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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. Wage-

workers’ 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: 204-

205). 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 wage-

workers 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 social-

psychological 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 mis-

involvement 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 one-

dimensional thought. Alienation separates two critical dimensions of advanced society: the reality

and the culture.

15

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 one-

dimensionality. 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 one-

dimensional 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 self-

esteem 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 self-

imposes an internal unfreedoms that prevent his or her self-satisfaction. Such internal unfreedoms

are even more powerful to the alienated than external unfreedoms.

17

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, 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. This is an

18

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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