Alienation has been discussed up till now as if it were primarily a working class phenomenon. Yet, if alienation is taken to be a set of relations between people and nature, both animate and inanimate, then many of the traits observable in the proletariat can be found, only slightly altered, in other classes. The connection Marx sees between proletarian alienation and that of the rest of mankind is expressed in his claim that ‘the whole of human servitude is involved in the relation of the worker to production, and every relation of servitude is but a modification and consequence of this relation’. By producing alienated material objects and, in the process, themselves as an alienated class, the proletariat can be said to produce the alienation of people with whom they and their products have relations. Consequently, we should not be surprised that ‘the emancipation of the workers contains universal human emancipation’.

We have already heard Marx declare that capitalists as well as workers are alienated. However, only once did he attempt to present his views on this subject in an organized fashion. What follows are his comments on this occasion: