Download The concept of alienation, its origins and consequences in capitalism

Annual New School – UMass Graduate Workshop in Economics 2016
THE CONCEPT OF ALIENATION, ITS ORIGINS
AND CONSEQUENCES IN CAPITALISM
Dai Duong, PhD student in Economics
Abstract
This paper examines Marx’s treatment of workers and capitalists’ alienation in capitalism
and numerous further research of forms of alienation. For Marx, wage-workers are alienated from
products that they produced, from their working process, from fellowmen, and from human
species. Meanwhile, capitalists are alienated to be greed and cruel because their private property
encourages their sense of having. However, alienation spreads through society to dominate lives
of various types of people, not just workers and capitalists. Alienation is different to each person
in capitalism. Diversified forms of alienation are identified such as powerlessness,
meaninglessness, isolation, normlessness, self-estrangement, lack of self, lack of meaning,
loneliness, social alienation, and so on. Although alienation becomes pervasive in capitalism, the
origin of alienation does not root in this mode of production but in commodity production, in
which, division of labor play important role in causing alienation. From individualistic approach,
alienation is the result of the human enigma that, on the one hand, human body is animal body
which desires basic needs of living, on the other hand, human beings are thinking beings who
desire to make sense of living, or freedom. Alienation leads to serious social and individual
problems such as commodity fetishism, one-dimensional thought, and limiting freedom. It is
difficult to overcome alienation when this phenomenon exists with a vicious cycle that reproduce
alienation by itself. For each individual, alienation weakens his or her personality and constrains
to live himself or herself life.
Main Paper
Alienation is a persistent phenomenon in the modern times. It is recognized in psychological
and socio-economic processes. This research is to identify the concept of alienation which had
been explored deliberately by Marx in capitalist mode of production in the 19th century. It is also
useful to identify forms of alienation in in the 20th century because the state of alienation is not the
same to each person in the society. Besides, the research figures out what causes alienation and its
consequences to human beings as a society and as an individual.
1. Marx’s theory of alienation in the 19th century capitalism
Alienation is a broad concept that is explored from diversified perspectives of theology,
philosophy, sociology, psychology, psychiatry, history, anthropology, education, literature,
political sciences and political economy (Johnson, 1973: 24). Usually, it is considered as a negative
challenge that individuals and society as a whole need to overcome (Bryce-Laporte and Thomas,
1976: xxiii). Before Marx, problems of alienation had been analysed, in particular, by Hegel and
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Feuerbach. For Hegel, in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), alienation is the process in which
characteristics of the Geist (God or Spirit) exists externally to human beings. Consequently,
Hegel’s understanding of the nature of human beings is built on ideal features of the supreme
power (DoĞan, 2008: 62). In contrast, for Feuerbach, in The Essence of Christianity (1841), the
alienation of human beings results in the image of God in which the image of God contains the
alienated characteristics of human beings (Feuerbach, 1957: 195).
Marx develops his theory of alienation against a background of the labour theory of value.
He pays special attention not simply to alienation, but to specific forms of alienation under
capitalism in which waged-workers and capitalists are alienated in different ways.
The concern with alienation is more evident in his early writings (Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts (1844), The Holy family (1844), and Grundrisse (1857)) although a special type of
alienation termed “commodity fetishism” appears in his later work (in Volume I, Capital (1867)).
Approaching from perspectives of religion, philosophy, and political economy, Marx examines
the phenomenon of alienation in industrial capitalism in the 19th century. Generally, the theory of
alienation is one of Marx’s great contributions to the academic literature together with the theory
of labour value, theory of surplus value and so on (Singer, 2000: 46).
For Marx, alienation refers to the phenomenon whereby human beings are estranged from
human nature so that they live in the way they are not themselves in nature. In the sixth thesis on
Feuerbach, after refusing the common notion “human as specie”, Marx claims that human nature
is built from “the ensemble of the social relations” (McLellan, 2000: 172). The social relation
changes over time so does human nature. In The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx claims that “all
history is nothing but the continuous transformation of human nature”. Therefore, human nature
is historically modified (McMurtry, 1978: 37). It is not fixed, but is made by and through human
activity. Human nature is not based upon egoism, but sociality (Meszaros, 1970: 148 - 149). If
essential social relations are broken (relations expanded upon below) human beings are not
themselves, not as they should or could be. Broken essential social relations mean alienation
(Ollman, 1976: 133). Alienation is a complex process of interaction that, whilst having its roots in
production, produces structural changes in all parts of the human totality (Meszaros, 1970: 183).
In that sense, alienation is viewed as a mistake, a defect that needs to be corrected by other
processes (Ollman, 1976: 132).
