Alienation

According to Karl Marx, work in a capitalist society is alienating. The structure and nature of employment in a capitalist economy prevent workers from realizing their true potential. For Marx, work was central to humanity. People could be differentiated from animals and other living things through the way in which they labored. Although many animals work, they do so instinctually; human beings not only perform labor, but they also think and plan ahead of time, and this is what makes our species unique. When working, humans express creativity and individuality. Marx held that the organization of work under capitalism stifles creativity and prevents workers from enjoying the fruits of their labor, thereby distorting human nature.

Marx identified four basic ways in which work in a capitalist economy is alienating, using the term alienation to reflect separation or estrangement. First, workers are alienated from the products of their labor. Workers put effort and a bit of themselves into what they produce, yet under capitalism, the product of their labor does not belong to them, but to their capitalist employers. Second, workers are separated from the labor process: They have no control over the conditions under which they work and often have little to say about exactly how they do their work. Although work under other conditions might offer an avenue of self-expression, in capitalist workplaces, workers are forced to act according to their employers’ instructions; they cannot be themselves. Third, under capitalism, workers are alienated from themselves and human nature. People can no longer work in a manner that differentiates them from animals (work that involves thinking, planning, and creativity), but must work according to the dictates of others (capitalists).

In a way, they are now worse off than animals, who at least labor somewhat autonomously (that is, no one tells a spider how to spin a web, but bosses will dictate to their workers exactly how their work is to be done). Fourth, workers are alienated from other people. Work under capitalism divides workers from employers, pitting them against each other, and it further creates conflict among workers as they compete for jobs and rewards. Overall, although Marx described alienation as an objective condition whereby workers are physically estranged, he believed that alienation had a terrible psychological cost.

Both Marx and later writers held that alienation can vary along a continuum: Some workers are more alienated than others. Generally, workers whose jobs are more controlled (through technology and work organization) and those who exercise less creativity on the job are more alienated than others. Further, since alienation is [Page 2]typically seen as a function of employment, self-employed workers should be immune. Research on alienation in recent decades has focused on two key problems or issues. First, how does alienation manifest in service work, when there is no clear “product” of the labor process? When the “product” is a satisfied customer, or a service rendered, can workers still be alienated? Arlie Hochschild, in her discussion of service work and “emotional labor,” argues yes. In fact, because employers of service workers dictate not only what workers do but also how they should do it, what they should look like as they are doing it, and sometimes even how they should feel about what they are doing, alienation may be even more intense in today's service economy. Only with a fundamental change in the mode of production, where workers would be empowered to collectively determine the way they work, would alienation disappear.

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