, and thus the restoration of monopoly in a more terrible form…