Full Idea
What Marx called 'alienation' is the widespread condition of not being able to discover what one wants, or not being remotely positioned to achieve.
Gist of Idea
Alienation is not finding what one wants, or being unable to achieve it
Source
Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 2 'Expanding')
Book Reference
Flanagan,Owen: 'The Really Hard Problem' [MIT 2007], p.58
A Reaction
I took alienation to concern people's relationship to the means of production in their trade. On Flanagan's definition I would expect almost everyone aged under 20 to count as alienated.