MANAGEMENT IN CONTEXT

MANAGEMENT IN CONTEXT

Management in Context

Introduction

The concept of alienation is most often associated with the work of Karl Marx (1818-1883), or in writings related to his ideas. It starts from a conception of the human essence, which is said to be creative, loving, communal, and powerful. In particular forms of society, notably under capitalism, aspects of the human essence come to be located elsewhere, for example, in the commodities that human labor produces. From here, they dominate and oppress real human beings. Eventually, when alienation becomes sufficiently extreme, it leads to a revolution and the introduction of communism, a society in which the human essence has been re-appropriated by men. This entry looks at some precursors of the Marxist concept of alienation, explores Marx's doctrine in detail, and describes its subsequent influence (Marx 1975, pp. 41).

The Marxist Concept of Alienation

Marx's doctrine of alienation is chiefly found in his early writings, most notably his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. His immediate point of departure is his admiration for Feuerbach's philosophy, and his evaluation of Hegel at this stage follows the same lines as Feuerbach. He agrees with Feuerbach that religion is based on the alienated human essence, although in The Jewish Question (1843), he sees Christianity as reflecting the egoism of life in civil society, while in Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law (1843), Christianity is represented as a de-alienated ideal.

Marx also sees the state as the alienated essence of the citizens and offers democracy as the way of overcoming this. As his thought develops, he comes in his manuscript on Estranged Labor to see the proletariat as the most alienated class in society, possibly because the alienation of labor comes to be seen as the central form of human alienation. Overcoming the alienation of the proletariat will also overcome the alienation of other classes (Marx 1975, pp. 41).

Marx is best known for his account of the alienation of labor. He says that labor involves a fourfold alienation. Laborers are alienated from the act of labor, meaning that it is done under compulsion of necessity to make money to live, not to fulfill their creative potential or desire to please their friends. Laborers are alienated from the product of labor. The more effort they put into their labor, the more its product confronts them as something alienated from them and dominates them. Because sensuous nature is needed as a precondition of labor, laborers also render themselves more dominated by nature the more they labor. Labor is forced labor, forced by necessity to earn subsistence. Laborers feel at home only in the animal functions of eating and drinking and procreating (Cowling 2006, pp. 319).

Besides being alienated from the act and object of labor, laborers are also alienated from others, who are rivals for work. Laborers are also alienated from their species-being. This is a concept taken from Feuerbach. The central idea is that we are distinguished from animals because we are conscious of ourselves as a ...