Karl Marx's Alienated Labour

Here at the Sociology of Everything Podcast, we acknowledge the people of Ghana, Yarta, whose land this episode was mainly produced on, and whose past and present elders repair respects to. Hi, I'm Eric Sue. And I'm Louis Evers. And we're Lu and the Sue, and this is the Sociology of Everything Podcast. Brought to you by UniSA. The University where we're not students but actually employed as staff. Yeah. We're not actually students. Yeah. We're employed as staff. Yeah. Because Louis, I'm not sure if you remember, but we actually got, you got a message. Oh, I did. I did. Yeah. From a listener who said they really liked the podcast, and it was so great to hear that students at UniSA were so invested and interested in promoting sociology. Yeah. It was the best unintentional backhand and complement I've ever saved. It was like, you guys are so good for students. Well, there's two ways to really interpret this. It's actually my profession. On the wayhand, they could just think that what our treatment of the concepts we're looking at in this podcast is very soft and mark. It's just like this must have been produced by students, because there's no way these people are employed. And a profession of that. But see, I choose to read it a different way. That we sound youthful. That we are able to speak in the vernacular of students. And I'll take it. Yeah. I'll take it. Yeah. Except having interactive with students on a regular basis as the semester has started. I don't know if we do speak in the vernacular of students. We do, Louis. We do. We clearly do. According to one little thing. Yeah. Thank you to that listener. You're wonderful. Now, Louis, we are now in season three of the podcast. It's been quite a long while since we recorded and released our last episode. What have you done in that time? Oh god. Not a great deal. We've had the kind of summer and festive period. It's been pretty mild and out of late. Fair amount of work, really. Which, sure. And that work involved the production of a book. Yes, that's true. I have submitted my first manuscript to the publisher. It's in the production process. I think that we'll probably do a pretty scandal of cell promotion exercise and run a podcast on our own writing at some point. I'll definitely wait for it to be on sale in bookstores or online. Prior to that. Louis, tell us about that experience of writing that manuscript. Did you feel like it was something you wanted to do? Or did it kind of in the end start to feel a bit tedious? I think definitely there's a bit of a trajectory with writing and academic texts, where it's very, very exciting at the start. And then towards the end, it does grind you down a little bit. But then I know this may not help our transition into today's episode. But there's still a lot of excitement, I think, towards the end. So there wasn't very much a strange man in the process of writing this book. And that actually leads us to the concept we're going to look at in this episode. Mark's concept of alienation. We've looked at the work of Mark's in a previous episode, namely the Communist Manifesto. But in this episode, we're going to take a look at a different facet of his work, which is the idea of alienation. Roughly put, Louis, what is alienation? Alienation is the process of something becoming alien, which is essentially something becoming foreign different separate from who we are. And so we can think about in society sometimes when a government might demonize a population and represent them as being other and different and scary and foreign, you could say that the government is trying to alienate that group. And I should also mention here that there are some translations of the term alienation that refer to it as a type of entrenchment. So some translations of Mark's work refer to his idea of alienation as a strangement. But they're more or less are trying to get at the same thing. Yeah, that process whereby something is becoming different separate and almost a little bit threatening or scary, I'd say as well. It's not just like it's no longer part of us or part of a group or part of something. It's actually in some ways a little dangerous, maybe. So why does Mark's think that alienation is a really insightful way to understand the system of capitalism? Well, Mark's argues that capitalism, the structure of capitalism, creates forms of alienation. And in the text we're talking about today, we're looking specifically at work, at labour. And he says, inside the capitalist structure, the process of work becomes something that's alienating for people. We'll go through the different ways he describes that. But one thing I'd like to add is I love this reading because so often for students, when you're looking at the Communist Manifesto, you're looking at a discussion when Mark's criticises a whole structure of capitalism, it's kind of sometimes hard to picture yourself in that story and think, how am I being exploited? But the descriptions in this text when he speaks about how work is alienating for us, you just see that light bulb moment for students when they realize that maybe this is their experience. So there's something very tangible, something very concrete about Mark's analysis here. And I should also mention that this analysis is drawn from a part of a text