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Alienation degrades human beings by distorting their unique characteristics. Many of the
qualities that distinguish human beings from other species are reduced to the lowest common
denominator (Ollman, 1976: 134). Such degradation is caused because their main internal relations
are interrupted, and then the alternative ones create alien characteristics. Hence, people become
“spiritually and physically dehumanized beings” in different ways (Ollman, 1976: 155). Alienation
emerges and embeds itself in the activity, thought, and lifestyle of the people who engage in
commodity production (Yuill, 2011: 109).
For Marx, both wage-workers and capitalists are alienated, but in different ways. Wageworkers’ are alienated by and from their labour; meanwhile, capitalist are alienated by and from
their capital.
Alienation of wage-workers
Wage-workers are alienated from their labour power as the latter is sold as a commodity. The
internal relation between wage-workers, their products, and their living activities is broken when
they cannot determine what, how, and when to do something. At the same time, the external
relations of wage-workers with fellow men and with human species are alienated. Wage-workers
have no possession of the products that their labour power are embodied in. Hence, wage-workers
lose degrees of independence in their working lives. Since the need for living labour in production
is determined by capital, the living labour depends on the production and circulation of capital
(dead labour). The more workers sacrifice living labour for capital – dead labour, the lower the
status of workers in society as well as in production. This domination of dead labour over living
labour is one of the key manifestations of workers’ alienation. In the Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts, Marx explains that wage-workers are alienated in four ways during the working
process.
Firstly, workers are alienated from commodities, that is, from the goods and services
produced by them – which can, of course, be non-material such as a computer programme, a book,
or even a smile – e.g. workers such as air stewards or sales assistants. The commodity is the
manifestation, the phenomenal form of alienated labour. The more commodities they produce does
not guarantee that they have a better life. Indeed, the more commodities are produced, the stronger
the power of the commodity exercised over workers because commodities have become powers
independent of wage-workers and rule over them. This is an inversion of the relation between
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producers and products, in which, the former is determined by the latter instead of determining the
latter.
Secondly, workers are alienated from their working activities because the product of their
labour is sold and does not belong to them. The first and second types of alienation relate closely
to each other. Marx asserted that “alienation appears not only in the result, but also in the process,
of production, within productive activity itself. How could the worker stand in an alien relationship
to the product of his activity if he did not alienate himself in the act of production itself” (Marx,
1844: 98). It looks like workers become components of machines. Workers feel like strangers in
the workplace, when work is not voluntary but compulsory (McLellan, 2000: 88, Ellis and Taylor,
2006). In Wage Labour and Capital, Marx underlined the meaninglessness of time spent in work
when their alienated labour activities are for their existence as a species does (Tucker, 1978: 204205). The function of working is distorted from creating humanistic identities to transforming
wage-workers to be part of a machine. The worker – machines relation has been reversed from the
human usage of machines to the machinery usage of workers. To put it differently, workers have
to follow the operation of machines. Initially, working distinguishes human beings from other
species. Working is to live, not merely to exist. Working is a natural necessity which does not
relate to money or wages. However, for workers, working is a responsibility due to pressure of
making income. It departs totally away from its original meanings. Fromm described this
alienation: “The alienated man, who believes that he has become the master of nature, has become
the slave of things and of circumstances, the powerless appendage of a world which is at the same
time the frozen expression of his own powers.” (Fromm, 1961: 53).
Thirdly, workers are alienated from their own human potential. As a special species, human
beings have consciousness vis-à-vis their living (and indeed dying) activities – which, incidentally,
does not give them the right to mistreat other species which may not possess such consciousness.
Other species do not distinguish their activities for survival and reproduction. However, under
conditions of capitalist commodity production, workers fight for their survival, their very species
existence, not for all the possible reasons that they could work, to carry out the possible activities
that they really wish to do. It is important to note that, in Marxist political economy, the wage is
assumed to fulfill the basic needs of living (varied culturally in their society). Therefore, workers
are working merely to sustain life, which is quite similar to what other species do. In this alienation,
workers’ conscious life activity is reduced to “a mere means to their existence” instead of being
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something worth pursuing in its own right (McLellan, 2000: 91). The human essence of workers
becomes a means of their individual existence. Their human lives are degraded to a state of
existence.
Fourthly, workers are alienated from other people or fellowship. Workers and capitalists
become alien to each other because the product of labour does not belong to the worker, but
belongs to the bourgeoisies. Workers are also alienated from their other colleagues due to
competition for employment. Such tensions also contribute to make the workers feel strange in
work, and feel at home when they are not working (Marx, 1964: 110). This kind of alienation is
the certain result of alienation from products, life activities, and other human beings.
