Alienation, or, why capitalism makes you miserable and how to stop it.
Defining alienation
Alienation is not a concept exclusively
used by Marxists, nor did it originate with Marx. However, it was
Marx who explained its origins and pointed a way to its removal.
We all feel alienated, probably quite a
lot of the time. We feel a distance between ourselves and the world
around us. We do not seem to connect on a human level with most of
the people we meet, or feel in control of our lives. The environment
which creates the conditions for living is on the verge of
catastrophe, yet we feel powerless to stop it. Why is this?
Marx argued that alienation is not a
necessary part of human experience, that it is produced wherever
social relations isolate people from each other, the produce of their
labour, or the natural world, or take away our ability to control our
conditions of work. These four factors form the basis of alienation
within a capitalist society. This talk aims to illustrate the
specific ways in which capitalist societies produce this alienation
and, in many ways more importantly, how we can defeat it.
Alienation and the commodity.
Whenever I think about Marx's
philosophy I usually start by thinking about the commodity. It's the
way he starts his analysis of capitalism in Capital,
and that's because it's an excellent way to start thinking about the
forms that our society takes. In Marx's own words, 'A
commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing.
But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing,
abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.' [Marx
1990:163]
What does he mean by this? He means
that once you take apart any object as a commodity, in order to
understand its nature as a commodity, it suddenly appears a lot more
complex and unsettling. Take anything you like, such as a table.
Initially it seems simple, comprehensible. What is it? Something we
put things on. That was easy!
So far as it is a use-value, there is nothing mysterious about it,
whether we consider it from the point of view that by its properties
it satisfies human needs, or that it first takes on these properties
as the product of human labour. ... But as soon as it emerges as a
commodity, it changes into a thing which transcends sensuousness. It
not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all
other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its
wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than if it were to
begin dancing of its own free will. [ibid.]
What are these grotesque ideas? The
answer lies in its nature as a commodity, that is to say something
made simply for exchange. All commodities are exchangeable only
because of their one common quality – human labour went into its
creation. Yet this is not immediately apparent, giving the commodity
its mysterious aura. Why is a mug worth £5 and a pencil 50p? In
reality it is due to the socially necessary labour-time embodied in
it, but when we see the object we do not see the social relationship
which placed it there. This was very nicely summed up by the
terrifying BBC nuclear armageddon drama Threads:
'in an urban society everything connects. Each person's needs are fed
by the skills of many others. Our lives are woven together in a
complex fabric.' or as the Marxist geographer David Harvey once put
it, 'how many people put breakfast on your plate this morning?' Yet
when we pour our cereal into our bowls and add the milk and pick up
the spoon, we do not see the huge web of social relationships
required to put those things there.
This finds its
ultimate expression in the universal commodity of exchange – the
money-form. Money allows capitalists to exchange commodities in such
a way that the amount of money received will, on average, reflect the
socially-necessary labour-time congealed in them. It is a material
representation of a social relationship, just like all other
commodities, yet because it can stand for exchange of anything, it
'becomes a real god' [Bottomore and Rubel 1963: 179] 'since it has
the property of purchasing everything, of appropriating objects to
itself, is therefore the object par excellence. The universal
character of this property corresponds to the omnipotence of money,
which is ... the pander between need and object, between human life
and the means of subsistence. But that which mediates my life,
mediates also the existence of other men for me. It is for me the
other person' [Op. Cit.:180]
Alienation in production.
In addition, the
people who made the commodity have put their labour power into its
creation, yet they will receive only a tiny fraction of the value
which they created. They will have no say in what happens to these
commodities, either in who they are sold to or how they are used.
They have no control over the production process beyond the tasks
which they have been instructed to perform. Working life under
capitalism is spent making objects which are alienated from those who
produce them because of the social relationships between themselves,
other producers and their employers. If exchange is fundamental to a
commodity, so too is exploitation. Capitalism relies upon not giving
the worker the true value of the labour they perform. Labour is
socialised but value is privatised. Even the value that workers do
receive – the wage – is alienated: a parcel of the magical
money-commodity that seems to have no direct relationship whatever
with the labour performed and yet is capable of standing for it.