that actually wasn't released when he was alive. It was released in a post-humusly published work called the Economic and Philosophical Manage Scripts of 1844. This is the best title, let's be honest. Is that what it has tied up? No, by the way, she had out to my dad because I told him that I was reading this a while back and he said, "What books are actually from? What takes actually from?" And I couldn't think of it. And he shamed me. And even nothing good from that. Is that the name of your book? No. To be revealed in Fetrefford. So let's just get stuck into it. If we head first into Mark's theory of alienation, we come across the first form of alienation. What is that referred to? So the first form of alienation is the alienation of workers from the products of their labor. Now in the most simplistic sense, what Mark's is referring to here is the fact that because workers don't work for themselves, they work as part of someone else's business. They don't own and control the things they produce. That's right. So they can spend all their time slaving away on something and creating something. And when that thing has been created, it's then taken off them. And it's sold so someone else can make profit. So let's pretend that we're working in a factory that produces clothes. We're producing t-shirts in this case. And I like do the sewing and you do like this densely. When we produce these t-shirts, do we get to keep them? No. We don't, right? And so it's literally taken off of us, but it goes even deeper. There's another layer to this argument that Mark puts forth, which is that the production process in countless societies can get so complex that we might not even see ourselves, our labor as contributing to the end result. So it's not only taken away from us, the end product, but when it reappears to us, it may appear to us in alien form. So the example that oftentimes that's given is the production of chocolate. There are some cocoa producers who have never come across chocolate before. Right? And you can watch these videos on YouTube where a cocoa farmer is for the first time given the product of their labor. And their mind is blown. And so that really hits that one aspect of his argument here. And there'd be all sorts of consumer electronics and high value items that are made in factories where people wouldn't be able to afford the very products they're making. That would be a pretty common scenario. And the more that these products are made, in some respects, the more the worker is exploited. So like usually if you were engaging in non-alienated labor, and we'll talk about what that is later on, you wouldn't think of that thing being responsible for your exploitation, your working conditions becoming more precarious. But that's what happens when we're producing these t-shirts, presumably, in a capitalist factory. We're producing them. Profit is being generated by our labor. But then according to Marx, that profit is used to make our lives more precarious, more difficult. So he's really describing a relationship that's developing between the worker and the thing they're producing. Their labor, ideally, the worker would do so in a kind of creative and fulfilling fashion. Obviously that's not happening here. And then they create this object which ideally should feel like a part of themselves. But that's not happening here. And then their object's taken away and it sort of stands opposed to them. It's been alienated from them. And then it's kind of an object of threat because it's part of this structure that's holding the mean a kind of unfulfilling existence. Yeah. And so you can see there's many different layers to this argument. And another facet of this argument is that there's also a type of alienation that's experienced by the worker in the act of production itself. What does that refer to? Well, that refers to the fact that once again in an ideal sense, workers should have some degree of agency and control over what they do at work. That should be able to choose how to spend their time what they're going to produce, what they're going to work on. But within this capital system, the worker has no control over what they do. I can't come to work and decide that I'm going to do something different from my normal role. And I have a lot more agency in power than people who do work say in a factory where they have to go in and do the same repetitive thing day after day. And that's what Marx was referring to here. It's the alienation of the worker from the actual production process or from the act of work. Yeah. This is when work becomes just a way to sustain yourself. So when Marx was writing, he was seeing all these transformations happening around the world. And he was saying people have to take forms of work. They wouldn't normally otherwise do. And just for the sake of survival. So when we just work for survival, that leads us to have a very unique relationship to labor, to producing things. We see it as something we wouldn't otherwise do. It's just, you know, when someone ever says, like, oh, it's just my job. I do it to put food on the table. Yeah. That's what Marx is talking about here. Yeah. Yeah. Effectively, labor becomes the same as eating or doing anything else. You just need to sustain yourself and stay alive as opposed to something you do to express