Alienation

Karl Marx

For Marx work was the primary source of human activity and thereby happiness. But he argued that society has created alienated labour, and this has caused workers to be alienated from their 'real selves' and alienated from each other. The origin of this alienation is the exchange of goods by barter, in which the products of labour become commodities and thereby “the worker is related to the product of his labour as to an alien object.” In fact, Marx claims, it is not private property that has created alienation, but alienation that has created private property — since if products are mere commodities then commodities can be privately owned. Thus the worker “does not fulfill himself in his work but denies himself, has a feeling of misery rather than well-being, does not develop freely his mental and physical energies but is physically exhausted and mentally debased. The worker therefore feels himself at home only during his leisure time, whereas at work he feels homeless.” For Marx the economic system forms an infrastructure with two parts — the means of production, whereby goods are produced, and the relations of production, which in a capitalist society take the form of a division into those who own the means of production and those who do not. The capitalist infrastructure intensifies the alienation; workers, like products, are reduced to the level of commodities and wage labour becomes a system of exploitation — the labourers are effectively slaves. Additionally, the mechanization of production deprives work of all interest. The worker “becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him.” Furthermore, alienation is intensified by specialization and the division of labour and workers are trapped in their specialized occupation, which is necessarily alienating since a specialized occupation can only express a limited part of human nature. The criticism of his theory is that it is based on the illusion of an alternative — in other words, it is impractical. This criticism is supported by the study by Milovan Djilas who claims that in communist societies the means of production were controlled by and for the benefit of the ruling elite.

Herbert Marcuse

Marcuse is a neo-Marxist analyzing from a Marxist point-of-view the development of class conflict since the time when Marx was writing. In 1844 industrial workers laboured between 12 and 16 hours a day; their work was alienating and leisure time was only a means to recuperation. However, even though modern industrial society has seen a reduction in working hours and increased affluence Marcuse argues that workers do not fulfill themselves through leisure. Capitalism, in order to maintain its exploitation of the work-force, promotes through the media and advertising, false needs. The individual then 'satisfies' these false needs through 'euphoria in unhappiness'; instead of developing class consciousness he develops 'happy consciousness' — though this term denotes a false consciousness and no true happiness.

White collar alienation

C. Wright Mills in his book White Collar argues, in effect, that white collar workers in American have undergone proletarianisation. Specifically, white collar workers sell “pieces of their personality” — which means that in order to obtain a job, they have to adopt certain personality characteristics that do not reflect their true personalities, and consequently society is filled with hypocrisy, deceit and insincerity. White collar workers manipulate others to earn a living, and consequently experience alienation.

Harry Braverman

Braverman's book Labour and Monopoly Capitalism, the Degradation of work in the Twentieth Century (1974) has been very seminal. He agrees with Marx that work in a capitalist society is alienating, but regards work in the twentieth century as particularly alienating — automation is part of a process of the continual degradation of work, and is used to deskill the workforce. In order to ensure a return on wages, the modern capitalist has fostered the increasing division of labour. He claims that the work of Frederick W. Taylor and his notion of scientific management has been most influential in the changing way work is organised under capitalism. Under scientific management the skills of the workers are embodied in the production process, the workers do not have to think, and the workers have to follow written instructions. He claims that under modern capitalism “labour power has become a commodity.” He regards the concessions by management as a means to habituating workers to oppressive conditions. Human relations management is just an off-shoot of scientific management. The situation of workers is worsening. They are increasingly trapped.

He challenges official US ways in which the skills of the workforce are measured. He claims that many so-called semi-skilled jobs are really unskilled jobs, whilst the classification of farm labour (which has significantly declined in numbers) as unskilled makes it appear falsely that there is an increase in skilled labour. He also claims that many non-manual jobs have themselves been deskilled. He claims that there has been white-collar proletarianisation.

His work has been supported by some sociologists — for example, Zimbalist has edited a work called Case Studies on the Labour Process in which a number of American writers illustrate the process of degradation of work in such occupations as carpentry, coal mining, car assembly, jewellery making, clerical work and insurance. Zimbalist conducted research of his own in the printing industry. He contrasts the skills based work of the late C19th with the deskilled work of the late C20th where word-processing has destroyed the traditional craft of typesetting.

Criticisms of Braverman are (1) he exaggerates the differences between the C19th and the C20th, exaggerating the importance of craft work in the C19th. (2) His work is based on America, and in Britain Taylorism has had less impact.

Some Marxists do not agree that scientific management is the predominant method of control, or that control is necessarily complete. Richard Edwards sees the workplace as a contested domain, where worker resistance and other situational factors can influence the outcome. He contrasts the simple control methods of the C19th, where factories were small, with the structural control methods of the C20th, where organisations are much bigger. Structural control comes in two forms: (1) technical control, where the labour process is directed by machines; (2) bureaucratic control, where workers are encouraged to enter into conflict with each other, rather than uniting to challenge management. He sees technical and bureaucratic control as more important than scientific management in the way management exerts control over the workforce.

Andy Friedmann adopts a more critical view of Braverman's thesis, and contrasts direct control, where every aspect of the worker's labour is rigidly controlled, with responsible autonomy, where workers are invited to identify with the objectives of the business as a whole. He also comments on the distinction between central and peripheral workers, with central workers being essential to the long-term prospects of the company and therefore more powerful. He claims that at all stages of capitalism direct control and responsible autonomy have coexisted.