Alienation Summary and Analysis

In this chapter, Nathaniel Branden examines the issue of alienation. Hegel is the philosopher who introduced the concept of alienation. Man does not recognize his own alienation because he is lost in the world of social institutions. Karl Marx took the Hegelian concept and applied it to the worker and claimed it was an inevitable part of the division of labor. The worker is separate from the product his labor services help to create. Because of this he feels he is an object instead of a human being. Because of the alienation, man is searching for an identity.

"What is responsible for this crisis? What has alienated man and deprived him of identity? The answer given by most writers on alienation is not always stated explicitly, but—in their countless disparaging references to 'the dehumanizing effects of industrialism,'&mdash...