your creativity to produce things, something that's really fulfilling. It's a great quote here that he talks about when he discusses this alienation of the work in the work process. And that's first, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e. it does not belong to his essential being, that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself, but denies himself, does not feel content, but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy, but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work and his work feels outside himself. So depressing. So depressing. So depressing. But it's amazing because in that quote, Marx is describing the fact that when the worker completely loses control and agency over what they do at work, work just becomes this degrading kind of horrible process. And interestingly, the quote sort of makes me feel about how people then start to try and express themselves outside of work. When you can take up a hobby, you can paint or you can whittle bits of water, I don't know what you do to kind of create and do kind of more productive forms of labor. Marx is kind of like emo, isn't he? Yeah, totally. Yeah, totally. And this prompts us to talk about the third form of alienation that Marx identifies. Which is the alienation from our species. That sounds so abstract. What is trying to get out here? Well, if you thought he was emailing dark before, I feel like this is where it comes home to root because what Marx is saying here is that labour and work the way it should be is a sort of essential part of being a human being. Yeah. Being able to actively create things, work on your environment to produce things in novel and interesting ways is a core part of what separates humans from animals. Animals just labour or work because of direct physical need. They might hunt because they're hungry. Whereas humans do things like create different cuisines and foods that aren't about sustenance, they're about being creative and interesting and that's what separates us from animals. But as more and more of our labour and work is just oriented towards money because we need money to survive, then there's no difference between going to work and hunting. It just becomes about survival. We don't do this creative, important process and because of that, the unique activity that separated us that was part of our species being, part of what made us unique is disappearing and we're just sustaining ourselves in the wraps. So Marx is actually trying to say something quite profound here. Yeah. He's actually trying to say something about what it means to be human. Yes. Right. Which is a really big question to try to answer. Yeah. And I think there's something really insightful that he's trying to get at when he says that humans aren't the only animal to produce things in the world. Yeah. Like a spider produces spider webs. I'm not sure I want to daily basis. I don't know how long they produce spider webs. But they produce spider webs, right? But what's different about us and a spider is that a spider doesn't think about it. It doesn't cautiously reflect on the thing they want to produce. Yeah. I mean, that'd be great if they did that. I mean, I mean, I mean, red shot is whip. Well, yeah, but I'm sure that's what not going to be like, you know, instead of producing this spider web, I'm going to produce the latest version of the iPhone. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. But humans can, right? Humans don't have to just produce things through instinct. Yeah. Or for need. Or for need. Yeah. It talks about production, not just being about physical need, but work is about physical need. If I didn't need money for food and my mortgage and everything else, would I come into work tomorrow? I'm not sure. I'd probably stay at home and do something creative and interesting. Yeah. And you know, I will say this aspect of box's work is really important and profound. Because it's getting us to think about like what would our ideal work situation look like? Yes. If we didn't have to work to survive, what do we do? Once again, I think you can think about looking at people's hobbies. What do people do when they're not just acting out of need? When they have free choice over their labors and their pursuits? My uncle in law, for instance, is one of those people who has heaps of hobbies. What did he do? Okay. So he does archery. He does karate. He does bonsais, he lives in London. He's building ships and he's taken up oil painting and he's doing all these things in retirement. Right? Yeah. He's had a lot of these hobbies for a while, but since retiring, he's now had the time for all these creative pursuits. And that's the type of labour that Marx is referring to. The feeling that he would get from producing all these different things, bonsais, ships, paintings. I bet he never had that feeling when he was grinding away for a paid hacker in his job. Get him on the line, Louis. No, no, no, we're not. We're not. And I think this actually also prompts us to talk about the fourth type of alienation that Marx identifies, which is the alienation from one another. And I think this actually leads us to a segment we like to go say, "When we look at a quote in need of further explanation, Louis, you have one for us." I do. Here we go. In fact, the proposition