Marxism and the Four Types of Alienation

Capitalism creates alienation, claimed Marx more than a century ago. Since then, Marx's sociological theories have led to remarkable changes in the ways people think about labor, social hierarchies, and systems of power in social institutions. There is nowhere better to think critically about Marx's theories than through the lens of someone who works as a wage laborer for a capitalist enterprise: in my case, literally the Enterprise Rent-A-Car company. My work at Enterprise has been fruitful and rewarding in some ways, but mainly I need the job in order to pay the bills. The work is not deeply fulfilling on any level. Therefore, I can easily see how a person who views this job as their career might become alienated from themselves on a psychological level, by failing to fulfill deeper desires and dreams. Marx did not care as much about humanistic hierarchies of needs as he did for social hierarchies and the need to change them. By discussing four different types of alienation, Marx shows how capitalist enterprises create alienation from the products of labor/fruits of production; from the processes of production, from species being, and from other men and women. While I hesitate to think only in negative terms about my job at Enterprise, I have come to agree with Marx that capitalist systems produce all four of these types of alienation.

Alienation from the product of labor is a core component of Marx's theory. When referring to alienation from the product of labor, Marx contrasts the capitalist system in which wage-earners are paid for their time versus systems in which a person is vested in the product that is being sold, as with artisans or farmers. Marx noted the "progressive coercion of human labor and the dispossession of the product of labor from its producers," (Calhoun, et al., 2012, p. 138). If Marx had survived into the late 20th or early 21st century, he would not have been surprised to see society devolve more fully into alienating laborers from the product of labor in the service-oriented and post-industrial world. When Marx developed his sociological and economic theories, he wrote based on what he witnessed in the burgeoning age of industry. Now, workers are even further removed from the products of labor because we are in service positions like mine at Enterprise. At Enterprise, the business model is service-oriented. The company does not manufacture or sell cars. It just rents them, providing a temporary service. In this sense, I have no connection at all either with the cars, the experience of driving, the insurance "products" we sell, or the customers.

Alienation from the processes of production is also something I can relate to from working at Enterprise. Because there is no production to speak of, we must shift our attention to the "production" of value through the maintenance of a fleet of motor vehicles. Even the managers in our office are alienated from the processes of senior management, the people who make the important decisions that affect all of us in our daily lives on the job. No one in our office, and especially not the workers like me, have any say in how the company is run, the service we provide, the prices, what cars to keep, or any other issue related to the business. We are all alienated systematically from the processes of production -- which is a process of production of intangible resources (services) to begin with. Marx would note that the value attributed to the service of car rental and to my salary is totally arbitrary, based on the profit-seeking motives of the owners of the means of production (Felluga, n.d.).

With regards to alienation from species being, Marx refers to what it means to be part of the human species (Ollman, n.d.). Working in a job in which we are systematically disempowered, we laborers are alienated from the sources of human joy. The capitalist system contradicts human nature itself, according to Marx (Calhoun, et al., 2012, p. 138). On the contrary, the "foundation of society was humankind's joint involvement in free, productive, and creative work," (Calhoun, et al., 2012, p. 138). Artisan work is an example of work that is not alienating and which unites an individual to the species-being. I could not experience such a thing at Enterprise, because it is a capitalist entity.

Alienation from other men and women is perhaps the most palpable of all the types of alienation I have felt working at Enterprise. We are not supposed to be friendly with customers. Our interaction with customers is supposed to be strictly about business so that we can efficiently process each order and move onto the next person. People are not treated as human beings, but as potential sources of revenue -- customers only. The "social estrangement" that results is alienation (Calhoun, et al., 2012, p. 138). A similar type of alienation exists in the social hierarchy that exists between each stratum in the business, such as between the store managers and the workers, or between senior management and our store managers. The relationship between workers like me and the manager is robotic in nature, with systems in place for recognizing employee sales data but no system in place for acknowledging more human elements such as treating customers well even in times of confrontation. The managers do not openly communicate with the employees, because there are thick barriers that alienate workers.