Work and Alienation

The sociological development: Blauner

Marx treated alienation as a condition of a whole economic system. Later sociologists, above all Robert Blauner, treated it as a variable that differs between workplaces and can be measured. Blauner analysed alienation into four dimensions of his own, and this is the treatment that makes the concept usable in research.

• Powerlessness: the worker's inability to control the conditions and pace of the work.
• Meaninglessness: inability to see how one's own fragment relates to the whole product or purpose.
• Isolation: absence of a sense of belonging to the work community.
• Self-estrangement: the experience of work as a means only, with no involvement of the self.

Blauner's inverted U. He argued that alienation varies with technology rather than being constant. It is low in craft production, where the worker controls the process and sees the whole; it rises in machine-minding industry; it is highest on the assembly line, where pace, sequence and task are wholly determined by the technology; and it falls again in continuous process production, such as chemicals and refining, where the worker monitors a system, exercises judgment and works in a team. Plotted against technological development the curve rises and then falls, which is why it is called an inverted U.

The finding matters because it separates alienation from capitalism as such: if it varies with technology within the same economic system, it is not produced by ownership alone.

Criticism

1. It is difficult to measure. Alienation is a condition of a relationship, and survey questions measure reported feelings, which is not the same thing.
2. Alienation without misery. Workers in objectively alienating jobs frequently report satisfaction, and the standard reply, that they have adjusted their expectations, risks making the theory unfalsifiable.
3. It is not confined to manual work. Clerical, call centre and platform work display powerlessness and meaninglessness as sharply as any factory, and monitoring by software has extended precisely the control Blauner associated with the assembly line.
4. It is not confined to capitalism. Alienation was reported in state-owned industry in socialist economies, which suggests that scale, hierarchy and the division of labour contribute independently of ownership.
5. Whose standard? The concept assumes a view of what work ought to be, which is a philosophical position rather than an empirical finding.

A worked example

A wooden chair.

In a carpenter's workshop, one person selects the timber, decides the design, makes the whole chair and sells it. They control the process, see the result, and the chair is recognisably theirs. Alienation on all four of Blauner's dimensions is low.

On an assembly line in a furniture factory, one worker fits the same joint every ninety seconds for eight hours. They did not choose the design, cannot vary the pace, never see a completed chair, and the output belongs to the company. Powerlessness, meaninglessness and self-estrangement are all high.

In an automated plant, a worker monitors machines that cut and assemble, intervening when a fault appears, working with three colleagues who between them understand the whole line. Control returns, the whole process is visible, and there is a work group. Alienation falls, which is Blauner's curve.

Now note what the law does about each. For the second case, labour legislation regulates hours, breaks, safety and the pace of work, and provides machinery through which the workers may bargain collectively. The law cannot restore the worker's relation to the product; it can restrain the conditions that make it worst, and that limit is worth stating in an answer, because it is exactly the distinction between what law can and cannot do that Module IV explores.

What alienation is NOT

Not the same as dissatisfaction. A well-paid worker may be satisfied and alienated. Alienation is a description of a relation to work, not a report of a mood.

Not the same as isolation or loneliness. Isolation is one of its dimensions in Blauner's scheme, not the whole of it.

Not confined to factories, as the criticism above records.

Not the same as anomie. Durkheim's anomie is normlessness, a deficiency of regulation in a society. Marx's alienation is estrangement from work under a specific form of ownership. Examiners set the two against each other, and confusing them is the commonest error in this part of the syllabus.

Quick revision

1. Marx's four dimensions: from the product, from the process, from species-being, from other people. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, written 1844, published in the twentieth century.
2. Work should be human nature realised in an object; alienation is the breaking of that relation.
3. Blauner's four dimensions: powerlessness, meaninglessness, isolation, self-estrangement.
4. Blauner's inverted U: alienation is low in craft work, rises through machine minding, peaks on the assembly line, and falls in continuous process production.
5. Because it varies with technology inside one economic system, it is not produced by ownership alone.
6. Criticism: hard to measure; workers report satisfaction in alienating jobs; it is not confined to manual work or to capitalism; and it assumes a standard of what work ought to be.
7. Alienation is not anomie: alienation is estrangement from work; anomie is normlessness in a society.

Test yourself

1. State Marx's four dimensions of alienation. Alienation from the product, which belongs to another the moment it is made and confronts the worker as an alien thing; from the process of labour, since the worker does not decide what is made, how, or at what pace; from species-being, the conscious and creative production that 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 with each other and in opposition to the owner.

2. What did Blauner add to the concept? He turned it from a condition of an entire economic system into a variable that differs between workplaces and can be measured, analysing it into powerlessness, meaninglessness, isolation and self-estrangement. He then showed that it varies with the technology of production rather than being uniform, which made the concept usable in empirical research.

3. Explain Blauner's inverted U. Alienation is low in craft production, where the worker controls the process and sees the finished article; it rises with machine-minding industry; it reaches its highest point on the assembly line, where pace, sequence and task are dictated by the technology; and it falls again in continuous process industries such as chemicals, where the worker monitors a system, exercises judgment and works in a team. Plotted against technological advance the curve rises and then descends.

4. Distinguish alienation from anomie. Alienation is Marx's concept: the estrangement of the worker from the product, the process, their own nature and other people, arising from a system in which the means of production belong to another. Anomie is Durkheim's: a state of normlessness or deregulation in which established rules have lost their authority and no new ones bind. One concerns a relation to work under a form of ownership; the other concerns the regulation of desires and conduct in a society.

5. Give two criticisms of the concept of alienation. That it is hard to measure, since surveys record reported feelings while alienation is a description of a relationship, and workers in objectively alienating jobs often report satisfaction, which the theory can only explain in ways that risk making it unfalsifiable. And that it is not confined to capitalism, having been reported in state-owned industry in socialist economies, which suggests that scale, hierarchy and the detailed division of labour produce it independently of who owns the enterprise.