How can workers become alienated from the products they make?

In Marxist theory, alienation is a fundamental consequence of capitalism, where the structure of production separates workers from the fruits of their labor. Workers become alienated from the products they create through several key mechanisms:12

• Lack of Ownership: The products of a worker's labor are expropriated by capitalists, who own the means of production. Because the worker does not own what they produce, the product becomes an external, alien object that exists independently of them.312
• Market Dynamics: In a market economy, goods are produced for exchange rather than for the worker's own use. As workers create more value, they paradoxically devalue themselves because their labor and its output are transformed into surplus value for the owner.2
• Loss of Creative Agency: Under factory conditions, the production process is often specialized and repetitive. Workers are reduced to an "appendage of the machine," losing the ability to use their human capacities in unique, creative, or fulfilling ways.12
• Commodification: The products of labor become "fetishes"—oppressive, alien realities that dominate the worker, as the worker’s own life becomes dependent on things they created but cannot claim as their own.2