Many people still believe that through hard work, they can reach any social and financial status to which they aspire. In the United States, this is commonly known as "The American Dream." It consists of the worker going to his job, working hard, returning to his home, and then repeating the process. This may go on for days, weeks, or years, but ultimately the worker will reach his financial goals. However, how rare is the realization of such goals, and at what price does it occur? Karl Marx argues that this capitalistic view of work results in the alienation of the worker from his job, himself, and others. In Marx's article, "Alienated Labor," he explains that capitalist society creates an environment in which the worker loses the special concept that makes him an individual. The worker gives himself up to the product he is working to produce, to capitalism, and consequently becomes commodified. Although we would like to think that the world has changed, capitalism has spread like a plague throughout society. Thus, the idea of alienated labor can still be used to explain how workers are treated as a result of capitalism, and how increasingly alienated they have become. .
As Marx explains, the relationship between the worker and the product of his labor is alien. The more man externalizes into his work, the more alienated he becomes. The worker puts his life into the object and therefore looses a part of himself. People who work in any type of production create a number of things sold in our market. However, capitalist society takes all credit for production and distribution of these products. The worker gets no credit for his work. In this way, the worker does not own what he creates, he sells himself to the capitalist. A shirt that is made by a worker in China does not belong to him but to the company that made the product. The worker is alien to us and the thought never occurs to us that another person's hands made what we own.