Alienation and Disalienation
By
Dr. Franz John Tennyson Lee
University of Port Harcourt
Department of Political Science
25.12.1982
(Original Version. See Revised Version of 9th
August, 2003 at :
http://www.franz-lee.org/files/alien.html
)
Contents
1. Origin of the Concept
„Alienation“ („Entäußerung“)
1.2 Hegelian Philosophy
and Alienation
2. Marx’s Critique of
Hegel’s Two Concepts of Alienated Labour
5.1 Religious Support to
Spread Social Alienation in „Third World“
8. Disalienation and
Revolutionary Theory-Praxis
In the
Rhine province of Western Germany, around 1842-43 increasingly the poor
peasants and other impoverished workers began to steal wood from the estates of
the large landowners. The Government intervened violently against these people.
The young Dr. Karl Marx who had freshly received the Ph.D. from the University
of Jena and who could not obtain a university post, tried journalism as a means
of survival. His political writings in the „Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher“
and the „Rheinische Zeitung“ eventually led to his expulsion from Germany and
his exile in France. In 1844, Marx came into contact with the first socialist
and workers organisation in Paris. Under the influence of the Left Young
Hegelians and Feuerbach, Marx had begun his intellectual life as an ardent
Hegelian 1840-43. From his studies of philosophy, especially of Hegelianism, in
1843, he undertook the study of political economy, especially of the Adam Smith
- Ricardo School. In 1844, Marx made the first attempt to synthesize his
philosophical and economic ideas in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts
(1844), also called the Parisian Manuscripts. In this work, and also those
written in co-authorship with Engels, The Holy Family (1845) and The German
Ideology (1845-46), the concept of alienation plays a central role. Marx took
the concept „alienation“ from Hegel and gave it a new meaning.
In
Hegel’s philosophy two main categories are alienation („Entäußerung“) and
estrangement („Entfremdung“) - they are extreme expressions of „other-ness“. At
the centre (or beginning) of Hegel’s philosophical system is the Absolute - the
whole of reality. This Absolute first exists as pure Idea, a mere logical Idea.
The Idea, and Hegel does not explain how and why, breaks out of itself to a
completely alienated condition - to Nature. In Hegel’s words, the Idea or
Spirit resolves to go forth as Nature.
At this
point Hegel is not applying his own dialectical method, because for the Spirit
to „go forth“ it must already be in unity with the same Nature which it is
supposed to create. In the Parisian Manuscripts (1844), Marx had already
commented: „the Absolute Idea is nothing in itself, only Nature is something.“
Hegel considered Nature as a lifeless dispersed mode of existence in
contradiction with the lively permanent motion and universality of the Absolute
Idea. This contradiction - and here begins Hegel’s dialectics - drives the Idea
forward, which begins to emancipate itself from its lifeless egg-shell and is
born as Mind. Mind their dialectically passes through a series of stages, from
crude sensation, across religion, to reach its highest self-realisation in
philosophy, thus, eventually the Idea has completed its cycle and ends as
Absolute.
Throughout
this complex process of the Absolute Idea, alienation plays a positive role. It
is the expression of the Negative at work within Hegelian dialectics. The
Negative, as alienation, is constantly destroying the existing forms through
the conflict of opposites, thus everything is permanently driven on toward a
higher form of existence.
Because
Mind has become alienated from itself conflicts arise, generalised as a
conflict between subject and object. The objective world becomes opposed to
man. Human existence is plunged into allembracing contradiction, the conflict
of society against nature, of idea against objective reality, of consciousness
against material existence. However, in Hegelian dialectics Nature is the
antithesis, the Negative, to the Idea, thus Nature, objective reality, Matter,
is nothing in and for itself. Nature is merely a concealed and mysterious
embodiment of the Absolute Idea.
This
meant that Hegel’s Absolute Idealism separated thinking, the thought process,
from real active thinking human beings, and converted it into an independent
omnipotent Subject which absorbed Nature, the World, Matter, into itself. This
idealism, in the last analysis, is a sophisticated ideology, in which the
Logical Idea replaced God.
Alienation
itself is a very old notion with religious origins. Hegel took over this
concept from his predecessors and gave it a new ideological content. In the
process of change, everything has an antithetical nature, a unity and
contradiction of opposites, it is both itself and becoming something else, its
„other.“ But this „other“ is simply a development of the „itself“; the implicit
become explicit, the possible become real. All these involve „Entfremdung“
(estrangement) from the original form and the realisation of the essence in a
higher form of existence.