Alienation of capitalists
Alienation not only affects wage-workers because, as Marx notes, capitalists, as “the master
of labour” are also alienated. In The Holy Family and Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts, he
argued that, private property, as human estrangement, is the necessary consequence of alienated
labour (McLellan, 2000: 148, Marx, 1964: 117). The alienation of capitalists who own large
private property is inevitable. Although the propertied class takes advantage from its ownership of
private property, alienation derived from that still makes them “stupid and one-sided” so that all
their physical and mental senses are degraded (Marx, 1964: 139). In addition, in order to enlarge
their private property, capitalists must engage in competition and are constrained themselves by
the laws of the market (Wallimann, 1981: 97). Gradually, this process breaks their relations to
other people and they become estranged from their human nature.
Ollman interprets Marx’s ideas via several aspects (Ollman, 1976: 154-155). Firstly,
capitalists, responding to competition in producing and exchanging commodities, are forced to
obey market demands. As commodity suppliers, to some extent, they are also under control of their
products. They cannot supply any commodities they desire but must provide things that consumers
are willing to buy. They gain no satisfaction from their own commodity, and any satisfaction is
transferred to buyers. Secondly, capitalists have a “theoretical attitude” (opposite to “practical
attitude” of workers) in production and to the product, which causes alienation because this attitude
does not reflect real and practical activities but rather its absence. Marx assumed that wageworkers work directly in commodity production while capitalists remain detached from that
process. Capitalists are therefore less concerned with any engagement in the production process
they happen to have, and more concerned with ensuring the prices of their commodities are
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competitive, and profitable. Thirdly, whilst not all capitalists are, many are encouraged to be
greedy, cruel and hypocritical in their exploitation (Ollman, 1976: 155). Private ownership is the
key reason for these characteristics. For capitalists, private property needs to be protected and
enlarged without limits. Satisfaction with private property urges capitalists to possess more
valuable property.
2. Forms of alienation in the advanced industrial capitalism in the 20th century
Since Marx simplifies capitalism as a society of two prominent classes thus he focuses on
the alienation of the two, especially wage-workers. However, when capitalism have reached new
peak of development in the end of the 19th century and the early of the 20th century, not only
workers and capitalists have been alienated by others groups have experienced alienation. As
Fromm asserts that “Marx did not foresee the extent to which alienation was to become the fate of
the vast majority of people, especially of the ever-increasing segment of the population which
manipulate symbols and men, rather than machines. If anything, the clerk, the salesman, the
executive, are even more alienated today than the skilled manual worker.” (Fromm, 1961: 57).
Alienation becomes a pervasive and social phenomenon. The fact is that alienation is not
homogenous among people. In other words, state of alienation of each individual is different from
each other. Therefore, there are diversified forms of alienation, not a single one.
From a narrow view, alienation consists of three major components included lack of self,
lack of meaning, and loneliness (Schmitt, 1983: 17). In Alienation and Freedom, Schmitt (2003)
only concentrates to two forms of alienation. As Schmitt assumes that human nature is to making
sense of living, so one of forms of alienation is a failure of making sense of living. The second
form of alienation is the state of “feeling depressed, aimless, without any power, out of place,
without a home and a proper place in the world” (Schmitt, 2003: 77).
From broader view, Seeman (1959) provides an important contribution of clarification with
five forms of alienation. First, from Marxian view of worker’s condition in capitalism, alienation
refers to a state of powerlessness which is perceived as “the expectancy or probability held by the
individual that his own behavior cannot determine the occurrence of the outcomes, or
reinforcements, he seeks” (Seeman, 1959). This conception implies a distinctly socialpsychological view, not from the standpoint of the objective conditions in society. In addition, the
state of powerlessness suggests the elimination of individual freedom and control. In the milieu of
working process, Blauner considers the powerless worker as an object who reacts rather than act,
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and being directed rather than self-directing. Alienation as powerlessness in industry has four
modes of freedom and control: (1) the separation from ownership of the means of production and
the finished product, (2) the inability to influence general managerial policies, (3) the lack of
control over the conditions of employment, and (4) the lack of control over the immediate work
process (Blauner, 1964: 16).
Second, from the perspective of the individual’s sense of understanding the circumstance
that he or she involves, alienation refers to the meaninglessness “when the individual is unclear as
to what he ought to believe – when the individuals’ minimal standards for clarity in decision
making are not met” (Seeman, 1959: 786). In meaninglessness, an individual is unable to predict
the future outcomes of behaviors. For example, as Adorno points out that German people could
not explain confidently the disastrous inflation after the World War I, and then, the Jews were
targeted, without firm evidence, as German people needed a cause to blame. Blauner interprets
meaninglessness as phenomena in which employees lack senses of function and purpose in their
work because of the complexity in bureaucratic structures. An employee needs only focus to a
limited task which is subdivided from a large working process. Consequently, that employee
cannot understand clearly his or her relation to the product, process, and organization of work. As
division of labor increases and production becomes standardized, contribution of each employee
to the final product is smaller and it is harder for employees to understand the production as a
whole (Blauner, 1964: 22).
