But work has ceased to be a moral and religious obligation in the sense of the middle class attitude of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Something new has emerged. Ever-increasing production, the drive to make bigger and better things, have become aims in themselves, new ideals. Work has become alienated from the working person.
但劳动已不再被人们以十八、十九世纪的中产阶级的那种态度看作是一种道德和宗教上的义务。新的观念产生了。不断地提高生产，追求更大更、好地东西，这些本身已成了劳动的目的，成了新的理想。劳动与劳动者的关系开始异化了。
What happens to the industrial worker? He spends his best energy for seven or eight hours a day in producing "something." He needs his work in order to make a living, but his role is essentially a passive one. He fulfills a small isolated function in a complicated and highly organized process of production, and is never confronted with "his" product as a whole, at least not as a producer, but only as a consumer, provided he has the money to buy "his" product in a store. He is concerned neither with the whole product in its physical aspects nor with its wider economic and social aspects. He is put in a certain place, has to carry out a certain task, but does not participate in the organization or management of the work. He is not interested nor does he know why one produces this, instead of another commodity--what relation it has to the needs of society as a whole. The shoes, the cars, the electric bulbs, are produced by "the enterprise," using the machines. He is a part of the machine, rather than its master as an active agent. The machine, instead of being in his service to do work for him which once had to be performed by sheer physical energy, has become his master. Instead of the machine being the substitute for human energy, man has become a substitute for the machine. His work can be defined as the performance of acts which cannot yet be performedby machines.
产业工人的情况又如何呢?他一天要花七八个小时把自己最旺盛的精力用于生产"某种东西"。他需要劳动以求生计，但他在劳动过程中只扮演一个被动的角色。他只在一个复杂的、组织程度很高的生产过程中起一点很小的、孤立的作用，从来没有机会接触到"他的"产品的全貌，至少不能以生产者的身分，而只能以消费者的身分接触到"他的"产品的全貌，即使这样也还需要有一个前提条件，那就是，他得有足够的钱从商店里购买"他所生产出的，，产品。无论对生产出来的完全的成品本身还是其更深远的经济意义和社会意义，他都不用关心。他被安置在一个固定的岗位上，去完成一定的工作任务，而对生产的组织与管理则概不参与。对于为什么要生产这一种产品而不生产另一种产品--该种产品与整个社会需求之间的关系如何，他是既不知晓，也无兴趣知晓。鞋子、汽车、电灯泡等等都是由"工厂"用机器制造出来的。工人只是机器的一个组成部分，不是作为主动操纵者而成为机器的主人。机器不是在为他服务，替他去干过去要完全依靠体力去完成的工作，而是反过来成了他的主人。不是机器替代人力，而是人成了机器的替代物。人的工作被解释为执行目前尚不能由机器完成的动作。