Hegel
explained that man is alienated because labour is alienated, and he gave two
explanations for this general alienation of human labour:
(a) The Dialectics of Need and Labour
Human needs
are always one step ahead of the available economic resources. It is impossible
to fulfil human needs, because the goal to equalise human needs with the
organisation of resources can never be attained.
(b) Hegel’s Concept of „Entäußerung“ (Externalisation)
Every
man who works, who produces something, really reproduces in his product an idea
which he initially had in his mind. In the first chapter of Capital, Marx
expressed a similar idea, but from a materialist point of view. Hegel, however,
stated that by producing something, we separate ourselves from the product of
our labour. Thus our idea does not continue to live in our mind, we project it
out of our body. Such then is the anthropological definition of Hegel of
alienated labour. Man is condemned forever to become separated, alienated, from
the products of his labour.
In the
Parisian Manuscripts, in 1844, Marx, in a youthful attempt, mainly for
„self-clarification,“ tried to integrate his ideas about labour in bourgeois
society with ideas about man’s fate, his earthly existence and position in
history. Marx was not yet a scientific socialist and had just begun studying
political economy a year before. But this work represents a major turning point
in Marx’s intellectual development.
Marx
contradicted both Hegel’s explanation of alienated labour. The discrepancy
between needs and material resources is only temporary, conditioned by history.
Man’s needs do not develop in an unlimited way, and collective labour’s output
needs not to be inferior to these needs. He rejected Hegel’s idea of an
identification of externalisation with alienation. He stated that humanity is
not condemned to live „by the sweat of its brew,“ under alienated conditions
forever. Humanity can become free, its labour can become free, under specific
historic conditions.
Marx
criticised Hegel for having seen only one side of the process, the alienation
of consciousness. Hegel completely neglected the aspect of labour in a class
society, the alienation of real man who produces commodities and surplus value.
Feuerbach
expressed the view that Hegel’s philosophy was in reality an abstract
expression of the alienation of man from himself. The „Absolute Idea“ was
nothing but „a thing of thought.“ Thus Feuerbach stated that Hegel’s system has
a religious essence, and he reestablished the materialist Truth that Nature,
Matter, is the real basis for thought. All ideas, gods, angels and devils are our
intellectual creations.
The
young Marx was fascinated by Feuerbach’s materialism and humanism. Thus he
began to analyse capitalist relations, showing what dehumanises and what is
truly human. Marx agreed with Feuerbach that religion reverses the real relations
between Man and Nature. Man created the gods in his own image. But to the
underdeveloped („primitive“) mind, unaware of sub- or unconscious mental
processes, it appeared as if gods had created Nature and Man. Confused by such
appearances, and not knowing the essence, and being manipulated ideologicallv
by „witch doctors“ and priests, men for thousands of years prostracted
themselves before the idol of their ruling classes, the gods manufactured in
the minds of men.
The primitive
alienation observable in pre- „civilised“ societies in socalled „barbarism“ and
„savagery“, had very much to do with ignorance and fear. The low level of
consciousness of primitive peoples across the globe did not enable man to
penetrate his environment deeply or to understand the forces or laws of Nature.
The
sector which primitive man dominated was very limited. Concerning this, he had
knowledge; about the rest only ignorance. Outside this field of knowledge, an immense
area of enigmatic and unmastered phenomena was explained by a mass of rituals
and conceptions commonly known as magic, something which is still being
practised in many parts of Africa, Asia, South America, etc., which are not yet
penetrated by scientific knowledge or materialism. Where human control of
natural forces or technology terminated, magic took over. By trial-and-error,
by accident, by observing repetitive processes, man did become aware of some
laws or forces of Nature, but not consciously, that is, scientifically. Thus
one should not mix up magical „hocus-pocus“ with natural laws discovered by
accident, but not yet knowing their scientific operations. Magic of both types,
negative ignorance which led to mental enslavement and religion, and positive
ignorance which led to a spirit of self-discovery and science, was originally
designed to satisfy demands, which social life had awakened, but which it could
not guarantee as yet. Hegel would say there was a discrepancy between needs and
material resources.
Man
began to assume supernatural powers, which had to be counteracted, neutralised
or won over. Many imaginary powers were fabricated - ancestors, chiefs,
animals, plants, mountains, volcanoes, thunder, rain, sun, etc. Man projected
his inner self into these self-created beings giving them super-human
properties. Thus the illusion was created that by creating an illusion about
reality you could actually control reality.
