Alienation as a critical concept

Abstract

This paper discusses Marx's concept of alienated (or estranged) labour, focusing mainly on his account in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. This concept is frequently taken to be a moral notion based on a concept of universal human nature. This view is criticized and it is argued that the concept of alienation should rather be interpreted in the light of Hegelian historical ideas. In Hegel, alienation is not a purely negative phenomenon; it is a necessary stage of human development. Marx's account of alienated labour should be understood in similar terms. It is not a merely subjective discontent with work; it is an objective and historically specific condition, a stage in the process of historical development. Marx usually regards it as specific to capitalism. The criticism of capitalism implied in the concept of alienation, it is argued, does not appeal to universal moral standards; it is historical and relative. Overcoming alienation must also be understood in historical terms, not as the realization of a universal ideal, but as the dialectical supersession of capitalist conditions of labour. Marx's account of communism as the overcoming of alienation is explained in these terms.

Keywords:

• Marx
• Hegel
• alienation
• labour
• morality
• social criticism

Acknowledgements

This paper is a slightly amended version of Chapter 6 of Sean Sayers, Marx and Alienation: Essays on Hegelian Themes, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. It is reproduced with the permission of Palgrave Macmillan. I am grateful to Christopher Arthur, Andrew Chitty and Meade McGloughan for their detailed and helpful comments on an earlier draft. These have contributed to major improvements in this paper.

Notes

¹ For useful summaries of issues of translation see Arthur (1986, 49–50, 147–9) and Marx (1975a, 429–30).

² This is disputed by Kain (1982, 75–92).

³ Similar arguments apply to these other areas as well, I believe, but I do not have the space to establish that here. I hope to return to it on another occasion.

⁴ See Avineri (1968), McLellan (1971, ix, 237), Mészáros (1970), Plamenatz (1975), Tucker (1961), etc. For a contrary view, see Cowling (2006). See (Leopold 2007, 1–10) for a good summary of these arguments. I shall not attempt to resolve them here.

⁵ There are numerous exceptions to this. For further discussion see Sayers (2005, 611–12).

⁶ This is true not only of alienated labour but of all labour. ‘M. Proudhon the economists understands very well that men make cloth, linen, or silk materials in definite relations of production. But what he has not understood is that these definite social relations are just as much produced by men as linen, flax, etc’ (Marx 1978c, 103) .

⁷ Cf. Leopold (2007, 65–6). These ideas are much more fully developed later in Marx (1973, 156–65), and in the analysis of ‘the fetishism of commodities’ (Marx 1961a, chapter 1.4), discussed below.

⁸ This is the title of Marx (1971b). It is also the subtitle of Capital in its original version, though this is changed in the English translation of 1867 supervised by Engels. However, it is also the title that Engels (1964) gave to his article of 1844 cited by Marx (1975b, 281; 1978d, 5) as an important influence on the early development of his thought.

⁹ Cohen (1978, chapter 1) gives a good account of this process, though he does not connect it with the concept of alienation. See also Cohen (2000, chapters 3–6).

¹⁰ ‘Alienation has not only a negative but also a positive significance’ (Marx 1975b, 388, 391). This a central theme of the sections on ‘Private Property and Communism’ and ‘Critique of Hegel's Dialectic and General Philosophy’ ( Marx 1975b).

¹¹ This is the explicit theme of Marx (1975b); it is fundamental to his account of genuine as contrasted with ‘crude’ communism. It remains Marx's view throughout his work.

¹² The account of history in terms of changes in the division of labour in Marx and Engels (1970) can be read as suggesting such a picture. See also Cohen (1978, 24, 299) for some further evidence. Cohen's case is not entirely convincing in my view, but I will not pursue the question here.

¹³ Marx is referring specifically to the alienation of the worker. In the 1844 Manuscripts he promises to go on to discuss the alienation of the non-worker (capitalist) but the manuscript breaks off as he is about to do so. One can only speculate about what he might have said (Sayers 2011, chapter 2).

¹⁴ As Engels (1958a, 563–4) puts it, ‘Only the proletariat created by modern large–scale industry, liberated from all inherited fetters, including those which chained it to the land … is in a position to accomplish the great social transformation which will put an end to all class exploitation and all class rule’. See Sayers (1998, chapter 5).

¹⁵ Cf. Hegel (1991, 217, para. 189 Remark) who maintains that economic laws and their study are features of the ‘modern world’.

¹⁶ There has been some speculation that this expresses Engels' views and that Marx's were different but there is no convincing evidence for this. For a good account of the arguments see Chattopadhyay (2006, 54–5).

¹⁷ ‘The negative which emerges as a result of dialectic, is, because a result, at the same time the positive: it contains what it results from, absorbed into itself, and made part of its own nature’ (Hegel 1892, 152, para. 81 Addition).

¹⁸ For a different account see Arthur (1986, 20–22).

¹⁹ Particularly the second type of communism described briefly in Marx (1975b, 347–8), as communism that ‘has not yet comprehended the positive essence of private property’ and which thus ‘is still held captive and contaminated by private property’.

²⁰ This first stage was what the ‘actually existing’ communist societies of the USSR, Eastern Europe, etc., attempted to institute.

²¹ Some of the main changes he has in mind are suggested in a well known passage from the ‘Critique of the Gotha Programme’. ‘In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!’ (Marx 1978a, 531)

²² I doubt this is always the case.

²³ This idea is made explicit in Engels 1964. Engels' article was already published when Marx was writing the 1844 Manuscripts and is referred to in them by Marx (1975b, 281).

²⁴ ‘The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan’ (Marx 1961a, 80; cf. 1971a, 819; 1973, 159, 611–12; etc.).