Turning now to Marx’s account of alienation and alienated
labour, we must, again, admit that it is very impressive, and
contains much of enduring worth. The exact conditions of
production he describes may now be relatively rare in
Western Europe, but they may be endemic throughout the
developing world. Here I want to raise just two points, which
will be examined in more detail later, in the discussion of
communism. First, although Marx associates alienated labour
with capitalist economic organization, it is less clear that
capitalism really is the problem. For certain aspects of alienated
labour could be a feature of any highly mechanized
production process, whether used under communism or
capitalism.