Thus
rudimentary alienation was created, which from magic passed into a higher form,
into polytheistic religion, and eventually to monotheism. A beautiful example
of how children are tutored in self-alienation today still is the „Our Father.“
The humble child, for example, of a poor African proletarian, in need, and who
has no resources to fulfil his desires, begins by addressing the heavenly
edition of a patriarch, a Somoza in class society: „Our Father.“ This despot is
their elevated far above earthly mortals to divine dimensions above the
Universe: „Who art in Heaven“. Then the little Black boy or girl gives the
White ruler the reverence due to superior authority: „Hallowed be Thy name.“
Then the helpless petitioner to the Crown does not ask for his needs to be
fulfilled, but for those of Mammon, of Capital: „Thy Kingdom come; Thy Will be
done.“ And this must not happen later, in heaven only, but immediately, while
Vorster or Botha is murdering little children, here and now: „On earth as it is
in Heaven.“
As the
„Primitive“ African forefathers had demanded a good harvest from the God of
Rain, now their Black descendant, the „civilised savage“ begs: „Give us this
day our daily bread.“ Meanwhile on the world market grain is being destroyed to
keep prices high, South Africa supplies Comecon countries secretly with wheat
exports, while the Soviet Union is attacking Apartheid, and millions of
children have no bread to eat.
The
ignorant „savage“ used to beg to be purified of taboos violated, fearing the
wrath of the God of Thunder: „And-forgive us our trespasses.“ This is then
supplemented by the moralising influence, gained from Roman Catholicism of the
„Dark Ages“, from times of the Spanish Inquisition: „As we forgive those of
others.“ All this is then crowned by the weakness, docility, humility, fear and
submission of the poor child and his „wretched“ family: „For Thine is the power
and glory forever.“ So it shall be, Master, Lord, Sir, Boss, don’t fail us:
“Amen.“
All
this rudimentary alienation can still be seen today in customs as sending
flowers to funerals and putting wreaths on graves, or at the feet of the status
of Bolivar, Kruschev or Mao. This rite dates back to primitive times when
ignorant man believed in another existence after death. The departed Souls
needed similar things as they had on earth the Pharaonic pyramid graves
demonstrate this at best. Ancient peoples buried food, tools and weapons with
the dead - until today, these have dwindled to a few flowers.
With
the development of agriculture craftsmanship and tockbruding, higher forms of alienation
were engendered. “Civilised“ man began to control Nature increasingly, but he
also began to lose control over the social process of production. After the
social division of labour, goods became converted into commodities and were
exchanged on the market. The laws of the market began to rule the producers and
later men themselves became commodities that could be bought and sold. Thus,
slavery was the first organised system of alienated labour historically, wage
labour will be the last. Wage labour, under capitalism, according to Marx, is a
specail type of alienated labour.
What
does it mean when a worker sells his labour power - not labour - to a boss of a
factory or a company? He sells his labour power, part of his life energy, part
of his life-time, to another, to the capitalist, to live on like a parasite.
The worker loses control over a large part of his waking hours, going to work
(usually up to 2 hours), 8 hours at work, going home (up to 2 hours), thus 12
hours, half-a-day of his daily life. The time which has been sold to the
employer belongs to him, not to the worker. He dictates what you will or will
not do during that time. He dictates what the worker will produce, how he will
do it, and where he will do it. He is master over the worker’s activity.
In the
Parisian Manuscripts of 1844, the young Marx put this as follows:
„Labour
is external to the worker, that is, it does not belong to his essential being.
Therefore he does not affirm himself in his work but denies himself. He does
not feel contented but dissatisfied. He does not develop freely his physical
and spiritual energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker
therefore only feels himself to be himself outside his work, and in his work he
feels outside himself. He is at home when he is not working and when he is
working, he is not at home.“
What is
even worse, the raw materials which the worker uses, the tools, and even the
products of his labour, do not belong to him. The only thing which he gets is
the exchange value of his labour-power, which is not equivalent to the selling
price of the commodities which he has produced. The wage, the money, which he
receives, is specifically calculated only to reproduce his labour power to work
tomorrow again. He can forget about saving to become a capitalist. A European
wage-worker can forget to become a capitalist today - to be able to compete
with „small“ capitalists, he needs US$ 50 million in Western Europe, otherwise,
he won’t survive. To work for 50 years, and saving his total „wage“ of US$
50,000 a year, could not even do it. About 20 workers will have to starve for
50 years to accomplish this. Apart from this, only managers generally earn the
above-mentioned salary. A capitalist lives from the „interests“ which he
acquires by exploiting labour power, a worker forever lives from the
„interests“ of his permanent debts.