Third, alienation refers to a condition of normlessness or anomie in Durkheim’s conception.
Traditionally, anomie implies a ruleless situation when the social norms regulating individual
conduct have broken down. The state of normlessness reflects social circumstance and psychic
states such as social disorder, personal disorganization, cultural breakdown, reciprocal distrust,
and others. The anomic situation is defined as “a high expectancy that socially unapproved
behaviors are required to achieve given goals’. (Seeman, 1959: 787-8). In the smallest social
system – the simple conversation, Goffman identifies that misbehavior of two parties or misinvolvement is an anomic situation, or a form of normlessness.
Fourth, isolation as a form of alienation that happens frequently with the intellectual role in
which the intellectual is estranged from his or her society and detached from popular cultural
standards. In the state of isolation, the alienated is the one who “assign low reward value to goals
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or beliefs that are typically highly valued in the given society” (Seeman, 1959: 789). This situation
manifests the rejection of the intellectual to commonly held values in society. The state of isolation
is similar as the state of loneliness in the Schmitt (1983) category of alienation. Meanwhile Blauner
(1964) describes both normlessness and isolation as “social alienation”. At the transition to
industrial age, traditional norms are destroyed so that integration of both national and local
communities becomes broken up while the new basis for industrial communities has not built yet.
Therefore, social alienation emerges with social disorders and chaos such as machine-breaking,
sabotage, strikes and others. Blauner finds the alienation of isolation that workers have to suffer
when they face difficulty in integration in new industrial community and have no sense of
membership in it. Isolation of workers refers to the absence of the sense of belonging in industrial
communities as they are not interested in identifying with such communities. In industrial
organizations, isolation of workers in particular and social alienation in general depend on the
technology, bureaucratic structure as well as normative consensus in such organizations.
Fifth, derived from Fromm’s view, alienation means self-estrangement which refers to “a
mode of experience in which the person experiences himself as an alien.” (Fromm, 2008: 117). In
other words, the alienated is the one who is estranged from the self. This is a popular understanding
of alienation. As discussing about the personal market, C. Wright Mills also points out this kind
of alienation “In the normal course of her work, because her personality become the instrument of
an alien purpose, the sales girl becomes self-alienated.” (Mills, 2002: 184). As the self is the
product of cultural socialization, the alienation from the self implies a deviation from popular
culture. The concept of self-estrangement assumes an ideal self that the actual self is estranged
from. That ideal self is constructed from some ideal human condition. Horowitz (1966) considers
that alienation is the synonym of separation and the antonym of integration. Particularly, alienation
is “an intense separation first from objects of the world, second from people, and third from ideas
about the world held by other people” (Horowitz, 1966: 231). The estrangement from self is
highlighted by the sense of dissociative state or disengagement from work, from people, and from
some other elements in the environment of the world. In working process, self-estrangement
represents in the loss of intrinsic meaning in work so that workers lose their intrinsically
meaningful satisfactions as they work. Seeman argues that the state of self-estrangement is “the
degree of dependence of the given behavior upon anticipated future rewards, that is, upon rewards
that lie outside the activity itself.” (Seeman, 1959: 790). The alienated fails to self-rewarding
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activities that engage him or her. For example, workers works for salary, not for their needs of
work. Blauner proposes that “self-estrangement refers to the fact that the worker may become
alienated from his inner self in the activity of work.” (Blauner, 1964: 26). In other words, laborers
are unable to find themselves in working as that process becomes an alien practice to them.
Therefore, self-estrangement not only results in the degradation of laborers’ satisfaction in working
process such as boredom and monotony but also impede personal development of laborers.
3. Origins of alienation
It is undeniable that alienation develops to higher levels under capitalism because this society
provides a favourable context for such processes arising. But, alienation of wage-workers,
capitalists are not features of capitalism but of commodity production. It is important to distinguish
between capitalism as the mode of generalised commodity production, and commodity production
as the economic mechanism which is founded by a social division of labour and the relative
separation of individual producers (Vietnam Ministry of Education and Trainning, 2009: 190).
Briefly, commodity production has existed in many social systems. There was petty commodity
production in civilisations for thousands of years before capitalist commodity production occurred.
Since the emergence of capitalism, commodity production has evolved into the advanced dynamic
economic mechanism that dominates the world today. Hence, capitalism and commodity
production are not the same thing. Capitalism is usually criticised for creating alienation but this
human self-estrangement springs from commodity production, rather than from capitalist
exploitation.
