Alienation In Our Time

ALIENATION IN OUR TIMES

In our times, it’s a wonder whether the concept of alienation has a place in our society, so apparently the concept is present in our working lives and influences us in all areas of our existence.

Karl Marx stated in one of his manuscripts The German Ideology (1845), “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas”. The media industry therefore, will express the ideas of Imperialism and the bourgeoisie worldwide, from the ideological point of view of those sectors. But what media industry presents people is a distortion of reality; this is known as media industry seeking to alienate and manipulate the masses.

However, in today’s world people no longer passively accept what the media suggest and there are serious doubts about the content of the media industry.

To enter fully into the subject, we must refer to the meaning alienation has in Marx in the late XIX century. Alienation is “ the transformation of people’s own labour into a power which rules them as if by a kind of natural or supra-human law” (M.I.A. Encyclopedia, 2013). For Marx (1844), is the condition in which the oppressed class lives in every exploiting society, in any society that allows private ownership of the means of production.

In Marx (1844), alienation refers to the exploitation of man by man himself, the result being the loss of autonomy and freedom of a social class from the exploitation that is submitted by another class, mainly because of the fact of the existence of the production private property.

If we analize the concept of feeling a part of something, from the work process point of view, being alienated could be the feeling of being overridden in the actions we perform. It is getting to feel that we do not belong, as if we did not own our own will when doing certain activities, which do not satisfy us, doing them for somebody who is not oneself.

So, the question is: how does the concept of alienation influence us today? Are we satisfied with our jobs? Do we feel that our work activities are for our own profit? Do we feel estranged from our jobs?

All these questions arise because of the concept of alienation. Most of the world’s population feels uncomfortable in their work environments, especially if we put into balance the global recession, this last one, is a very influential factor when questioning working conditions. For example, as seen in The Guardian-The Observer article (2013) about workers conditions in Indian factories, we can see that workers making clothes that end up in the stores of the biggest names on the British high street suffer from a shocking regime of abuse, threats and poverty pay. Many workers in Indian factories earn so little that an entire month's wages would not buy a single item they produce. Yet, prices are set within the context of unequal global power relations. Multinational corporations put pressure on factories like these to produce clothing at a very low price. Low wages are part of what has helped India's economy to boom. Short term living conditions are discarded in favour of long-term economic growth.

This makes us think about the possibilities of finding a good working space in which we could feel comfortable and where we get to work to and for us, and where we could carry out our own work expectations.

As Marx (1844) says, “work alienation atrophies the body at the same time that it degenerates the spirit. This happens because the activity that the worker performs is a routine activity, mechanical, and does not requires any special skills.” What remains in Marx's reflections about the alienation of wage labor, even in the current conditions of extreme complexity? First, there is the claim that the man in capitalist society matters only as a worker and not as a man, to the point of becoming an object-merchandise subjected to the ruthless laws of the market. Situations as irrational as unemployment and poverty appear under the cold light of the inconveniences

...