Marx is not engaged in developing ethical theory as such.  However, his critique of capitalism and money may be seen as an application of such a theory.  Specifically, Marx may be understood as applying a teleological ethic wherein the highest good and standard of evaluation is freedom.  Since freedom is viewed by Marx as the human essence, his ethic is a humanistic one for, as with Aristotle, the highest good is the realization of the human potential.  Capitalism and money are critiqued precisely because they block this realization.

For our purposes, the terms "estranged" and "alienated" should be understood to be equivalent.

   JCM

ECONOMIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL MANUSCRIPTS
Karl Marx (1844)

FIRST MANUSCRIPT
. . . . .
ESTRANGED LABOR
. . . . .
We have started out from the premises of political economy. We have accepted its
language and its laws. We presupposed private property; the separation of labor,
capital, and land, and likewise of wages, profit, and capital; the division of labor;
competition; the conception of exchange value, etc. From political economy itself,
using its own words, we have shown that the worker sinks to the level of a
commodity, and moreover the most wretched commodity of all; that the misery of the
worker is in inverse proportion to the power and volume of his production; that the
necessary consequence of competition is the accumulation of capital in a few hands
and hence the restoration of monopoly in a more terrible form; and that, finally, the
distinction between capitalist and landlord, between agricultural worker and industrial
worker, disappears and the whole of society must split into the two classes of
property owners and propertyless workers.

Political economy proceeds from the fact of private property. It does not explain it. It
grasps the material process of private property, the process through which it actually
passes, in general and abstract formulae which it then takes as laws. It does not
Comprehend these laws -- i.e., it does not show how they arise from the nature of
private property.
…..
We now have to grasp the essential connection between private property, greed, the
separation of labor, capital and landed property, exchange and competition, value and
the devaluation of man, monopoly, and competition, etc. -- the connection between this
entire system of estrangement and the money system.
…..
We shall start out from a present-day economic fact.

The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production
increases in power and extent. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the
more commodities he produces. The devaluation of the human world grows in direct
proportion to the increase in value of the world of things. Labor not only produces
commodities; it also produces itself and the workers as a commodity and it does so in
the same proportion in which it produces commodities in general.

This fact simply means that the object that labor produces, it product, stands opposed
to it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labor
is labor embodied and made material in an object, it is the objectification of labor. The
realization of labor is its objectification. In the sphere of political economy, this
realization of labor appears as a loss of reality for the worker, objectification as loss
of and bondage to the object, and appropriation as estrangement, as alienation .

[2]
So much does the realization of labor appear as loss of reality that the worker loses
his reality to the point of dying of starvation. So much does objectification appear as
loss of the object that the worker is robbed of the objects he needs most not only for
life but also for work. Work itself becomes an object which he can only obtain
through an enormous effort and with spasmodic interruptions. So much does the
appropriation of the object appear as estrangement that the more objects the worker
produces the fewer can he possess and the more he falls under the domination of his
product, of capital.

All these consequences are contained in this characteristic, that the workers is related
to the product of labor as to an alien object. For it is clear that, according to this
premise, the more the worker exerts himself in his work, the more powerful the alien,
objective world becomes which he brings into being over against himself, the poorer
he and his inner world become, and the less they belong to him. It is the same in
religion. The more man puts into God, the less he retains within himself. The worker
places his life in the object; but now it no longer belongs to him, but to the object.
The greater his activity, therefore, the fewer objects the worker possesses. What the
product of his labor is, he is not. Therefore, the greater this product, the less is he
himself. The externalization of the worker in his product means not only that his labor
becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently
of him and alien to him, and beings to confront him as an autonomous power; that the
life which he has bestowed on the object confronts him as hostile and alien.
…..
Up to now, we have considered the estrangement, the alienation of the worker, only
from one aspect -- i.e., his relationship to the products of his labor. But estrangement
manifests itself not only in the result, but also in the act of production, within the
activity of production itself. How could the product of the worker's activity confront
him as something alien if it were not for the fact that in the act of production he was
estranging himself from himself? After all, the product is simply the resume of the
activity, of the production. So if the product of labor is alienation, production itself
must be active alienation, the alienation of activity, the activity of alienation. The
estrangement of the object of labor merely summarizes the estrangement, the
alienation in the activity of labor itself.