Alienation in consumption (consumer
fetishism of commodities)
These social relations which define
commodity production are usually hidden from view. The commodity
appears to us as a neutral object. Yet all our social relationships
are mediated through commodities. The commodity therefore comes to be
seen as possessing power in and of itself, hence Marx draws analogies
between the commodity and religious forms of expression: exchange
becomes a hidden universal force, giving all commodities value in a
way which cannot be measured save by its effects. This means that
people relate to each other socially through things – commodities –
for the most part. How many people put your breakfast on the table
this morning? It also means that the object can be elevated to a
position of significance in people's lives beyond that of actual
people.
Alienation from nature
At the same time that we are being
alienated from the product of our labour and from other human beings,
our society alienates us from the natural world – a world which we
are in fact a part of, and yet because of the way in which capitalism
uses nature in order to create commodities it is seen not as a world
of which we are a part, but rather a separate entity which needs to
be mined for the creation of profits. Indeed, nature itself can be
and is being increasingly commodified. We cease to see the natural
world as a part of the conditions of our existence, in which we are
in a continual and dynamic interaction, and instead see nature as
something 'out there' which needs to be conquered so that it may
yield its use-values and be sold. A recent example of this
commodification process in the UK would be the repeated attempts by
the Tories to sell off the national forests. This would pave the way
for rapid deforestation, which would increase the environmental
problems which we are facing but would allow capitalist enterprises
to sell lots of wood, for a short while at least.
Capitalism, because of the anarchy
created by commodification and competition, cannot be used to provide
a stable relationship with the environment, or really take account of
nature in itself, because we only see it mediated through social
relationships which are defined by exchange and exploitation.
Alienation from others and ourselves
– vampires and zombies
The sleep of reason produces monsters,
and so too does the experience of alienation. We are alienated, we
feel it, and we express it. The first monster of capitalism was the
vampire. Transformed from a bestial horror of Hungarian folk legends
into an aristocrat: debonair, charming, commanding, seductive. The
vampire has a mysterious hold over his victims – young women,
symbols of innocence and virtue. Marx saw the vampire as the metaphor
for capital: 'capital
is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living
labour, and lives the more' [Marx 1990: 342]. But more broadly the
vampire also comes to represent the money-commodity – alien,
omnipresent, inscrutable, powerful, mysterious.
The
monster that comes to represent our relationships with people is, I
would argue, the zombie. The last book written by one of the party's
greatest theoreticians, Chris Harman, was called Zombie
Capitalism.
By this he meant that the capitalist system, once dynamic, chaotic,
creative and destructive, is now weighted down with its own
accumulated capital. Firms are existing, zombie-like, without growing
or failing. '21st
century capitalism as a whole is a zombie system, seemingly dead when
it comes to achieving human goals and responding to human feelings,
but capable of sudden spurts of activity that cause chaos all
around.' [Harman 2010:12]. Yet the zombies first appeared in popular
culture during the height of capitalism's long boom: a shambling mass
of undifferentiated aliens, looking like people but without any human
characteristics, wanting to devour the organ which gives you your
sense of self – the brain.
The
best epitomisation of the zombie scenario is the TV series The
Walking Dead.
In this we follow a shrinking group of survivors as they attempt to
maintain their humanity in the aftermath of a zombie outbreak. Not
only are they surrounded by zombies but the other humans who they do
meet are frequently increasingly debased and inhuman themselves, as
their increasingly desperate conditions lead to violence, conquest
and even cannibalism. This takes place in the remains of consumerist
America, with survivors hunting amongst convenience stores and
supermarkets for the commodities that will keep them alive.
The
zombie myth reflects the extremes of existential crisis which
alienation produces, heightening our worst fears and the worst
aspects of our behaviour towards others, in which other people are
rendered literally alien to us.
