Andrew deSouza

Tutorial Group A
Economic Sociology – SOC 106

Examine the notion that alienation is an inbuilt feature of the modern capitalist production
process

The notion that alienation is an in-built feature of the modern capitalist production process suggests
that alienation arises out of the mechanics of the capitalist system. In order to understand how this
happens, it is necessary to first look at Marx's conception of alienation and what it includes. It is
also necessary to look at how this alienation extends beyond the production process. We must also
see how this translates into contemporary society, and how the growth of the service sector has been
shaped by this phenomenon.
Ernest Mandel offers an articulate account of Marx's theory of alienation. He sees Marx's theory of
alienation as coming from Hegel and his concept of externalisation. Both Hegel and Marx were of
the belief that what separates man from animal is man's ability to consciously create the object of
his production in his mind before he creates it in the material world. Hegel's understanding was that
the act of producing necessarily alienates the producer from the product, since by projecting the
mental construction of the object into the physical world, man is distinct and separate from it;
therefore, all labour is alienated labour. (Mandel, 1970)
Marx, however, contradicts this. He believes that the product of labour does not necessarily oppress
or stand in contradiction to the producer; rather, this is the result of historical and material factors. It
is because of a particular form of organisation of society; "only in a society which is based on
commodity production and only under the specific economic and social circumstances of a market
economy, can the objects which we project out of us when we produce acquire a socially oppressive
existence of their own and be integrated in an economic and social mechanism which becomes
oppressive and exploitative of human beings." (Mandel, 1970)
Here, it is important to look at Marx's own explanation for alienation as found in the Manuscripts.
He illustrates four ways in which the worker is alienated.
First is alienation from the product he produces. Since the product that the labourer produces is in
the control and the possession of the capitalist, he can not use it to either sustain himself or engage
in further productive activity. Since the product he produces is external to him, it confronts him as
an autonomous power. In earlier societies, the worker had the option to produce as much as he
wished, and the more he produced, the more value he created for himself. However, in bourgeois
society, the more the worker produces, the more he enriches the external world of objects, and
therefore, the poorer he becomes.
The second form of alienation is from the labour process. By offering his labour on the market, the
worker relinquishes all control over his labour. He is no longer in control of the conditions,
organisation, or effects of the work process. The managers and capitalists are in control of the
system of production, and it is in their interest to have the worker produce faster, harder, and for
longer. In addition, as Braverman (1974) notes, managers and bosses have an interest in further
breaking down the labour process, since in a system based on the sale and purchase of labour,
dividing crafts cheapens the individual part. For Marx, it is life-activity that determines life, and
therefore, the worker sees his own life as an activity opposed to him. In a mechanical production
line, the worker must adjust to the demands of the machine. The worker himself becomes like a
machine and finds himself in a system pre-existing and independent of him, a system to which he
must conform. He is merely a part of the system, required to run the machine.
The third form of alienation is that of man from himself. For Marx, the life activity of man is
different from that of animals, because animals are at one with their life activity, they are driven by
immediate and physical needs, and they produce only in the manner in which their species is able to
produce. But man is free from these restrictions: he can produce things other than those that satisfy
his immediate needs, he regards himself as acting upon things, and he can produce in many varied
modes. Thus by working upon the natural world, man creates for himself a species-being. but in the
capitalist mode of production, nature is taken away from man, he is no longer able to work freely
upon it. thus, "Man’s species-being, both nature and his spiritual species-property, into a being alien
to him, into a means of his individual existence. It estranges from man his own body, as well as
external nature and his spiritual aspect, his human aspect." (Marx.) Thus, the species-being of man,
his work, is converted into only a means to sustain himself.
In the fourth form of alienation, man is also alienated from his fellow human beings. In part, this
both results in and arises from the class structure of society. For Marx, if the worker no longer has
power over his product, it must belong to someone - some human. Thus it belongs to the persons in
control of the labour and the labour process, the capitalist: "Thus, if the product of his labour, his
labour objectified, is for him an alien, hostile, powerful object independent of him, then his position
towards it is such that someone else is master of this object, someone who is alien, hostile,
powerful, and independent of him. If he treats his own activity as an unfree activity, then he treats it
as an activity performed in the service, under the dominion, the coercion, and the yoke of another
man." (Marx). In a system based on the exchange of commodities, individuals interact with each
other based on their material, and not their social relations. According to Fischer (2008), humans
are related not as individuals but as representatives of class and capital. Since we are only related
through commodities, and since the production and consumption of commodities are inherently
alienating, man becomes further alienated from his fellow man. Added to this is the constant 'army'
of reserve labour maintained by the capitalist class to further drive down wages. As a result, the
worker sees fellow workers as competition and must fight to obtain employment for himself,
instead of seeing him as a fellow worker, living under material conditions that are similar to his
own.
It is clear then that alienation is far more than an effect created by a certain kind of workplace. It is