What constitutes the alienation of labor?

Firstly, the fact that labor is external to the worker -- i.e., does not belong to his
essential being; that he, therefore, does not confirm himself in his work, but denies
himself, feels miserable and not happy, does not develop free mental and physical
energy, but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind. Hence, the worker feels himself only
when he is not working; when he is working, he does not feel himself. He is at home
when he is not working, and not at home when he is working. His labor is, therefore,
not voluntary but forced, it is forced labor. It is, therefore, not the satisfaction of a
need but a mere means to satisfy needs outside itself. Its alien character is clearly
demonstrated by the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, it is

[3]
shunned like the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a
labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Finally, the external character of labor for the
worker is demonstrated by the fact that it belongs not to him but to another, and that
in it he belongs not to himself but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous
activity of the human imagination, the human brain, and the human heart, detaches
itself from the individual and reappears as the alien activity of a god or of a devil, so
the activity of the worker is not his own spontaneous activity. It belongs to another, it
is a loss of his self.

The result is that man (the worker) feels that he is acting freely only in his animal
functions -- eating, drinking, and procreating, or at most in his dwelling and
adornment -- while in his human functions, he is nothing more than animal.

It is true that eating, drinking, and procreating, etc., are also genuine human
functions. However, when abstracted from other aspects of human activity, and
turned into final and exclusive ends, they are animal.

We have considered the act of estrangement of practical human activity, of labor,
from two aspects: (1) the relationship of the worker to the product of labor as an
alien object that has power over him. The relationship is, at the same time, the
relationship to the sensuous external world, to natural objects, as an alien world
confronting him, in hostile opposition. (2) The relationship of labor to the act of
production within labor. This relationship is the relationship of the worker to his own
activity as something which is alien and does not belong to him, activity as passivity,
power as impotence, procreation as emasculation, the worker's own physical and
mental energy, his personal life -- for what is life but activity? -- as an activity directed
against himself, which is independent of him and does not belong to him.
Self-estrangement, as compared with the estrangement of the object mentioned above.

We now have to derive a third feature of estranged labor from the two we have
already examined.

Man is a species-being, not only because he practically and theoretically makes the
species -- both his own and those of other things -- his object, but also -- and this is
simply another way of saying the same thing -- because he looks upon himself as the
present, living species, because he looks upon himself as a universal and therefore free
being.

Species-life, both for man and for animals, consists physically in the fact that man, like
animals, lives from inorganic nature; and because man is more universal than animals,
so too is the area of inorganic nature from which he lives more universal. . . . The universality
of man manifests itself in practice in that universality which makes the whole of nature his
inorganic body, (1) as a direct means of life and (2) as the matter, the object, and the tool of
his life activity. Nature is man's inorganic body -- that is to say, nature insofar as it is not the
human body. Man lives from nature -- i.e., nature is his body -- and

[4]
he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it is he is not to die. To say that man's
physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself,
for man is a part of nature.

Estranged labor not only (1) estranges nature from man and (2) estranges man from
himself, from his own function, from his vital activity; because of this, it also
estranges man from his species. It turns his species-life into a means for his individual
life. Firstly, it estranges species-life and individual life, and, secondly, it turns the
latter, in its abstract form, into the purpose of the former, also in its abstract and
estranged form.

For in the first place labor, life activity, productive life itself, appears to man only as a
means for the satisfaction of a need, the need to preserve physical existence. But
productive life is species-life. It is life-producing life. The whole character of a
species, its species-character, resides in the nature of its life activity, and free
conscious activity constitutes the species-character of man. Life appears only as a
means of life.

The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It is not distinct from that activity;
it is that activity. Man makes his life activity itself an object of his will and
consciousness. He has conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he
directly merges. Conscious life activity directly distinguishes man from animal life
activity. Only because of that is he a species-being. Or, rather, he is a conscious being
-- i.e., his own life is an object for him, only because he is a species-being. Only
because of that is his activity free activity. Estranged labor reverses the relationship so
that man, just because he is a conscious being, makes his life activity, his being,
a mere means for his existence.
…..
(3) Estranged labor, therefore, turns man's species-being -- both nature and his
intellectual species-power -- into a being alien to him and a means of his individual
existence. It estranges man from his own body, from nature as it exists outside him,
from his spiritual essence, his human existence.

(4) An immediate consequence of man's estrangement from the product of his labor,
his life activity, his species-being, is the estrangement of man from man. When man
confront himself, he also confronts other men. What is true of man's relationship to
his labor, to the product of his labor, and to himself, is also true of his relationship to
other men, and to the labor and the object of the labor of other men.

In general, the proposition that man is estranged from his species-being means that
each man is estranged from the others and that all are estranged from man's essence.

Man's estrangement, like all relationships of man to himself, is realized and expressed
only in man's relationship to other men.

[5]
THIRD MANUSCRIPT
…..
MONEY
. . . . .
If man's feelings, passions, etc., are not merely anthropological characteristics in the
narrower sense, but are truly ontological affirmations of his essence (nature), and if
they only really affirm themselves insofar as their object exists sensuously for them,
then it is clear:
(1) That their mode of affirmation is by no means one and the same, but rather that
the different modes of affirmation constitute the particular character of their
existence, of their life. The mode in which the object exists for them is the
characteristic mode of their gratification.
(2) Where the sensuous affirmation is a direct annulment [Aufheben] of the object in
its independent form (eating, drinking, fashioning of objects, etc.), this is the
affirmation of the object.
(3) Insofar as man, and hence also his feelings, etc., are human, the affirmation of the
object by another is also his own gratification.
(4) Only through developed industry -- i.e., through mediation of private property,
does the ontological essence of human passion come into being, both in its totality
and in its humanity; the science of man is, therefore, itself a product of the self-
formation of man through practical activity.
(5) The meaning of private property, freed from its estrangement, is the existence of
essential objects for man, both as objects of enjoyment and of activity.

Money, inasmuch as it possess the property of being able to buy everything and
appropriate all objects, is the object most worth possessing. The universality of this
property is the basis of money's omnipotence; hence, it is regarded as an omnipotent
being... Money is the pimp between need and object, between life and man's means of
life. But that which mediates my life also mediates the existence of other men for me.
It is for me the other person.

What, man! confound it, hands and feet
And head and backside, all are yours!
And what we take while life is sweet,
Is that to be declared not ours?
Six stallions, say, I can afford,
Is not their strength my property?
I tear along, a sporting lord,
As if their legs belonged to me.
(Goethe, Faust -- Mephistopheles)
[ Part I, scene 4 ]

 [6]
Shakespeare, in Timon of Athens:

Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold! No, gods,
I am no idle votarist; roots, you clear heavens!
Thus much of this will make black, white; foul, fair;
Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant.
... Why, this
Will lug your priests and servants from your sides;
Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads:
This yellow slave
Will knit and break religions; bless th'accurst;
Make the hoar leprosy adored; place thieves,
And give them title, knee, and approbation,
With senators on the bench: this is it
That makes the wappen'd widow wed again;
She whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores
Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices
To th'April day again. Come, damned earth,
Thou common whore of mankind, that putt'st odds
Among the rout of nations, I will make thee
Do thy right nature.

. . . . .

Shakespeare paints a brilliant picture of the nature of money. To understand him, let
us begin by expounding the passage from Goethe.

