Nietzsche and Marx Foresee Modern Alienation

Nietzsche And Marx Foresee Modern Alienation

Beyond typical philosophers solely focused on acquiring knowledge, Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche were equally dedicated to actualizing their vision of a better society and way of life. Before our present state of modernism, Nietzsche and Marx were already prophesizing our societal flaws based on past wrongs done to humanity. The Spanish Inquisition, the African Slave Trade, and the Holocaust are all clear testaments to the detrimental effect that separatism and alienation have on all humans alike. Marx and Nietzsche voice the changes that need to be made in order for humanity to finally push itself another crucial step closer to equality and freedom.

Marx is a harsh critic towards the Bourgeois Socialism that still to this day dominates our western concept of government. The class separatism between the proletariat and the bourgeois are still very distinct and continuously more is being done to hold the workers down. Marx's description of the bourgeois methods of entrapment on the workers to generate their own surplus value can be correlated directly to modern figures in the political and economic world like: John Kerry and the major corporations of Nike and General Motors.

Democrats establish themselves as being the modern day heroes of the workingman, but have little exposure to any people belonging to a lower economic class. In the eyes of Marx, political powerhouses like John Kerry are only trying to temporarily make the system acceptable while still keeping the Bourgeois in power. Though Kerry is firmly planted as a bourgeois, rather than falling in and out of the system as Marx describes, he still proposes ideas and policies that appeal to the working class in order to keep them oppressed within rigid social classes. Marx sees the offerings of welfare, social security, minimum wage, and other types of social programs as an attempt to make the working class seem more enjoyable. In this oppression, the pursuit of the American dream is lost, people are alienated in their class, and the forces of power remain the same. Marxism views Kerry as a hypocrite