The
products of labour can become hostile to the worker, can threaten him. This happened
with the machines which he had produced. The worker becomes an appendage to the
machine. It causes even unemployment of the worker. Monotonous work, shift
work, abnormal schedules, all these ruin the workers causing not only physical,
but also psychological and nervous disorders.
The
modern capitalist worker has become alienated to himself. Work is no longer a
means of self-expression. Work is just a means to attain a goal. And that goal
is making money. People just talk about how to make money. In Osaka, the main
commercial and industrial city of Japan, you don’t address a person whom you
meet with „How do you do?“ anymore, but, „How is business?’’ „Are you making
money?“
Today,
money has the „magical“ power of turning things into their opposites.
Shakespeare already said: „Gold: yellow, glittering, precious gold can make
black, white; foul, fair; wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward,
valiant.“ A man’s worth is no more his talents or praiseworthy abilities or
actions, but his bank account or his private property. In Germany a Rotschild
was loved, where Marx was hated. Love has become a commodity, a flourishing
commercial business of prostitution. In America, even Death is commercialised:
Morticians seek to induce people to buy more expensive coffins, so that the
beloved can rest peacefully on foam mattresses. Here not the corpse’s need is
satisfied, but the deepest feelings if the living family members are exploited
by ruthless capitalists.
Until
now we have dealt with the consequences of alienated labour, and not with the
alienation of the wage-worker himself. Already in 1844, Marx painted out that
within capitalism a built-in-contradiction of needs exists. Each capitalist
tries to limit the human needs of his own workers, in order to keep wages low,
and profits high. However, each capitalist considers the work force of other
capitalists a potential buyer for its commodities. In the last analysis,
capitalism constantly extends the needs of the consumers. Up to a certain
limit, real human needs, like healthy feeding, proper housing and necessary
clothing, can be fulfilled. However, capitalism must forever create new,
artificial needs, has to commercialise everything, love, death, leisure, etc.
All kinds of gadgets are sold, a chess-computer with which one can compete, a
computer for washing dishes, dolls which speak to the baby, stifling her
creative imagination, etc.
Thus
alienation becomes social and psychological in nature. Human needs are extended
beyond what is rational, permanent dissatisfactions are being created.
Capitalism would cease to exist when all human needs are fulfilled - thus
„wear-and-tear“ has to be built into the commodities, they have to last only
for a while - all rubbish which cannot be sold in the metropoles or is obsolete
is being dumped into the „Third World“ at exorbitant prices: Of course, here
also artificial needs are created, for example, the use of an electrical
tooth-brush, by permanent blackouts or power-cuts. Even in that case, a power-standby
machine would do the job. Thus social alienation spreads across the globe.
Systematically,
capitalism and neocolonialism are creating frustrations, illusions and
discontent. One only needs to study the number and types of crimes in the daily
newspapers to verify these facts. Capitalist society breeds juvenile
delinquency, antisocial behaviour patterns, rape, murder and insanity. Human
activity becomes alienated, beggars are created, mad people, talking to
themselves, unable to communicate with others, roam the ghettoes, slums,
struts, subways and highways. Workers become overspecialised, prisoners of
their trade, they live in shut-in horizons. They become over-specialised,
one-track skilled or academic idiots. They know something for a while about a
certain branch of human activity and absolutely nothing about totality.
Ignorance crowned with diplomas increases, ideology does the rest.
Thus
human relations become „thing-relations“, money-relations. About this tendency
towards „Verdinglichung“ (reification), in Capital, Marx warned already.
Bourgeois economic relations have completely pervaded human relations.
Man-Woman relations have become money-relations; friendship flourishes on
thing-relations; pure human qualities like politeness, sincerity, consideration,
helpfulness, become the exploitative field of touts, crooks and corruption.
Everything one urgently needs or wants to do, can only be achieved over the
money-nexus - this has become a modus vivendi in most „Third World“ countries.
People are dehumanised, lower than animals; workers have a bourgeois mentality,
without a cent in their pockets, if they have any.
Bourgeois
and worker cannot communicate with each other anymore, they do not understand
each other’s language. White South Africans know nothing about Black South
Africa or Black Africa for that matter. Communication has broken down. Many
people are so isolated, so lonely, that when they meet someone, they just flush
down all their thoughts, any theme, whether the other is listening or not. Both
conversing partners talk along parallel lines, unburdening themselves of their
loneliness of their alienation. Other „sane“ ones call them „mad“, yet they
have just reached the extremes, for which the „sane“ worker is heading
ultimately. Capitalism is progressively creating morons, idiots and lunatics.
