Marx's Four Types of Alienation at Enterprise Rent-A-Car

Introduction: Marx, Alienation, and the Capitalist Workplace

Capitalism creates alienation, claimed Karl 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 about 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 and the 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

Alienation from the product of labor is a core component of Marx's theory. When referring to this type of alienation, Marx contrasts the capitalist system — in which wage-earners are paid for their time — against systems in which a person is vested in the product 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 twentieth or early twenty-first 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, 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 many of us occupy service positions like mine at Enterprise. At Enterprise, the business model is entirely service-oriented. The company does not manufacture or sell cars — it merely rents them, providing a temporary service. In this sense, I have no connection whatsoever with the cars, the experience of driving, the insurance "products" we sell, or the customers themselves.

Alienation from the Processes of Production

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, attention must shift 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 working lives. No one in our office, and especially not the workers like me, has any say in how the company is run, the service we provide, the prices, which cars to keep in the fleet, or any other issue related to the business.

We are all systematically alienated from the processes of production — which is, to begin with, a process of producing intangible resources in the form of services. As Marxian economic theory would suggest, the value attributed to the service of car rental and to my salary is entirely arbitrary, based on the profit-seeking motives of the owners of the means of production (Felluga, n.d.).

Conclusion: Capitalism, Alienation, and the Future of Work

Through my analysis, I have come to agree with Marx's theory of alienation. All capitalist enterprises have the potential to alienate workers from the products of their labor, the processes of production, the essence of their humanity, and other human beings. I believe that any work in which the worker has no contact with senior management — and therefore no say in company culture or policy — is essentially alienating. Similarly, service-oriented capitalist enterprises run the risk of being exploitative because wages are completely arbitrary and based solely on the profit motives of the owners. Workers cannot set their own wages; we either accept the offer or find a new job.

On the other hand, I believe that the shift toward smaller businesses offering quality artisanal products represents the next step in the evolution of enterprise in a post-capitalist market system. Such businesses hold the potential to reconnect workers with their products, their creative capacities, their fellow human beings, and their shared species-being — precisely the connections that Marx argued capitalism destroys.

References

Calhoun, C., et al. (2012). Classical Sociological Theory. Malden, MA: Walden-Blackwell.

Felluga, D. (n.d.). Terms used by Marxism. Retrieved from

Ollman, B. (n.d.). Man's relation to his species. Chapter 22 in Alienation: Marx's Conception of Man in Capitalist Society. Retrieved from