alienation (Entfremdung) Marx, Karl used this term to describe the changes in the economic and social conditions of modernity which separated (i.e., alienated) workers from the product of their labour, the process of their labour, the reason for their labour, and finally each other. A factory worker in a car manufacturing plant is responsible for only one small part of the final product, and that may even be invisible in the finished item; the workers do not control the flow of work, but have to adapt themselves to the demands of the production line (Henry Ford famously didnât allow toilet breaks!); moreover, whether there is in fact any work at all is completely beyond their control, it all depending on the global market; from this point of view, the workers in one plant benefit when workers in plants elsewhere fail. Compare this to the peasant farmer who is responsible for planting, tending and harvesting his or her crop and works as much or as little as his or her needs dictate. Marx develops this concept in the posthumously published âEconomic and Philosophical Manuscriptsâ (1844) by reworking genreâs concept of Geist (spirit).