Firstly, the social division of labour is involuntary and coerces men and women to produce
commodities satisfying alien wills. Hence, producing and exchanging commodities downgrades
human relationships to a relationship between commodities. The relations between humans,
therefore, take on the form of relations between commodities. In addition, the social division of
labour turns each worker into a potential consumer because no one can fulfill their whole needs
from their own productive activity. This increases dependence of human beings on commodity
production and their purchasing power. Empirically, Blauner attributes the division of labor as the
key factor, besides technology causing the state of workers’ alienation in four industries including
printing, textiles, automobiles, and chemicals. Particularly, alienation is at its lowest level among
craft workers and at highest level among workers in assembly lines. Especially, in automotive
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industry, all dimensions of alienation are intensified (Blauner, 1964: 182) when workers have to
work in the conditions which are standardized, routine, repetitive and highly fragmented.
Secondly, to compete better, in commodity production, enterprises need to deepen the
technical division of labour. At its worst, this turns working activity into unfulfilling, boring and
repeated tasks. Even where this does not characterize the whole job, if often characterizes
significant aspects of the job. Gradually, labour becomes a one-sided and incomplete process.
Workers can, therefore, become “depressed spiritually and physically to the condition of a machine
and from being a man becomes an abstract activity and a belly” (Marx, 1964: 68). Thus, the relation
between labour power and its result becomes estranged, especially when the workers’ products are
uncompleted things that cannot be used separately, but rather, stand in need of being integrated
with other uncompleted things in order to become a full, functioning thing. For example, Intel
Corporation produces microprocessors that are not final products for consumption but inputs for
larger producing processes such as computers, tablets, and phones. This causes alienation of
human beings both from their products, and from working activity. Commodities are estranged
from those who produced them, and the producing process is fragmented. These reasons help
explain why the social division of labour, as a key principle of economic organization in
commodity production, plays a central part in creating alienation (Wallimann, 1981: 89-98).
Empirically, Blauner attributes the division of labor as the key factor, besides technology causing
the state of workers’ alienation in four industries including printing, textiles, automobiles, and
chemicals. Particularly, alienation is at its lowest level among craft workers and at highest level
among workers in assembly lines. Especially, in automotive industry, all dimensions of alienation
are intensified (Blauner, 1964: 182) when workers have to work in the conditions which are
standardized, routine, repetitive and highly fragmented.
Thirdly, commodity production reinforces the alienation of capitalists, encouraging greed,
and subjecting them to the will of markets. The second necessary condition for commodity
production is isolation of production. As Marx says: “Only the products of mutually independent
acts of labour, performed in isolation, can confront each other as commodities.” (Marx, 1990,
p.132). While this condition atomises the links of capitalists, causing them to exist independently
from each other, it also creates the perfect conditions for them to pursue their own interests. Thus
the entire production process, governed by capitalists, is organised in order to create profit for
them, not to meet the needs of the whole society. In addition, under conditions of isolated
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production, capitalists need to compete in order to meet a market demand that changes
dynamically. Hence, they are obliged to act according to market discipline, instead of them
imposing their wills on it.
Briefly, alienation is the inevitable social-economic aspect of the process of production and
exchange based upon commodity production – and exchange. The more commodity production
develops the more alienation spreads. Based on empirical evidences, Blauner also agrees that
“alienation is not a consequence of capitalism per se but of employment in the large-scale
organizations and impersonal bureaucracies that pervade all industrial societies”(Blauner, 1964:
3).
As alienation is also a process of individual transforming, there must be individualistic causes
for alienation of each person in the society besides the general causes as mentioned above.
Alienation is not the result of moral failings or defective character. Keyan (1981) generalizes that
human limitations lead to alienations. Endogenous limitations arise from birth, degeneration,
debility, death, and other biological processes. Exogenous limitations originate from social
unfreedoms, laws, economic activity, religion, tradition, and other social condition of the external
world. Such limitations convert individuals to objects which are manipulated and controlled by
external forces and out of their wills. In the state of dependence, individuals are constrained to be
free, detached, self-assured, self-affirmed. Instead, their existence are fragmented and alienated
with depersonalized feelings (Keyan, 1981: 11,51).