Religion
cannot help anymore either. As Marx wrote: The miracles of God become
superfluous because of the miracles of industry.“ In metropolitan countries,
technology and futurology have taken the place of God, theology and religion.
At the University of Frankfurt in West Germany, 88% of the students never go to
church, or only at Christmastime to satisfy their parents. 53% of them don’t
care about marriage, especially not in church. And this is the general trend in
Western Europe or North America and yet the „Third World“ is being flooded by
religious cults, Jesus-shouters, who know absolutely nothing about the
historical facts surrounding the Jesus-Movement, the Messiah principle, the
early christians or the genesis of the „Holy Bible“, especially its censorship
in the interest of ruling class ideology. Soon these heavenly-relations,
divine-relations will also fade away here into capitalist oblivion, in spite of
all the „Hallelujah“ and „Amen“ shouting.
After
studying Hegel, Marx first became aware of the alienation of man as a citizen
in his relation with the State. This was the real starting point of Marx’s
scientific socialist thought. The so-called „social contract“ theory (Rousseau)
maintained that in higher developed complex human society, the individual must
forfeit a certain number of individual rights to the State as the
representative of the collective interest of the community. However, as we have
seen, the State, a product of the division of labour, based in private property
of the means of production, always represented dominant/ruling class interests.
These so-called individual rights were taken by force, by class violence, in
fact, by pure robbery. This forced forfeiture of individual rights to the State
ended up with alienation.
In the
same way as money has become the supreme fetish of bourgeois society, similarly,
the State comes to a close second fetish. State coercion; ruling class
violence, manifests itself in its penal powers, tax powers, forceful
conscription for military service, etc.
The
identity of Steve Biko has to be validated by documents stamped by Apartheid
State officials. He needed a certificate to vouch for his Black birth, to prove
that he graduated from any school, that he is married or single, that he may
travel on a tram, that he may leave his Bantustan, that he payed his tax, etc.,
etc. He needed even a death certificate, to prove that Apartheid South Africa
murdered him.
The
oppressed worker does not feel that the State defends his interest in any way.
Having lost his basic human rights, he becomes a pariah, a slave in the land of
his birth.
Even
science, whether natural or social, has been placed in the service of labour
exploitation. For example, since 1842, nuclear physicists were no more
searching for the Truth, in the service of the well-being of humanity, but
capitalist militarists constantly were turning their labour into death-causing
instruments. „Freedom of Science“ or “Objectivity of Science“ became a mockery,
when scientific results were declared as „top-secrets“, and „for reasons of
State“ were kept away from the knowledge of the overwhelming part of humanity.
These „top-secrets“ fabricated the atomic bombs which destroyed Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, or the napalm bombs thrown on the Vietkong or African freedom
fighters. Natural scientists are more and more vassalised to the imperialist
military machine. Social Science has become a factory for ideology production
and anti-socialism, to spread vulgar nationalism and cultural imperialism.
Alone the huge text-book multinationals which monopolise presenting of „Third
World“ educational literature bear testimony of how social science has become a
force of capitalist production; a quick glance in a B.A. syllabus or university
subjects’ curriculae will clear the mind of any doubting Thomas.
To say
that Africa has the choice between Socialism and Barbarism, is the same as
saying, it has, like the whole of humanity, the choice between progressive
disalienation through socialist emancipation and inevitable alienation in
capitalism. This simply means that the grim situation is not at all without
revolutionary hope.
Alienation,
like capitalism itself, is not God-made, it is historically produced man-made
evil, neither rooted in nature or human nature. Thus alienation and capitalism
can be unmade by man, man proudly walking in upright gait, with human worth,
and not forever bowing, sprawled at the feet of Mammon, kissing the filth and
blood. The Marxist theory of alienation implies and contains a theory of disalienation,
part of revolutionary theory-praxis, by means of which the material and
intellectual conditions are created for the gradual disappearance of all forms
of alienation. Scientific theory-praxis in all disciplines is a conditio sine
qua non for the disappearance of human alienation and capitalism. Labour,
intellectual and manual, has to be disalienated, the division of labour
eradicated, class society destroyed, the State annihilated. Labour must not be
a coercive necessity to hunt for money, but a creative self-realisation
occupation. The transformation of human labour into all-sided creative human
activity is the ultimate aim of scientific socialism on a global scale. Only
when World Socialism is attained, and World Capitalism totally destroyed, will alienation
disappear from our galaxy.