Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts as applied to 

Political Economy (his), Theology (his) and modern education (mine). 
 

Question: Why are people alienated from the main elements of life: each other, 

their labor, their sexuality, the earth, and the struggle for rational knowledge?
 
Mainstream Political Economy Theology Modern Education
Private property exists, with no history..... God is...... Standards are non-partisan and tests are forever
Ignores the many divisions of labor, like workers and bosses, mental and manual, social production/individual accumulation Assumes the division of people and god(s) Assumes the value of externally regulated knowledge, denies the social construction of ideas and rewards falsely individual achievement. 
The Money System simply is Evil comes from the fall of People (man).  You failed the valid test.
But all labor (a key source of life) is, under capital, coerced, involuntary.  Faith is rooted in fear. Truancy and compulsory attendance laws. Your future is revealed in the test.
Workers do not control the products of their labor. Parishioners do not define or redefine god-or sin.  Standard and test authors and their interests are rarely questioned. Tests are secret, scores worshiped.
Workers do not control the processes of their labor Rituals and icons determined by officials. Tests and standards are designed to eliminate the thinking teacher and the inquiring student. Answers are always external.
The more capital (surplus value) a worker produces, the more the worker is diminished, the more the boss is enriched. The more faithful the worshiped, the more alienated from investigation of daily life and its processes, i.e., the sigh of the oppressed.  The more standards and tests are worshiped, the more wisdom is demolished.
Hence the more you have the less you are. The more you believe, the less you think. Deep commitment to test scores =profound ignorance. 
You are less in your species life, your connections with others. less in your own life, more alienated from work, knowledge, love, and nature.  Your are less in your intellectual and practical life, self-diminished, non-self-actualizing. You memorize, forget, and go on, learning indifference to learning.
The more sophisticated the process which transforms nature to capital, the more the worker is barbarized (less powerful and deskilled by the process.  The more profound the worship of icons, the more rigid the rituals, the more self-oppressed the worshiper.  The more people connect science with standards and tests, the more Talibanized the people become. 
"Having," becomes more important than "being." Gathering Icons. "Look at MY test scores!"
The more you have the less you are. The more you worship others' gods the less you comprehend yourself. The more you test, the less you think.
Labor, a means to life, becomes a means to create commodities, for sale, and later, simply finance capital. Aesthetic work becomes a means to enrich those who determine what is beautiful and worth loving. The honest struggle for what is true, always a social activity, becomes and all on all war for scores. 
People are split from their natural connections with other people in this battle for things and money. False gods and priests intervene between the social relations of people, deciding what the basis of social is. Teachers, students, parents and communities are split from each other in the battle to set standards and score high..
Who shall own the products of labor, and control the processes of production, and why?  Who decides who god is, and why? Who writes the standards, controls the tests, and why?
Private property is the result of alienated labor, and vice versa, in a spiraling relationship. Mullahs, priests, etc., are the result of people seeking to solve earthly social problems with individualized fantasies. Standards, tests, are all private property, the result, and creation, of a society rooted in exploitation, inequality, and segregation. 
Wages and private property are identical, so driving up wages only creates golden handcuffs for slaves.

The emancipation of the working class means the emancipation of all society.

The worker actively alienates him or herself, but the master's estrangement is a STATE of alienation. 

What shall we say people are? People are free, conscious producers. But need and greed have forced them into productive relations they do not see, which deny their common humanity. But now, with capitalism, there is the potential for abundance and free communally based creative production.

Communism is the transcendence of human self-alienation, positive humanism. But what, now, is the way out? 


 

Communism is an overcoming (94) which actualizes people

as conscious social beings, the genuine resolution of the conflict 

between people and people and people and nature, 

between FREEDOM and NECESSITY. 
 
 
 
Estrangement in production means estrangement in all aspects of life Estrangement in testing for reality in social practice leads to irrationalism in all aspects of life. Even hope is alienated in the standards and tests.
Communism is "bent on action," social practice, illuminated by theory. Atheism is limited in that it is merely a rejection of religion, not an overcoming, hence remains stuck in its theoretical trap. In the tests, theory resolves theory. Answers are inside the tests. Truth in alien from all who seek it. 

 

There are many doorways into understanding Marxism. These are the main entryways:




Alienation

Exploitation

Reification

Commodity Fetishism

Sexual Oppression

Spectacularization

Surveillance

Quantification

Irrationalism

Criticism of the state, that is, government

Counter-ecology and ecology
 
 
 
 
 

Marx's Favorite Saying: 

Criticize Everything.

 

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