Schmitt (2003) identifies the precondition for alienation included the very human body. As
human body is biologically an animal body. Therefore, on that aspect, lives of human beings also
embody animal lives which are ruled by natural necessity and blind accident. Schmitt asserts that
“our bodies are animal bodies; but what is out relation to our bodies? Her body’s illness kills her;
it is the body that makes us mortal. At the very center of our life is this power, the body, that we
can affect but do not control” (Schmitt, 2003: 46). This human condition conflicts with human
desire to live meaningfully and freely. This is a contradiction between, on the one hand, human
lives are animal lives, and on the other hand, human beings are thinking beings. For Schmitt, this
duality of human nature is the precondition of alienation as human bodies are burdened by
necessity and minds which desire freedom. He also argues that not everyone in the society has the
same condition to overcome this precondition, but some people find this struggle more difficult
than others. Thus, each person has different life when each has different capacities and confronts
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the challenge to give meaning to life in different situations. Work is a frequent source of alienation,
but not for everyone. Because of individualistic causes for alienation, alienation takes different
forms for each person in society (Schmitt, 2003: 77).
There were numerous research projects that examine what cause and how alienation emerges.
Many factors are identified to cause worker’s alienation within working process. Aiken and Hage
show that greater work alienation and greater alienation from expressive relations were found in
highly centralized and highly formalized organizational structures (Aiken and Hage, 1966). Allen
and Lafollette find that alienation from work is directly related to the level of hierarchy of authority
perceived to exist in the organization, inversely related to the level of participation in decision
making perceived to exist in the organization, and directly related to the level of job codification
perceived to exist in the organization. In other words, workers’ alienation is related to structural
properties of organizations (Allen and LaFollette, 1977). Besides the traditional view that
formalization in the structure of organization leads to workers’ alienation, the compensatory view
suggests that formalization creates positive effects to harness alienation. Such effects include
reducing powerlessness by a sense of greater autonomy and power, reducing meaninglessness,
normlessness and isolation, and preventing self-estrangement (Organ and Greene, 1981).
Meanwhile, the Podsakoff’s study of pharmacy technicians, government employees, and
employees from a mid-western state's department of mental health confirmed the mixed effects of
organizational formalization to alienation that formalization decreased ambiguity of staff roles in
working, it did not increase conflict between their roles (Podsakoff et al., 1986).
The role of characteristics of the occupation in alienating workers is disputable. Studying in
a large manufacturing firm, Chisholm and Cummings argue that there is a lack of significant
relationships between the nature of jobs and experienced work alienation (Chisholm and
Cummings, 1979). Nevertheless, investigating the U.S.A industries, Simpson asserts that the shift
from mechanical to electronic technology decomposed the labor force, including the decoupling
of work from the employing organization, and substituted electronic for bureaucratic control so
that the workplace became increasingly anomic and alien and workers were increasingly
vulnerable (Simpson and Simpson, 1999).
4. Consequences of alienation
Commodity fetishism as a common consequence and manifestation of alienation
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In his effort to critique other theories of value, Marx introduces the concept of “commodity
fetishism” to explain the false belief that “goods possess value just as they have weight, as an
inherent property” (Elster, 1986: 57). Actually, commodity fetishism is restated from alienation in
order to reveal the essence and mystification of capitalism (Cowling, 2006: 329).
For Marx, commodity fetishism refers to a social phenomenon whereby the commodity
becomes mysterious and appears to dominate human relationships. In the eyes of human beings,
the commodity seems to be endowed naturally with its value. It looks like an autonomous and
independent power in the relation with human beings (Marx, 2007: 83). However, the secret behind
such mystification is that value is the result of socially necessary abstract labour embodied in
commodity. Because value expresses relations between producers, when the source of value is
concealed, relations between producers are also obscured. Harvey describes in A Companion to
Marx's Capital that “our social relation to the labouring activities of others is disguised in the
relationships between things”. So, it is impossible to know anything about the labour or the
labourers through commodities (Harvey and Marx, 2010: 39-40).
In short, commodity fetishism is an epistemic problem, involving the mistaking of
appearance for commodity production (Ripstein, 1987: 736). It plays an important role in creating
alienation of consciousness that contributes significantly to alienation of human nature. Therefore,
commodity fetishism changes life styles, thoughts and enjoyments in human life. Marx stresses
that commodity fetishism reduce human beings to be human commodity: “Production does not
simply produce man as a commodity, the human commodity, man in the role of commodity; in
conformity with this situation it produces him as a mentally and physically dehumanized being –
Immorality, miscarriage, helotism of workers and capitalists – Its product is the self-conscious
and self-acting commodity…..the human commodity” (Marx, 1844: 111).