That which exists for me through the medium of money, that which I can pay for, i.e.,
that which money can buy, that am I, the possessor of money. The stronger the power
of my money, the stronger am I. The properties of money are my, the possessor's,
properties and essential powers. Therefore, what I am and what I can do is by no
means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy the most beautiful
woman. Which means to say that I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness, its repelling
power, is destroyed by money. As an individual, I am lame, but money procurs me 24
legs. Consequently, I am not lame. I am a wicked, dishonest, unscrupulous and stupid
individual, but money is respected, and so also is its owner. Money is the highest
good, and consequently its owner is also good. Moreover, money spares me the
trouble of being dishonest, and I am therefore presumed to be honest. I am mindless,
but if money is the true mind of all things, how can its owner be mindless? What is
more, he can buy clever people for himself, and is not he who has power over clever
people cleverer than them? Through money, I can have anything the human heart
desires. Do I not possess all human abilities? Does not money therefore transform all
my incapacities into their opposite?

[7]
If money is the bond which ties me to human life and society to me, which links me to
nature and to man, is money not the bond of all bonds? Can it not bind and loose all
bonds? Is it therefore not the universal means of separation? It is the true agent of
separation and the true cementing agent, it is the chemical power of society.

Shakespeare brings out two properties of money in particular:

(1) It is the visible divinity, the transformation of all human and natural qualities into
their opposites, the universal confusion and inversion of things; it brings together
impossibilities.
(2) It is the universal whore, the universal pimp of men and peoples.

The inversion and confusion of all human and natural qualities, the bringing together
of impossibilities, the divine power of money lies in its nature as the estranged and
alienating species-essence of man which alienates itself by selling itself. It is the
alienated capacity of mankind.

What I, as a man, do -- i.e., what all my individual powers cannot do -- I can do with
the help of money. Money, therefore, transforms each of these essential powers into
something which it is not, into its opposite.

If I desire a meal, or want to take the mail coach because I am not strong enough to
make the journey on foot, money can provide me both the meal and the mail coach --
i.e., it transfers my wishes from the realm of imagination, it translates them from their
existence as thought, imagination, and desires, into their sensuous, real existence,
from imagination into life, and from imagined being into real being. In this mediating
role, money is the truly creative power.

Demand also exists for those who have no money, but their demand is simply a
figment of the imagination. For me, or for any other third party, it has no effect, no
existence. For me, it therefore remains unreal and without an object. The difference
between effective demand based on money and ineffective demand based on my need,
my passion, my desire, etc., is the difference between being and thinking, between a
representation which merely exists within me and one which exists outside me as a
real object.

If I have money for travel, I have no need -- i.e., no real and self-realizing need -- to
travel. If I have a vocation to study, but no money for it, I have no vocation to study -
- i.e., no real, true vocation. But, if I really do not have any vocation to study, but
have the will and the money, then I have an effective vocation do to so. Money, which
is the external, universal means and power -- derived not from man as man, and not
from human society as society -- to turn imagination into reality and reality into more
imagination, similarly turns real human and natural powers into purely abstract
representations, and therefore imperfections and phantoms -- truly impotent powers
which exist only in the individual's fantasy -- into real essential powers and abilities.

[8]
Thus characterized, money is the universal inversion of individualities, which it turns
into their opposites and to whose qualities it attaches contradictory qualities.

Money, therefore, appears as an inverting power in relation to the individual and to
those social and other bonds which claim to be essences in themselves. It transforms
loyalty into treason, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue,
servant into master, master into servant, nonsense into reason, and reason into
nonsense.

Since money, as the existing and active concept of value, confounds and exchanges
everything, it is the universal confusion and exchange of all things, an inverted world,
the confusion and exchange of all natural and human qualities.

He who can buy courage is brave, even if he is a coward. Money is not exchange for a
particular quality, a particular thing, or for any particular one of the essential powers
of man, but for the whole objective world of man and of nature. Seen from the
standpoint of the person who possesses it, money exchanges every quality for every
other quality and object, even if it is contradictory; it is the power which brings
together impossibilities and forces contradictions to embrace.

If we assume man to be man, and his relation to the world to be a human one, then
love can be exchanged only for love, trust for trust, and so on. If you wish to enjoy
art, you must be an artistically educated person; if you wish to exercise influence on
other men, you must be the sort of person who has a truly stimulating and
encouraging effect on others. Each one of your relations to man -- and to nature --
must be a particular expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real
individual life.
. . . . .

Edited by J. Carl Mickelsen