Alienated labor

Karl Marx considered 'alienated labor', as he called it, to be one of the major problems with capitalism. People often interprete it to mean that workers are unhappy, but actually means something more.

The idea is that the proletariat workers are completely under the control of their employers. According to free market theory, you have an absolute right to dispose and control your property as you see fit. Therefore, the owners have complete control over the work place. They decide what/how/when things are going to be done with their property. The workers, if they wish to be payed, must do as they are told. The workers are free as soon as they leave work, but to be paid, and therefore survive, they must sell themselves into slavery everyday.

Not all workers are alienated. Professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and fortune tellers usually have autonomy. They still must work for a living, but they don't have to do it on the terms of an evil capitalist.

Marx called a person who had to work in an environment which was owned completely by another a Wage Slave, alienated from his job, and believed that this was immoral.

Alienated labor also has a great deal to do, at least in the modern interpretation, with the specific working conditions of industrialization and especially the assembly line system. Prior to industrialization, an artisan oversees every aspect of the creation of their product. They plan the design, gather the materials, do every stage of the work, and then sell the product, most likely to somebody they know, or keep it for their own use. In any case, they can point to the pot they threw or the clothing they made, and say, "I created this." In effect, their work becomes a mode of self-expression.

In contrast to this (no doubt slightly romanticized) picture stands the modern assembly-line worker who spends all day working a drill press in one place, or tightening the same rivet on each unit which passes by. They are alienated from their labor, not just because they have no financial control over their circumstances, but because their work has been reduced to a form of near-mindless rote repetiton.

The modern service economy, arguably, takes this a step further, as a low-level worker in the service industries, say a counter clerk or a first-line tech-support worker or a telemarketer, not only has no control over their circumstances, and is compelled to hold to a rigidly defined routine, but is producing no product at all.

'Wage slave'? Really? Show me one place in this country where a person is required to work. Outside of the government (ie, police force, air-traffic controllers) no one is required to keep their job. You don't like working somewhere? Go somewhere else! That is the ultimate right of the worker, any worker, any sector. The power and right to quit are sacrosanct.

The phrase 'wage slave' makes one think that someone is obligated to work in a certain place. Not so, not anywhere. Actually, the closest thing my mind can conjure up for the phrase 'wage slave' is someone in the old Soviet Union, who has no choice but to report to a job, a job he had no choice in to begin with. That much better fits my idea of 'wage slave'.

Tem42 said the following: "The idea is that the proletariat workers are completely under the control of their employers. According to free market theory, you have an absolute right to dispose and control your property as you see fit. Therefore, the owners have complete control over the work place. They decide what/how/when things are going to be done with thier property. The workers, if they wish to be payed, must do as they are told."

Where the hell do you get off? You're saying that the evil capitalist-swine-dog treat their workers as if they were property, theirs to dispose of as they please. This could not possibly be further from the truth of the matter.

I don't know what country you live in, but in America, laborers have exactly one commodity to sell to their employers: their labor. Their time, sweat, energy. If they want to be paid, yes, they have to do their job. That seems rather reasonable to me. How else do you think it should be set up, pray tell?

The owner of the factory has complete control over the factory, yes. Duh. He or she owns it, paid good money for it. But the workers themselves are not the property of the employer. This is actually a very alien thought to someone at all well-grounded in capitalism and free-market economy. (Note: That's FREE market; no accident there.)

You're describing slavery. I'm describing a free person. Free to take their labor elsewhere, free to work at that factory, free to work, free to earn a wage, free to quit, free to starve, free to live, free to die. There is no nice 'middle ground' between slavery and freedom. A compromise between poison and goodness will only profit poison.

The average American worker lives better today than high-class merchants did a hundred years ago. Hourly and salary wages are higher in comparison to the GSL than every before. Get this: 80% of your 'alienated labor' is invested in the stock market, some through retirement accounts, some through profit-sharing and stock options. That's an incredible investment for someone to have in something they're 'alienated' from.

I worked in a factory for almost two years, before going back to college. I can tell you this, honestly: The 'average' worker today is smarter, more business-savy, and better able to quit one job and get another. The idea of 'wage slave' was wrong when it was conceived, and it's only more obviously wrong today. Labor isn't alienated; laborers are integrated parts of companies, and much more free than their equivalents in any Marxist country.

Narzos, in that sense, modern workers are somewhat more removed from the product they are producing. They don't mold it and shape it every step of production. They don't have the life-affirming knowledge that 'I created this.' This is part of a trade-off.

Our standard of living is so much better today than it was 150 years ago. We have more products and services available for us to buy with our earned wages. We have more free-time, which is something you just cannot put a price to.

I think a lot of the gratification of the job is being shifted to the back end, to what you can achieve with the money you earn with your labor. Instead of drawing pleasure from being able to create a powerful, cold-iron plow share with your bare hands, and being able to say 'I made this,' and then go home to your hovel, today we have workers in John Deere who draw plentiful wages doing something very repetitious and (perhaps) relatively unskilled, then relax while driving home in their new Corvette. Do you think that iron-shaper could have bought a corvette with his entire life savings? No chance.

Instead of getting the gratification of our labor through what we produce, we are getting that gratification through what we can buy with what we produce. We buy medicine that is actually effective, food that is fresher, cheaper, and much more varied, billions of books from any and every subject, complex and intricate entertainment devices, we travel much wider and more often, we have 'weekends', which didn't really exist for 95% of the world until relatively recently, we only work about 40-50 hours a week.

Is this a step forward? I think so. I really do. And I think it's well worth the trade.