that man's species nature is a strange from him means that one man is a strange from the other. As each of them is from man's essential nature. The estrangement of man, and in fact, every relationship in which man stands to himself, is first realised and expressed in the relationship in which a man stands to other men. Now, if we set aside the highly gendered language that's being used. A lot of men. A lot of men. It could be, it could be a white, you know, kind of a traditional white power rally, or something, isn't it? It could come straight from the Proud Boys at one. But if we set that to one side and just replace man with person, what he's suggesting here is that something weird happens to how we relate to one another, how we see one another, how we view one another. In an ideal world, according to Marx, we would see each other as being allies, as being able to work towards the same goal and having collective endeavors and pursuits. But we don't view each other in that way in a capitalist economy. The workers view each other as competition, as people they need to beat in some sort of game or some sort of race that they're forced to engage in. And it's fascinating. If we go back to the term alienation and we think about all these forms of alienation, it's this constant process of things being othered and made foreign to ourselves. The products of our labor, our labor itself of what we do worry at work. We're becoming foreign to ourselves as we don't even recognise ourselves as humans anymore because we're just cogs in a machine. And now fellow workers, fellow human beings seem strange and foreign and different. They're being alienated too because we just see them as labor power. And like you said, you know, competition in the workforce. And I always think when I get to this point in this reading that it also ties back into the communist manifesto a little bit. Yeah. So you think about the purpose of that document. It's about creating class consciousness. It's about getting workers to see that they're in the same system, that they're part of the proletariat, the same class. And this is one way that capitalism kind of stops at happening. By alienating people from one another, it stops people developing a class consciousness. It's such a damaging part of capitalism. So you can see why this text has such resonance in the contemporary era. Right? Like if you've ever felt isolated, if ever you felt disconnected from your life or what you're doing, then Marx has an answer for you. It's because of capitalism. This is an objective reality that capitalism relies on. And you might think, oh, this is just my own subjective experience, and this is just who I am. Marx would say, no, you're being made to feel this way. This is an integral part of the system. So if we want to address this issue, if we want to address these feelings and experiences, then we need to have structural changes. That's exactly right. However, I would say that one thing about this reading is that maybe for the listeners, this doesn't reflect their experience of work and capitalism. Not everyone's. No, that's right. And I can think about friends of mine. Have a friend who lives in Melbourne, who's a Navid listener, so shout out to him. I describe him as a super fan. He's a fan, that's great. And he runs his own woodworking workshop, where he has control over a lot of what he does. It's a very creative process. He kind of picks his clients. He's partners and artist, and they work on joint projects together. I'm not sure how much of this text describes what he does. Louis, if you didn't have to work for money, what would you do? That's such a good question. I have no idea. I could say something noble now and make myself sound good, but I'd probably play a lot of video games. Travel? Travel and play video games. Yeah, when you go around the world, you go, "Lily, what do you do?" I play video games. Travel and stuff. Have fun. Right, my bike a lot. No, really, no, you should be saying. You should be saying doing this podcast. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Which we're in this third season of now. Yeah, it wouldn't have been months between episodes. It's because you were doing alienated live ones away, but. Yeah, that's exactly right. So now we're free. We now we feel free. Yeah, we've got like an hour of freedom to record this, and then it's back to the alienating grind. Well, on that note, thanks very much for listening. We'll catch you the next episode. Thank you. The Sociology of Everything Podcast is created and hosted by Eric Sue and Louis Evers. It's produced and edited by Eric Sue. To learn more about studying sociology and other exciting programs online or in-person at the University of South Australia, visit unisey.edu.au where you can search for more details. The Sociology of Everything Podcast is primarily produced on the lands of the Ghana people. The host of the podcast would like to pay the respect to elders past, present, and emerging. The opinions expressed in the Sociology of Everything Podcast are that of the hosts and guest speakers. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of anyone at unisey or the institution at large. If you'd like to get in touch or learn more about the podcast, then visit our website at sociologypodcast.com. Thanks for listening.