intrinsically related to the system of commodity and private property, that is, to the capitalist
system. Marx believes that private property is a necessary consequence of alienated labour: "though
private property appears to be the reason, the cause of alienated labor, it is rather its consequence,
just as the gods are originally not the cause but the effect of man’s intellectual confusion. Later this
relationship becomes reciprocal." (Marx). It is therefore clear that the system of private property
and alienated labour cannot exist without each other, as private property is the consequence, and,
later, the cause of alienated labour. Since private property is an integral feature of the modern
capitalist system, it then follows that alienated labour is an inbuilt feature of the modern capitalist
production process.
Another aspect that needs to be looked at is that of the commodity and commodity fetishism. It is
precisely because there exists a system of commodities that alienated labour produces and
reproduces itself. In a system which runs on commodities, the reification of the commodity results
in further alienation. Cox suggests that "The commodities of each individual producer appear in
depersonalised form, regardless of who produced them, where, or in what specific conditions.
Commodity production means that everyone 'appropriates the produce of others, by alienating that
of their own labour'."
There is yet another way in which alienation and capitalism are linked. Alienation goes beyond the
workplace and affects human life in general. It also affects how we consume, not just how we
produce. According to Mandel, "On the one hand, each capitalist entrepreneur tries to limit the
human needs of his own wage earners as much as possible by paying as little wages as possible.
Otherwise he would not make enough profit to accumulate. On the other hand, each capitalist sees
in the work force of all the other capitalists not wage earners but potential consumers. He would
therefore like to expand the capacity of consumption of these other wage earners to the limit or
otherwise he cannot increase production and sell what his own workers produce. Thus capitalism
has a tendency to constantly extend the needs of people."
Thus capitalism requires the constant generation of needs in order to sustain itself. Mandel also
notes that once productivity increases and the socially necessary labour time falls, the leisure time
that the worker is afforded is also commercialised. Since leisure is now a commodity, it must come
from somewhere and be produced somewhere. Thus even in leisure time, the worker, through
consumption, is part of a system of alienated labour. This has further reaching implications. In order
to create new needs, capitalism must constantly create dissatisfactions, for a consumer who is
completely satisfied and content would have no need of purchasing any commodities. Thus it is
necessary for capitalism to constantly keep its consumer base at a certain level of dissatisfaction so
that they are always ready to purchase the apparent 'cure' of that dissatisfaction. We can see this
clearly with the scale of the advertising industry and the increasing use of 'aspirational-ism' to sell
goods.
But if work in the modern capitalist system is so alienating, how does it reproduce itself? According
to Althusser, wages are the mechanism through which labour is allowed to reproduce itself
physically. Wages are then the very minimum that the capitalist can pay the worker to ensure that
he turns up to work the next day. This is however not a biological minimum, but a historical
minimum, and is also contingent to the cultural situation of the workers: "Marx noted that English
workers need beer while French proletarians need wine".
It is not however enough to reproduce only the material conditions for labour power if it is to be
reproduced. It is also necessary for the labour power to be appropriately 'competent' and 'skilled' in
order to fit in to the various jobs and posts required of it. How then does this happen? For Althusser,
unlike systems of slavery or serfdom, this happens less through apprenticeship and more through
capitalist educational systems and other institutions. It is at these schools that children learn how to
fit in to the capitalist system and how to take on the roles offered by the various positions in
capitalist organisation. "The reproduction of labour power requires not only a reproduction of its
skills, but also, at the same time, a reproduction of its submission to the rules of the established
order, i.e. a reproduction of submission to the ruling ideology for the workers, and a reproduction of
the ability to manipulate the ruling ideology correctly for the agents of exploitation and repression,
so that they, too, will provide for the domination of the ruling class ‘in words’."
Thus we can see that alienation exists in many forms and at many levels, and that there are intrinsic
capitalist features that ensure its existence and continuation. While alienation of labour is
particularly acute for physical labourers, modern capitalism brings almost anyone that produces into
the ambit of alienated labour. thus, workers in the service sector must either separate their emotions
or start to take on new emotions in order to not offend their customers. Even artists and intellectuals
are not free from alienated labour, since they too are bound by the need to make money, and the
existence of the music industry, entertainment industry, etc., ensure that they too are wage labourers
of a kind. Also, the necessity to exchange art or ideas on the market paints their creations too with
the broad brush of commodity fetishism.
It is therefore clear that alienation is indeed an in-built feature of the capitalist system, since it is
both result and cause of some of the most fundamental mechanics that underlie capitalist
production.
References

Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and ideological state apparatuses (notes towards an investigation)." The
anthropology of the state: A reader 9 (2006): 86.

Braverman, Harry. Labor and monopoly capital: The degradation of work in the twentieth century.
NYU Press, 1998.

Cox, Judy. "An introduction to Marx's theory of alienation." International Socialism (1998): 41-62.

Fischer, Ernst. How to Read Karl Marx. Aakar Books, 2008.

Mandel, Ernest, and George Novack. The Marxist theory of alienation: three essays. Pathfinder
Press, 1973.

Marx, Karl. "Estranged labour." (1844). Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts.