7.While
celebrating the historically progressive role of capitalism, he argues its
dynamism is ultimately self-defeating: irrational and dehumanising. Historical
progress comes at a tremendous human cost. Capitalism views the workers as labour
power, as only a factor of production while ignoring their total personality
and human needs. For Marx, the key category is alienation. History can be
conceived as a process of continuing augmentation of the productive forces in
the shape of general social wealth but this is typically the outcome of an
organisation of production in which the great majority did not benefit.
Paradoxically, Marx argues that in bourgeois society, the generally uneven
character of historical progress gains a new intensity. Some workers are
reduced to living in a state of deprivation worst than the ancient slaves while
the general social wealth expands in geometric proportions (Quote MER, 483). In
this respect, Marx argues that the bourgeoisie is the most inadequate ruling class
in history because it is unable to provide to those it rules even the barest
necessities.
8. Aspects of alienation. Rationalisation of work process according to intrinsic rules of the object lead to a more efficient modern division of labour. But efficiency is bought by devaluing the skills of individual workers. Workers become detached from their own activity, they have no control and are reduced to a mere means. This leads to crippling one-sided development and poverty: species wealth and individual de-humanisation. This process also impacts on social interaction. The modern worker is posited as a contracting individual and finds herself in competition with other workers for employment. The existence of a pool of unemployed workers keeps the price of labour power low. While the complex system of need satisfaction increases the level of social inter-dependence necessary in the economy, this potential solidarity remains latent until the struggle against the resulting individual atomisation assumes collective forms. At this point, the system begins to produce its own grave-diggers. Marx views the process of the proletariat’s historical self-formation as a gradual development of class-consciousness. The new working class soon develops a trade union consciousness that stems from their collective life situation and interests. This consciousness is primarily concerned to increase wages and gain incremental improvements in conditions of work.
8. Aspects of alienation. Rationalisation of work process according to intrinsic rules of the object lead to a more efficient modern division of labour. But efficiency is bought by devaluing the skills of individual workers. Workers become detached from their own activity, they have no control and are reduced to a mere means. This leads to crippling one-sided development and poverty: species wealth and individual de-humanisation. This process also impacts on social interaction. The modern worker is posited as a contracting individual and finds herself in competition with other workers for employment. The existence of a pool of unemployed workers keeps the price of labour power low. While the complex system of need satisfaction increases the level of social inter-dependence necessary in the economy, this potential solidarity remains latent until the struggle against the resulting individual atomisation assumes collective forms. At this point, the system begins to produce its own grave-diggers. Marx views the process of the proletariat’s historical self-formation as a gradual development of class-consciousness. The new working class soon develops a trade union consciousness that stems from their collective life situation and interests. This consciousness is primarily concerned to increase wages and gain incremental improvements in conditions of work.
9.
However, Marx makes a clear distinction between this form of empirical worker’s
consciousness and the more enlightened form that he designates as “class
consciousness” and derives from a theoretical understanding of the totality of
bourgeois society and its historical dynamics. Thus the communists have ‘the
advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the
ultimate general results of the proletarian movement’ (MER, p484). Marx argues
that this latter form of consciousness demands an appreciation of the
“political” source of current economic struggles and the need to attack not
just the symptoms of these problems but their underlying causes in bourgeois
property relations and their manifestations in classes. The development from
the more naïve to the enlightened form of consciousness is a product of the
proletariat’s historical struggles and gradual accumulation of experience and
insight into the dynamics of Capitalism. Marx believed that this process of
struggle would be assisted in its later stages by the assistance of bourgeois
intellectuals who, like himself and Engels, understood the general direction of
historical dynamics, had abandoned their own class to assist the workers in
their struggle. Much later dispute in Marx interpretation has centred around
the question of these historical dynamics. Is the development of capitalism an
inevitable process determined by necessary historical laws or the product of
collective human struggles and contingent human actions? What role is played in
this process by ideology and educations of consciousness? Without wanting to
enter these long standing debates in any detail, all I will say is that, in my
view, Marx views the structural dynamics of bourgeois society conditioning but
not determining the final outcomes. Marx was himself actively engaged in political
struggles and clearly thought that such activity was indispensable to the
realisation of Communist goals. For him, a range of structural factors and
their dynamics like a large working class, class polarisation and economic
crisis generate the objective possibility of certain forms of political action.
However, they cannot determine the consequences of these actions, how
strategically wise they may be, the degree of resistance and a millions and one
other contingent ingredients of the final outcome.
10. The impact of alienation is not confined to the economic sphere. It also invades other dimensions of the lifeworld. Marx speaks of the schizophrenic division between bourgeois and citizen. We have already seen the way this plays out in Hegel’s distinction between the particular and the universal in civil society and in Tocqueville it assumes the form of the tension between individualism and externally orientated civic commitment. For Marx, the bourgeois is a self-interested rational maximiser of own needs focused on possession and accumulation. But this creates an internal conflict within the civic commitments of the same person who is also a bearer of common interests and the common good. In modernity the tension that stems from this division is internalised.
11. Alienation also has cognitive consequences. Detached from community and tradition, the modern individual is often without guide or rule. The modern social world seems an autonomous world of commodities and things involved in complex relations independent of their creators--an opaque objectivity that Marx designates reification (Verdinglichuung) is alien and difficult to comprehend. The collective experience of the power of the proletariat as a political agent works as cognitive resistance to this reified worldview by indicating that it rests on social processes that are subject to struggle and change. So the idea that the education of the proletariat is a historical and political struggle allows Marx to posit the practical/cognitive possibility of overcoming reified appearances that would otherwise be utopian.
12. All the manifestations of alienation will be transcended by the abolition of capitalism. For Marx, this follows after the proletariat’s revolutionary seizure of political power. While he thought that in the most advanced bourgeois societies this might happen through the ballot box with the gaining of universal suffrage, he was generally sceptical of the bourgeoisie’s preparedness to concede their ruling power without some level of violent confrontation. He viewed the dictatorship of the proletariat as a short period of transition in which the old power relations would be destroyed and the state as a external, centralised bureaucratic and military power would gradually fade away. Socialism means entry into the realm of freedom. This is a classless society: Its pre-conditions are material abundance, the abolition of bourgeois property relations, reduced working time and simplified work. However, the realm of freedom must still contain a sphere of necessity. The material reproduction of society at a given societal level requires a certain amount of necessary labour. Decisions about production will be under the control of the associated producers. Marx wants to demarcate these two spheres (production and control) to ensure that an individual’s role in production does not ensure them differential access to resources or control. Yet the level of material abundance required to make this possible was realised neither in Marx’s times not our own. While scarcity remains an issue, command of resources will always be exercised by those with power and knowledge. Marx gives few details regarding Socialism as it must be a free creation of historical actors. Despite Marx’s critique of the so-called “Utopian Socialists”, there is a strong utopian dimension in his own critique. I will explore this utopianism suggesting it permeates his whole notion of critique.
13. Bourgeois society must be transcended because it is irredeemably alienated. The associated producers must regain control of their collective creation. Yet the expansion of human capacities and technique requires functional differentiation, more complicated social organisation and administrative machinery. The survival of mass populations depends on all this. All of this complicated social infrastructure cannot be abolished in a way that would reassert direct control. We cannot regain direct control over an organisation apparatus that requires indirection: mediated by specialists, officials, functionalism, bureaucrats and subsystems. Clearly modern impersonality is one of the costs of a large complex, globalising society. But it must also be remembered that it has benefits: the modern sense of personal autonomy, freedom and individuality. When Marx says that the state will fade away, he does not imply that the functional needs that give rise to the state will disappear (although he does believe that an armed citizenry would dispense with the need for a standing professional army). Yet, he doesn’t explain how direct associational control and social complexity could be managed. And his idea of the overcoming of alienation tends to obscure this as a problem.
10. The impact of alienation is not confined to the economic sphere. It also invades other dimensions of the lifeworld. Marx speaks of the schizophrenic division between bourgeois and citizen. We have already seen the way this plays out in Hegel’s distinction between the particular and the universal in civil society and in Tocqueville it assumes the form of the tension between individualism and externally orientated civic commitment. For Marx, the bourgeois is a self-interested rational maximiser of own needs focused on possession and accumulation. But this creates an internal conflict within the civic commitments of the same person who is also a bearer of common interests and the common good. In modernity the tension that stems from this division is internalised.
11. Alienation also has cognitive consequences. Detached from community and tradition, the modern individual is often without guide or rule. The modern social world seems an autonomous world of commodities and things involved in complex relations independent of their creators--an opaque objectivity that Marx designates reification (Verdinglichuung) is alien and difficult to comprehend. The collective experience of the power of the proletariat as a political agent works as cognitive resistance to this reified worldview by indicating that it rests on social processes that are subject to struggle and change. So the idea that the education of the proletariat is a historical and political struggle allows Marx to posit the practical/cognitive possibility of overcoming reified appearances that would otherwise be utopian.
12. All the manifestations of alienation will be transcended by the abolition of capitalism. For Marx, this follows after the proletariat’s revolutionary seizure of political power. While he thought that in the most advanced bourgeois societies this might happen through the ballot box with the gaining of universal suffrage, he was generally sceptical of the bourgeoisie’s preparedness to concede their ruling power without some level of violent confrontation. He viewed the dictatorship of the proletariat as a short period of transition in which the old power relations would be destroyed and the state as a external, centralised bureaucratic and military power would gradually fade away. Socialism means entry into the realm of freedom. This is a classless society: Its pre-conditions are material abundance, the abolition of bourgeois property relations, reduced working time and simplified work. However, the realm of freedom must still contain a sphere of necessity. The material reproduction of society at a given societal level requires a certain amount of necessary labour. Decisions about production will be under the control of the associated producers. Marx wants to demarcate these two spheres (production and control) to ensure that an individual’s role in production does not ensure them differential access to resources or control. Yet the level of material abundance required to make this possible was realised neither in Marx’s times not our own. While scarcity remains an issue, command of resources will always be exercised by those with power and knowledge. Marx gives few details regarding Socialism as it must be a free creation of historical actors. Despite Marx’s critique of the so-called “Utopian Socialists”, there is a strong utopian dimension in his own critique. I will explore this utopianism suggesting it permeates his whole notion of critique.
13. Bourgeois society must be transcended because it is irredeemably alienated. The associated producers must regain control of their collective creation. Yet the expansion of human capacities and technique requires functional differentiation, more complicated social organisation and administrative machinery. The survival of mass populations depends on all this. All of this complicated social infrastructure cannot be abolished in a way that would reassert direct control. We cannot regain direct control over an organisation apparatus that requires indirection: mediated by specialists, officials, functionalism, bureaucrats and subsystems. Clearly modern impersonality is one of the costs of a large complex, globalising society. But it must also be remembered that it has benefits: the modern sense of personal autonomy, freedom and individuality. When Marx says that the state will fade away, he does not imply that the functional needs that give rise to the state will disappear (although he does believe that an armed citizenry would dispense with the need for a standing professional army). Yet, he doesn’t explain how direct associational control and social complexity could be managed. And his idea of the overcoming of alienation tends to obscure this as a problem.
14. All this is not to say that alienation is an illusion. Yet, not everything Marx called alienation could be abolished, nor would it be desirable that it be overcome. It should be made more efficient, humanised and made more responsive to democratic control and oversight. What is needed is a more discriminating account: we want to minimise mere functionalisation, bureaucracy, impersonality and exploitation in a way that is consistent with contemporary standards of economic and technical efficiency, freedom and human dignity.
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