Commodity fetishism is summarised in five points by Cohen: (1) The labour of persons takes
the form of the exchange-value of things; (2) Things do have exchange-value; (3) They do not
have it autonomously; (4) They appear to have it autonomously; (5) Exchange-value, and the
illusion accompanying it, are not permanent, but peculiar to a determinate form of society (Cohen,
2000: 116). Point (3) jumps to point (4) due to a very peculiar kind of false consciousness of
participants in commodity production. Producers cannot understand the origin of exchange-value,
not because they are unintelligent, but because commodity fetishism hides its own origins, making
it impossible to see the origin of value and, therefore, making it difficult to understand. Related to
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point (5), Lukacs showed that a commodity takes a form of objectivity and also creates subjective
behaviour for human beings (John and Dimitri, 2004: 6). The unawareness of the origin of value
leads people to wrongly evaluate their lives. They are happier with activities that gain money, and
vice versa, losing money brings depression. Similarly, their attitude of valuable things is intensive
and explicit.
Commodity fetishism is a symptom of alienation whereby some people become obsessed by
the ownership of commodities. These people lose themselves in their objects, and their existence
is then proved by their ownership of them. As Marx says, “Thus, the objectification of the human
essence, both in its theoretical and practical aspects, is required to make man’s sense human, as
well as to create the human sense corresponding to the entire wealth of human and natural
substance.” (Marx, 1964: 141). In other words, ownership of objects, or commodities, in the
context of capitalism, conveys status on their owners and brings feelings of well-being.
Meanwhile, the absence of commodities clearly defines their situation of poverty. Possessing
luxury commodities or collecting unique ones is the common way to signify the wealth, status,
power, lifestyle, and social relations of their owners. Money, and often precious metals, become
the highest of fetishized things, appearing to have innate power. Owning them often becomes the
goal of many people instead of being the means to live their lives. Marx emphasizes the sense of
having as a significant sign of alienation: “the less you are, the less you express your life, the more
you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being.”
(Marx, 1844: 144). Consequently, some people had exposed their identities through their
preoccupation with commodities. Commodity fetishism does all this, whilst concealing the real
relations between those who produce and those who exchange.
Alienation by technological changes results in one-dimensional society
Alienation in advanced industrial capitalism is happened as the inevitable consequence of
technological changes. In turn, alienation by technological changes undermines the ability of
critical thinking which is characterized for human species. Marcuse criticized capitalism for such
alienation effect on members in society. Particularly, while advanced industrial capitalism
becomes a one-dimensional society, human beings becomes one-dimensional men with onedimensional thought. Alienation separates two critical dimensions of advanced society: the reality
and the culture.
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The reality dimension represents the relational and practical aspect of human experience while
the culture dimension describes the expressive side of human experience. For Marcuse, an advanced
industrial society is transformed to be a one-dimensional society when technological changes lead to
the incompatibility of culture with the reality so that culture is alienated to become a material culture.
In turn, such culture transforms the individual life to be enslaved under the total administration of
society. This is an absolute alienation toward those ones living in capitalism. Marcuse writes: “the
distinguishing feature of advanced industrial society is its effective suffocation of those needs which
demand liberation -…. – while it sustains and absolves the destructive power and repressive function
of the affluent.” (Marcuse, 1964: 7). Generally, individuals in advanced societies, especially
proletariat, become “one-dimensional man” with consciousness dominated by operational concepts
under influence of cultural industry and social media. Their minds are prevented to be conscious about
the reality. As a result, the industrial society transforms to be totalitarian and operates under the
manipulation of vested interests.
On the aspect of the reality, alienation causes new social-organizational characteristics of the
one-dimensional society. First, there is alienation of proletariat as a class who are integrating socially
and culturally to bourgeois society. Particularly, proletariat has changed their attitudes owing to
changes in the character of work and the instruments of production. In addition, they have lost their
class consciousness by advertising, consumerism, and other products of cultural industry. Marcuse
points out that operationalized concepts are used intensively by social media so that proletariat are
limited to understand those concepts in some certain ways and act based on such limited understanding.
Consequently, they are unable to think outside the box and do not have critical thinking about problems
of society. Second, in the influence of growing role of science in production, the exploitation of
capitalist domination is transformed to the control of society to individuals: “with technical progress
as its instrument, unfreedom – in the sense of man’s subjection to his productive apparatus – is
perpetuated and intensified in the form of many liberties and comforts” (Marcuse, 1964: 32). Third,
by the raising role of automatic machine in production, the autonomy of laborers in production declines
relatively, and hence laborers are implicitly refuted by the established society. In addition, the higher
dependence of productivity on automatic machine implies the declining importance of laborers’
political power in the politics sphere.
