alienation (or "estrangement") means the way in which things are related by their abstract externalisation (e.g. representation). to marx, labour is the primary mode of man's alienation, which imbues objects of creation with his own qualities, such that he worships himself, as an illusion of transcendence. in feuerbach's "essence of christianity" (1841) he sees how Christ as a figure is the representation of humanity in general, and thus the worship of Christ is the alienated expression of man's self-becoming. it is the medium of the symbol which is the object of the young hegelian critique (e.g. feuerbach, stirner, marx, bauer) which is rendered as "false consciousness". in marx's criticism of the young hegelians (t. "the german ideology", 1843) he says that consciousness comes from material causes, and so one cannot change consciousness without changing material circumstances (this theme is prevalent throughout all his work). in "on the jewish question" (1843) he is directly responding to bruno bauer (1843) whose concern with jewish identity leads him to believe that the jew must integrate (it is an early anti-zionist work). marx generally agrees, but deepens the critique by situating form and content within the capitalist conditions of antisemitism. he maintains that the consciousness of the christian antisemite is confused, since the christian is a sublime jew, rather than a common jew (e.g. romans 2:29, romans 9:8), and as such, all conditions of the jew (e.g. "huckstering") is attributed to the christian, just in a sublated format. marx further attributes the division between civil society (e.g. the private sector) and the state as the location of the antagonism, mysteriously claiming that both must be abolished to erase both christianity and judaism (as per bauer's program). thus, marx sees how it is structural divisions in society again bringing out ideal divisions in religious sentiment.
in the same essay, marx claims that it is money and capital which is the "jealous god of israel", which is important in considering a later work. the later work is an 1844 commentary on james mill where he writes:
<Owing to this alien mediator [money] – instead of man himself being the mediator for man – man regards his will, his activity and his relation to other men as a power independent of him and them. His slavery, therefore, reaches its peak. It is clear that this mediator now becomes a real God, for the mediator is the real power over what it mediates to me. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/james-mill/thus, money is the "real god" of man who engages in a commercial society, where he is "alienated" as a medium (e.g. symbol) that acts on behalf of himself. thus, alienation appears clear; it is the way in which (in this case) "man" externalises himself in an object, which then takes possession over him (like a religious icon). from this we may move onto the "1844 manuscripts":
<This fact expresses merely that the object which labor produces – labor’s product – confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labor is labor which has been embodied in an object, which has become material: it is the objectification of labor. Labor’s realization is its objectification. Under these economic conditions this realization of labor appears as loss of realization for the workers; objectification as loss of the object and bondage to it; appropriation as estrangement, as alienation.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htmthus, it is necessary to conclude two facts; "labour" as a concept (which marx attests to "political economy" by its abstraction) is realised in its mode of objectification (e.g. in its productive end), which in turn is the very mode of alienation (since "man" is transposed into an object, like money). also, the realisation of "labour" is also the process of its economic dispossession, so the worker is doubly alienated - in the first case, by the idea that he is labour, and secondly, by labour's conditions. so then, alienation is not simply being "exploited", but in having the social relation of "labour" to begin with. marx says here too that labour's realisation is in the power of an alien object which comes to dominate man, the same way that man worships money or Christ. marx explains:
<they [communism and atheism] are but the first real emergence, the actual realisation for man of man’s essence and of his essence as something real.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/hegel.htmthus, marx characterises as the positive concept of "humanism", where man may be united with himself. so, if alienation is in effect, mediation, then disalienation must be the immediacy of being (or so to say, the erasure of internal contradiction), an anti-hegelian project, since hegel saw the absolute idea bound to its manner of self-mediation (alienation). we then return to marx's political ambitions of attempting to resolve all internal division (e.g. state and civil society, town and country, division of labour, etc.) while hegel preserves contradiction as constitutive (necessary) of being, such that in kantian terms, he sees war as the health of the state, by its movement to self-consciousness (of course, the father of italian fascism, giovanni gentile, was a hegelian). so then, that is a difference in dialectic. i find hegel more correct, but thats just my perspective.
after this we may move onto later works by marx, such as the grundrisse (1858) where he explains how man is alienated by capital through its objectification of him, and in turn, capital makes itself a subject:
<Rather, it is the machine which possesses skill and strength in place of the worker, is itself the virtuoso, with a soul of its own in the mechanical laws acting through it; and it consumes coal, oil etc. (matières instrumentales), just as the worker consumes food, to keep up its perpetual motion. The worker’s activity, reduced to a mere abstraction of activity, is determined and regulated on all sides by the movement of the machinery, and not the opposite. The science which compels the inanimate limbs of the machinery, by their construction, to act purposefully, as an automaton, does not exist in the worker’s consciousness, but rather acts upon him through the machine as an alien power, as the power of the machine itself […] In machinery, objectified labour confronts living labour within the labour process itself as the power which rules it; a power which, as the appropriation of living labour, is the form of capital. The transformation of the means of labour into machinery, and of living labour into a mere living accessory of this machinery, as the means of its action, also posits the absorption of the labour process in its material character as a mere moment of the realization process of capital.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch13.htmthus, in the productive process, man is not in charge, but rather, the machine takes control of man, imbuing itself with a soul by its replenishment with "living labour" (is marx prophecying artificial intelligence)? here then, man is reduced from his being merely "labour" to being "capital" (e.g. "variable capital"), since labour-power is already accepted as an indiscriminate commodity in the market. this agency by capital is also seen in capital vol. 1 (1867):
<the relations connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are, material relations between persons and social relations between things.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmthese "social relations" being expressed by the medium of exchange (what marx refers to as a "fetishism" and what he directly compares to the idols of religion):
<In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands […] the Fetishism inherent in commodities, or by the objective appearance of the social characteristics of labour…thus, the feuerbachian critique still holds, that man in representing concrete relations, abstracts idols which he takes as the essence of such relations. man takes money to possess an intrinsic value, but this can only be true where man also produces commodities to be sold. this "fetishism" thus is the very notion of alienation, and marx provides this conclusion:
<The religious world is but the reflex of the real world [this, marx footnotes with a reference to his "zur kritik" of 1859, which discusses "base and superstructure"] … The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then finally vanish, when the practical relations of every-day life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellowmen and to Nature. The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan. This, however, demands for society a certain material ground-work or set of conditions of existence which in their turn are the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development.so then, marx sees that (as per his earlier work), religion (as the "illusory happiness" of mankind) is man's own alienation from his "real happiness", yet it can only be got rid of where the mode of production changes to an assortment of "freely associated men" with a "consciously regulated" plan for society (e.g. communism). so then, as marx also writes in 1844, the project of communism is to liberate man from the illusions of society, but for this to occur, society must change its material circumstances so as to reflect reality. this is why marx considers capitalism as important, since it unveils society by its brutality (1848):
<The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part. The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment” […] In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation […] The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htmthus, the disillusionment which the bourgeoisie brings is an initiation into the self-consciousness of society, heralded by the bourgeois slogans of "reason" itself.