To begin with, capitalism is a type of economic system. Simply put, capitalism is the system in which workers work for the capitalist and receive wages for their work. In Wage Labor and Capital Marx explains the exchange between the capitalist and his workers regarding wages and labor. He wrote: Since the capitalists owned the mode of production, they had the power to make the workers work for whatever amount they wanted to give. The wage workers had no choice but to accept the wage amount they received. This was their only way to survive. This was around the time that Marx was pointing out that wage workers were actually being alienated and exploited. Because of the conditions in which wage workers worked, Marx described it as exploitation. Marx felt that wage workers were being exploited. Capitalists, also known as bourgeois, exploited wage workers, the proletariat, because of their cheap labor. They were essentially using them to create and increase their own profit. This in turn led to alienation. Basically, alienation, also known as estrangement, is when a person is separated from their work, what they produce, themselves, and their environment. Marx's theory of alienation has been used to describe workers working in capitalist society. Workers, also known as wage laborers, were commodities, things that are bought, sold, or exchanged in the market. They were selling their work, which means they were alienated from what they were doing. The first type of alienation is that from the "product of work". This is where the worker becomes separated from their job. This basically means that the work the worker is creating does not necessarily show his creativity. Marx wrote: W... in the center of the paper... is a threat. Then, they will compete with each other to receive more benefits. However, this type of alienation actually benefits the bourgeoisie because if workers are all competing to do better than their peers, then private owners will essentially make a better profit. Alienation theory is useful in explaining capitalism because it focuses more on the work aspect of the capitalist system. Since capitalists didn't do the work themselves, they hired other people to do it. In doing so, it slowly began to create this divide between capitalists and wage workers. This gap was created solely because wage workers were not fortunate to have the means of production that capitalists had to succeed. In a sense, this system was simply consolidating the two main classes: the rich and the poor.