Overcoming alienation –
capitalism, cracks, conscientious consumerism and unalienated labour
Capitalism itself can appear to offer a
way of overcoming the alienation it produces. We see this in every
magazine, most TV channels and cinema, hear it on the radio, and out
of the corner of our eyes on every web page: advertising. Advertising
is a vital part of late capitalism, not simply for its functions in
increasing sales of the commodities which capitalism produces but
because it creates the promise of a better world. This is an empty
world, of what John Berger calls 'glamour' – you want the products
it offers because with it comes the promise of a happier, more
fulfilled you. Thanks to advertising, coca-cola isn't sticky brown
sugar water, it's the key to a perfect Christmas, and Marks and
Spencer's food isn't just food, even though it is, it's sex, even
though it isn't. The problem with this of course is that the world of
glamour doesn't overcome alienation at all. After all, even if you
were to purchase all the goods which advertising offers you, you
would then need to purchase the products which replace them next
week. And there's the further problem that all you will have done is
surround yourself with more commodities, which are the cause of
alienation in the first place. Finally, there's the other issue –
the glamour that advertising offers isn't even available to most
people. Odds are that you don't have the cash for most of these
gadgets, services, exotic ready-meals, cars, clothes, phones,
tablets, phablets, smart watches, 3-D Ultra HD curved 56” screen
TVs and discount five-star hotel breaks anyway, so even the empty
promises of capitalism will likely remain unfulfilled. Hard luck,
pal.
But what if you're mad as hell and you
aren't going to take it any more? Can't we escape alienation by
changing our lifestyles? Communes, travellers, and smallholding
farmers have all been touted as alternatives to capitalism. The logic
goes that you can overcome alienation by living in such a way that
your labour is not alienated, the commodity-form is not produced and
producers feel that they have control over their lives. This will
allow us to live more authentic lives, relating to others as human
beings, not means to an end; not viewing the natural world as
external to ourselves; feeling a sense of ownership over the products
of our labour.
The problems are that such groups as
these find rarely if ever truly exist outside the world of capital.
Capitalism is expansionist, forever seeking to extend the commodity
form in whatever direction it can. So a smallholder may end up
selling more and more of their produce to supermarkets, a commune may
need a new tractor, travellers need a new bus. But in practice too,
the state is not a neutral presence happy to let alternative forms of
social organisation emerge. The Thatcher government's crackdown on
the travelling communities in Britain demonstrate this, as do the
more recent harassment of the residents of Dale Farm. And that's
assuming that your commune was an alternative paradise in the first
place. As Adam Curtis noted in his documentary All Watched Over By
Machines of Loving Grace, in
many communes there was formal equality and so no formal power
structures. For many this meant an unofficial tyranny for which there
were no structural means of redress. Hardly a solution to alienation,
then.
On a more theoretical level, we need to
return to the causes of alienation. The problem with our relationship
to nature under capitalism is the commodity form itself, in which the
commodity mediates between ourselves and nature. Nature becomes
either something which is experienced through the commodities we use
or viewed as a repository of raw material from which our alienated
labour flows. Buying artisanal bread and locally sourced produce are
nothing more or less than other commodities. They do nothing to alter
the fundamental relationships which create alienation. In addition,
since they necessarily require more labour-time to produce than the
socially necessary labour-time, they are subject to the same
pressures as any other form of luxury commodity, and can never be
available to the great mass of people.
Overcoming alienation –
collectivisation, organisation, revolution, socialism
In the SWP we have
a relentless focus on the importance of the working class. 'The
emancipation of the working class is the act of the working class' is
our motto. We have a focus on the working class because the working
class has the power to change society and it is in our interests to
do so. The power comes from the class's vital role in production as
the creators of value, and the interest comes from the exploitation
which workers experience. In order to overcome capitalism workers
must act collectively, and collective action can overcome vital
aspects of alienation: alienation from each other, and from our
humanity. But collective working class action which challenges
capitalism also overcomes the commodity relationship. As John Berger
might have said, we make political decisions, not consumer decisions.
