Let's say, for example, a clocksmith, a specialist in constructing beautiful and
precise clocks, who is very, very proud of his elegant products.
Let's compare that man with a boy who performs all day long a monotonous,
boring, repetitive action in our famous pin factory described by Adam Smith.
Now you begin to have an idea of what Marx means with alienation.
The man working in the pin factory may not realize in what way his
simple task contributes to the final product.
The little pins that leave the factory.
And if he did, he couldn't care less.
The clockmaker loves his clocks,
the pin maker doesn't feel any kind of pride for his pins.
In a way, he has been cut loose from his products.
He doesn't recognize his own work in the material outcome of all his labor.
In short, his product has been alienated from him.
He experience it as something alien.
A thing that he doesn't recognize as his own creation.
And in a broader sense,
the whole productive process has been robbed from him.
He has been robbed of his dignity as a factory worker.
He has become a kind of robot.
A cog in the machine.
Being coerced to make the same bodily movements over and
over and over again, all day long, and also the next day, and the day after that.