According to Karl Marx artistic expression and aesthetic enjoyment are essential human characteristics but the ways in which human productions are manipulated and understood are always ideological. In other words, art specifically is always attempting to convey the ideology, conviction or belief of the artist. Marx argued that capitalism inevitably estranges the producer from his product or one might use the word "alienates" more appropriately. The individual is forced to market what is produced in the interest of providing for one's means for the sustenance of life and this is the context in which this alienation takes place. According to Marx, the creative artistic productions of human labor define the nature of human existence, but when their work is alienated from human beings, as with capitalism, human beings are alienated from themselves. Art, like religion, morality, and philosophy is the expression of the socioeconomic system of the ruling class. The conflict of classes generates counter culture or revolutionary art according to Marx.