The commodity is at the heart of alienation and exploitation and
exchange are the forces which create the commodity. If we produce
instead items on the basis of need, not on the basis of profit, we
will have lives which are not governed by alienation. As Harman put
it:
It is the very development of capitalism that shapes and reshapes the
lives of those it exploits, creating the objective circumstances that
can turn a disparate mass of people who sell their labour power into
an increasingl elf-conscious class “for itself”. This class is
the potential agent for challenging the chaotic and destructive
dynamic of capitalism because capitalism cannot do without it. The
mistake of Mouffe and Laclau – and thousands of other sociologists,
philosophers and economists who write that the working class has lost
its central place within the system – is that they do not grasp the
elementary point made by Marx. The system is a system of alienated
labour that has taken on a life of its own, and capital cannot
survive without more labour to feed it, just as the vampire cannot
survive without fresh supplies of blood. [Harman 2010:349]
So what is the
best way to overcome alienation? The first step is to become a
revolutionary – because if you are a revolutionary you will
understand why the world makes you miserable and how we can have a
world which doesn't. The second step is to be an active
revolutionary, helping to create the subjective conditions where the
working class can take power and be transformed by transforming
society. I'd like to finish with a description of life in the midst
of a revolution, by way of illustrating how revolution can overcome
alienation in a very real way:
All around them great Russia was in travail, bearing a new world. The
servants one used to treat like animals and pay next to nothing, were
getting independent. A pair of shoes cost more than a hundred rubles,
and as wages averaged about thirty-five rubles a month the servants
refused to stand in queue and wear out their shoes. But more
than that. In the new Russia every man and woman could vote; there
were working-class newspapers, saying new and startling things; there
were the Soviets; and there were the Unions. The izvoshtchiki
(cab-drivers) had a Union; they were also represented in the
Petrograd Soviet. The waiters and hotel servants were organised, and
refused tips. On the walls of restaurants they put up signs which
read, “No tips taken here–” or, “Just because a man has to
make his living waiting on table is no reason to insult him by
offering him a tip!”
At the Front the
soldiers fought out their fight with the officers, and learned
self-government through their committees. In the factories those
unique Russian organisations, the Factory-Shop Committees[4] gained
experience and strength and a realisation of their historical mission
by combat with the old order. All Russia was learning to read, and
reading–politics, economics, history–because the people
wanted to know–. In every city, in most towns, along the
Front, each political faction had its newspaper–sometimes several.
Hundreds of thousands of pamphlets were distributed by thousands of
organisations, and poured into the armies, the villages, the
factories, the streets. The thirst for education, so long thwarted,
burst with the Revolution into a frenzy of expression. From Smolny
Institute alone, the first six months, went out every day tons,
car-loads, train-loads of literature, saturating the land. Russia
absorbed reading matter like hot sand drinks water, insatiable. And
it was not fables, falsified history, diluted religion, and the cheap
fiction that corrupts–but social and economic theories, philosophy,
the works of Tolstoy, Gogol, and Gorky…
Then the Talk,
beside which Carlyle’s “flood of French speech” was a mere
trickle. Lectures, debates, speeches–in theatres, circuses,
school-houses, clubs, Soviet meeting-rooms, Union headquarters,
barracks–. Meetings in the trenches at the Front, in village
squares, factories–. What a marvellous sight to see Putilovsky
Zavod (the Putilov factory) pour out its forty thousand to listen to
Social Democrats, Socialist Revolutionaries, Anarchists, anybody,
whatever they had to say, as long as they would talk! For months in
Petrograd, and all over Russia, every street-corner was a public
tribune. In railway trains, street-cars, always the spurting up of
impromptu debate, everywhere…
And the
All-Russian Conferences and Congresses, drawing together the men of
two continents–conventions of Soviets, of Cooperatives, Zemstvos,
nationalities, priests, peasants, political parties; the Democratic
Conference, the Moscow Conference, the Council of the Russian
Republic. There were always three or four conventions going on in
Petrograd. At every meeting, attempts to limit the time of speakers
voted down, and every man free to express the thought that was in
him…
We came down to
the front of the Twelfth Army, back of Riga, where gaunt and bootless
men sickened in the mud of desperate trenches; and when they saw us
they started up, with their pinched faces and the flesh showing blue
through their torn clothing, demanding eagerly, “Did you bring
anything to read?”
...
It was against
this background of a whole nation in ferment and disintegration that
the pageant of the Rising of the Russian Masses unrolled… [Reed
2010:12-14]
Bibliography
Berger, J. 1972,
Ways of Seeing, Penguin.
Documentary available online at Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jTUebm73IY
Bottomore, T.B.
And Rubel, M. 1963, Marx: selected writings in sociology and
social philosophy, Pelican.
Curtis,
A. 2011, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, BBC.
Documentary available online at Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/78979216
Harman,
C. 2010, Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance
of Marx, Haymarket Books.
Marx,
K. 1990, Capital Volume I,
Penguin.
Reed,
J. 2006, Ten Days That Shook The World,
Dover. Available online at Marxists Internet Archive here:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/reed/1919/10days/10days/
Swain, D. 2012, Alienation: an introduction to Marx's theory,
Bookmarks Publications.