For Marcuse, the side of culture of the advanced industrial society is characterized with the onedimensionality. Individuals in advanced society are satisfied by the superficial happiness on a thin
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surface over fear, frustration, and disgust. Marcuse calls it ironically as “the happy consciousness”. In
the realm of happy consciousness, individuals believe in the rationality of the reality where is
dominated by reification and commodity fetishism. The existence of happy consciousness represents
the one-dimensionality of advanced industrial society in which the dimension of unfree society prevails
at the expense of the loss of dimension of culture. Individuals conform fully the administration of the
totalitarian society. Such conformity had been strengthened by the domesticating effects of
operationalized language which is emerged purposely by the rise of the mass media and the culture
industry. Paradoxically, individuals are demanding unconsciously the products of such weapons of
total administration in order to obtain happy consciousness. In the end, this results in the onedimensional thought in individuals. In which, positive thinking claim its triumph based on empirical
experience, technological rationality and domination of logic.
Alienation limits freedom
Alienation is an enemy of freedom which is the state of acting with own willing. As alienation
is different to each person, freedom also implies different meaning to each. For the rich who has
strong economic independence, freedom means unconstrained from acting with their rich
resources while the poor who has economic dependency considers freedom as no fear of
deprivation. The poor cares less about using property to please their unlimited wants as the rich
does. In order to live with freedom, both the rich and the poor need to live their own lives which
is meaningful by the way they define. J.S.Mill considers it as the true form of freedom: “The only
freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as
we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it” (Mill, 1863: 29).
Alienation prevents people to make sense of their own living. In the context of alienation, people
have limited choice to live freely so that freedom has been narrowed down. The alienated is unable
to understand what is good and what is meaningful to him or her. The alienated becomes indecisive
and does not trust their own judgment. As Marcuse points out, mass culture, especially mass media,
will decide what values are good and force the alienated to follow. Therefore, the alienated cannot
think outside the box to find their own meaningful value to live with. Alienation also reduces selfesteem of people so that the alienated live to try to please others. They do not dare to choose
alternative living ways which manifest their own uniqueness. In this sense, the alienated selfimposes an internal unfreedoms that prevent his or her self-satisfaction. Such internal unfreedoms
are even more powerful to the alienated than external unfreedoms.
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Alienation in capitalism fosters people to fetish money by maximizing profit and pecuniary
gains as much as possible. The motivation toward money and profit will be honored as ultimate
purpose of life for all people. This leads to an alienated trending that people use money as a
solution for troubles they face in their lives. Harder problems can be solved with more money.
Attention of making a meaningful life has been replaced by the desire of making money, and then
people are so alienated to question how to use money to make sense of their living. In that state of
alienation, human beings consider that making money and making a meaningful life as the same
thing. Commodity fetishism and money fetishism prevent people to achieve freedom of living their
own lives and push them to the race of making and spending money. They feel happy with having
more money, and feel timid and frightened with having little money (Schmitt, 2003: 127-128).
Hence, alienation limits freedom not only in the way it distorts people from their meaningful lives
but also in the way it denies possibility of awareness that they are being alienated. In other words,
the alienated does not realize that they are unfreedoms so that they do not have idea of going back
to the road to true freedom. Because of this reason, the state of alienation becomes deepened,
particularly, in individual mind and, generally, in capitalism.
5. Conclusion
This paper examines Marx’s treatment of workers and capitalists’ alienation in capitalism in
the 19th century which is a theoretical basis for numerous further research of forms of alienation
in the 20th century. For Marx, wage-workers are alienated from products that they produced, from
their working process, from fellowmen, and from human species. Meanwhile, capitalists are
alienated to be greed and cruel because their private property encourages their sense of having.
However, alienation spreads through society to dominate lives of various types of people, not just
workers and capitalists. Alienation is different to each person in capitalism. Diversified forms of
alienation are identified such as powerlessness, meaninglessness, isolation, normlessness, selfestrangement, lack of self, lack of meaning, loneliness, social alienation, and so on. Although
alienation becomes pervasive in capitalism, the origin of alienation does not root in this mode of
production but in commodity production, in which, division of labor play important role in causing
alienation. From individualistic approach, alienation is the result of the human enigma that, on the
one hand, human body is animal body which desires basic needs of living, on the other hand,
human beings are thinking beings who desire to make sense of living, or freedom. This is an
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enigma that “man has been compelled to seek his freedom in his unfreedoms and limitations; his
emancipation in his restriction; his liberty in his subjection and helplessness; and his happiness
and well-being in his suffering.” (Keyan, 1981: 12). In terms of consequences, alienation leads to
serious social and individual problems such as commodity fetishism, one-dimensional thought,
and limiting freedom. For Keyan, human limitations lead to alienations, which, in turn, lead to
other limitations. Hence, it is difficult to overcome alienation when this phenomenon exists with
a vicious cycle that reproduce alienation by itself. For each individual, alienation weakens his or
her personality and constrains to live himself or herself life. Alienation leaves him or her fearful,
anxious not to be different from others, eager to conform and to be accepted (Schmitt, 2003: 93).
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