Marx: Alienation

The philosophical background, briefly

Worth two paragraphs, because the concept is unintelligible without it and because it shows where Marx broke with his predecessors.

Hegel used alienation, Entfremdung, for the process by which Spirit externalises itself in the world and confronts its own creation as something foreign, before recognising it as its own. The estrangement is a stage in the development of consciousness.

Feuerbach applied the idea to religion: human beings project their own best qualities outward onto a god and then experience that projection as a power over them, so religion is human self-alienation.

Marx's move was to locate alienation in labour rather than in consciousness or in religion. Human beings realise themselves in what they produce; where the product and the process belong to another, the realisation becomes an estrangement. Religious alienation, on this account, is a symptom of the material alienation and cannot be cured by argument about religion, which is why he treated criticism of religion as the beginning of criticism rather than its end.

Alienation and private property

The relation matters and is often stated backwards.

Marx's argument is that private property is the consequence of alienated labour as much as its cause, and that the two stand in a reciprocal relation which becomes a vicious circle: alienated labour produces private property, and private property then reproduces alienated labour on a larger scale.

The consequence he drew, and it is what makes the concept political rather than merely descriptive: since alienation arises from the relation of ownership, it cannot be relieved by better wages, shorter hours or improved conditions, however desirable those are in themselves. Only the abolition of private ownership of the means of production would remove it.

This is where the concept meets its strongest empirical objection, from [Work and Alienation]: workers in state-owned industry in socialist economies reported the same estrangement, which suggests that scale, hierarchy and the detailed division of labour produce it independently of who owns the enterprise. An answer must give this, because it goes to the heart of Marx's remedy rather than to the description.

What a law student should take from it

Three propositions, and they are the reason the concept belongs on this syllabus.

Law can regulate the conditions of work and cannot restore the relation to it. Indian labour legislation, on hours, safety, wages, leave, compensation and social security, now consolidated in the labour codes, addresses everything about work except what Marx was describing. The distinction between what law can reach and what it cannot is the practical lesson, and it is the same distinction drawn in [Law and Social Change].

Participation is the legal form that comes closest. Provisions for workers' participation in management, works committees, and the recognition and rights of trade unions are attempts to restore some control over the process, which is Marx's second dimension. Whether they succeed is an empirical question of the kind Module III would answer.

The concept explains a body of law that otherwise looks miscellaneous. Rules on hours of work, weekly rest, the pace of work, monotony, and the right to organise are all addressed to the same underlying condition, and seeing them as one subject rather than as a list is what the concept provides.

Criticisms

1. It rests on a theory of human nature, species-being, which is a philosophical premise rather than a finding, and a great deal follows from it.
2. It is difficult to measure, which is what Blauner's reformulation in [Work and Alienation] was designed to remedy.
3. Alienation is not confined to capitalism, as the socialist experience shows.
4. It is not confined to manual work, and clerical, call centre and platform work display it as sharply.
5. Workers in objectively alienating jobs frequently report satisfaction, and explaining this as adjusted expectations risks making the theory unfalsifiable.
6. The remedy does not follow from the description. One may accept every element of the account of what wage labour does and reject the conclusion that only common ownership can cure it.

A worked example

A worker on an assembly line in an auto components plant near Pune.

What the law provides, and it is substantial: maximum hours and overtime; weekly rest; safety standards, machine guarding and inspection; a statutory minimum wage; leave; compensation for injury; provident fund and insurance; and the right to form and join a union and to bargain collectively.

What the law does not touch, and cannot. The worker still does not decide what is made or how; still fits the same component every ninety seconds; still does not own the product; and still works to live rather than living in the work. Every one of Marx's four dimensions survives full statutory compliance.

What comes closest. The provisions on participation and on collective bargaining, which return some control over the process, and safety and hours provisions, which reduce the physical cost without altering the relation.

The conclusion, and it is the honest one. Marx's description identifies something real that labour law does not address and was never designed to address. His remedy does not follow from his description, and the socialist experience is evidence against it. What survives for a lawyer is the diagnostic question: what does this work do to the person doing it, and which of the answers can law reach?

Quick revision

1. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, written 1844, first published 1932. The delay explains the shape of the debate about Marx, since the nineteenth century knew him without this work.
2. Four dimensions: from the product; from the process; from species-being; from other human beings.
3. The two Marxes debate: humanist young Marx against scientific mature Marx, or one continuous thought in which alienation reappears as the fetishism of commodities in Capital. Name it, do not settle it.
4. Background: Hegel, Spirit externalising itself; Feuerbach, religion as human self-alienation; Marx, alienation located in labour, with religious alienation as a symptom.
5. Private property is consequence as well as cause of alienated labour, and the two form a vicious circle. His remedy is therefore the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, not better wages.
6. The remedy meets the strongest objection: alienation was reported in state-owned industry too, so scale, hierarchy and the division of labour contribute independently of ownership.
7. For a lawyer: labour law reaches hours, safety, wages and security, and does not reach the relation to the work; participation and collective bargaining come closest; and the concept unifies a body of law that otherwise looks like a list.

Test yourself

1. Where does alienation stand in Marx's work, and why does the publication date matter? It belongs to his earliest writing, the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, written in 1844 when he was twenty-six, four years before the Communist Manifesto and more than twenty before Das Kapital. The Manuscripts were not published until 1932, so the Marx known to the nineteenth century and to the early socialist movements was the Marx of the Manifesto and Capital, without this material. A whole body of interpretation had therefore been built before the early work was available, which is why its appearance produced the debate about whether there are two Marxes.

2. Name the four dimensions of alienation. From the product, which belongs to another the moment it is made, so that the more the worker produces the more wealth confronts them as an alien power. From the process, since the worker decides neither what is made nor how, at what pace or in what order, so the activity is not theirs. From species-being, the conscious and creative production Marx held to be distinctively human, which is reduced to a mere means of subsistence. And from other human beings, since workers are set in competition and the relation with the owner is one of opposition.

3. How did Marx transform the idea he took from Hegel and Feuerbach? Hegel used alienation for the process by which Spirit externalises itself and confronts its own creation as foreign before recognising it as its own; Feuerbach applied it to religion, holding that human beings project their best qualities onto a god and then experience the projection as a power over them. Marx located alienation in labour rather than in consciousness or religion: human beings realise themselves in what they produce, and where product and process belong to another the realisation becomes estrangement, religious alienation being a symptom of the material condition rather than its cause.

4. What is the relation between alienation and private property, and what remedy did Marx draw from it? Marx argued that private property is the consequence of alienated labour as much as its cause, the two standing in a reciprocal relation that becomes a vicious circle in which alienated labour produces private property and private property reproduces alienated labour on a larger scale. He concluded that alienation cannot be relieved by higher wages, shorter hours or better conditions, however desirable those are, and that only the abolition of private ownership of the means of production would remove it.

5. What can labour law do about alienation, and what can it not? It can and does regulate hours, overtime, weekly rest, safety, minimum wages, leave, compensation for injury and social security, and it can secure the right to organise and to bargain collectively. It cannot restore the worker's relation to the work: after full statutory compliance the worker still does not decide what is made or how, still does not own the product, and still works in order to live. Provisions for participation in management and for collective bargaining come closest, because they return some control over the process, which is Marx's second dimension.