Episode 29 - Alienation

Transcript

David: 0:07

Hi, I'm David Peña-Guzmán,

Ellie: 0:09

and I'm Ellie Anderson. Welcome to Overthink,

David: 0:11

The podcast where two friends,

Ellie: 0:13

who are also professors,

David: 0:15

put philosophy in dialogue with the everyday.

Ellie: 0:18

Because big ideas are within everyone's reach.

David: 0:30

Ellie, a lot of people hate their job to the point that we have all kinds of ways to talk about how much we hate it based on the day of the week that we are in. So like Wednesdays are hump day, where it's just like, oh, you're making it to the other end of the week, uh, you know, it's downhill from there. Or like TGIFriday's, Thank God It's Fridays, which is also the name of like a chain, but like that's how popular it is.

Ellie: 0:58

TGIFridays is the name of the chain. The phrase is either Thank God it's Friday or TGIF. But then Sunday scaries,

David: 1:07

Oh, wait, What is Sunday scaries?

Ellie: 1:09

Sunday Scariesthat's like the best one. You feel like crap on Sunday because you're like anxious about the Monday you have ahead of you. And then we have Mondays, am I right? for Mondays.

David: 1:21

I feel like we really need representation for Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Ellie: 1:27

Well, Thursday's get Thirsty Thursday, which is like, oh, it's okay to drink. If I'm a little hung over on Friday, it doesn't matter so much.

David: 1:34

What about Tuesday?

Ellie: 1:36

I don't know. What is Tuesday? I actually love a Tuesday. But I also like don't really get Sunday Scaries, so, cause it usually- I don't like teaching- I don't teach on Mondays because I get Sunday Scaries if I teach on Mondays.

David: 1:48

Really? Do you really get that? So I have a friend who gets so anxious on Sundays that he just knows that he won't be able to sleep the whole night on Sunday. Like-

Ellie: 1:59

Sounds absolutely awful.

David: 2:01

And like, it's not because anything particular is happening on Mondays. Like it's just a regular week, but he just, by now, has accepted this as part of his reality, that on Sundays, he's not going to get any sleep out of stress.

Ellie: 2:12

Oh my God. And even those who are getting sleep a lot of times, aren't looking forward to starting the workday on Monday, right? Like I think we almost take for granted in our society most people

David: 2:25

Okay.

Ellie: 2:25

their jobs or at most like tolerate them, right. And millions of workers in America are actively disengaged in their jobs, sort of using their jobs as a way to like, just make enough money to live on or to live comfortably on, right. And maybe like try and check Facebook when they can, be posting on Twitter.

David: 2:46

Yeah, or just make it, you know, from one paycheck to the other one. And of course there is nothing natural about that sentiment. If anything, our collective hatred for our work cultures on the whole is a major indictment of the way in which we've organized our political economy and a sign of just how alienating work is under conditions of capitalism.

Ellie: 3:09

Yeah. Like what does it say about American ideology that we have this whole narrative around like why work is good for you and you have to do it even though it's not at all fun or fulfilling, you know, like a

David: 3:21

Well,

Ellie: 3:22

picture. have to overcome your natural laziness and be of benefit to society.

David: 3:27

Yeah. I mean, that's what Max Weber calls the Protestant work ethic, that we moralize work, which is why capitalism and religion are so interconnected in North America and the West, because through work, you not only put food on the table, but you prove that you are a person of good moral standing, right, because you suffer through work.

Ellie: 3:50

Yes, but you only need that kind of ideology when work for so many people is as painful and as unpleasant as it is.

David: 4:00

And it's not to say that work, per se, is the problem. The problem might be what Karl Marx calls alienation.

Ellie: 4:15

Today we're discussing alienation.

David: 4:18

Why is work so unfulfilling for so many people?

Ellie: 4:22

And to what extent is that due to capitalist modes of production and compensation?

David: 4:26

The Marxist concept of alienation has historically been used to make sense of industrial work, but can it also shed light on new non-industrial forms of production?

Ellie: 4:37

And can we also describe things outside of work as alienating, such as social media and leisure time? Anytime we work, we're creating something outside of ourselves that reflects back on who we are. ideally this reflection gives us some sort of satisfaction. think about making a shoe. When you make a shoe, you're taking raw materials, maybe you've got some leather or, Ooh, you're making Tevas, I'm loving my Tevas. this summer You've got

David: 5:07

okay.

Ellie: 5:07

rubber and some fabric and some Velcro. And when I create that shoe, my own labor time and energy into that. And I am creating the shoe with an aim towards certain ends. I want to make something that I can wear and that hopefully will also be appealing, right. And I actually can wear that shoe, I'm enjoying the products of my labor. This is very, very different from the way that most people tend to work in the industrialized and post-industrial eras. of making a shoe that I can then enjoy, what I do is I buy a shoe on the market. When I buy a Teva, I'm buying something that was produced in a factory it wasn't produced by just a single cobbler. It may have been produced for instance, on an assembly line where you've got the base of the shoe that's made out of rubber and then a machine puts on the top of the shoe. And it probably hasn't been created by just one cobbler. It's likely been produced in a factory by a whole number of people and machines working in tandem, right. It may be one person's job just to do the stitch on the top of the shoe, stitching the Velcro to the fabric. This type of work, where people are removed from the whole picture and instead are working on an assembly line or working on just one component, repetitive motions over and over again, a common feature of capitalist societies in the past couple of hundred years. to Marx, this type of work can't give us the satisfaction that we find in something that we've sort of created on our own and seen out from beginning to end. This type of work is what he would call alienated.

David: 6:45

Well, I take it that for Marx, the problem here has to do with our relationship not just to the product of work, but to the activity of work as well. So for Marx, when we work, it's not just that we put time and energy into our work, we put ourselves into it, our identity, our very being goes into the kind of activity that we do. because.

Ellie: 7:08

if you want to be fancy.

David: 7:09

And he does say that we put our spirit into our work. And that means that when our work expresses who we are and who we take ourselves to be, we find a kind of completion in our work. We feel fulfilled. And yet, as you mentioned, Ellie, under contemporary conditions of production, that kind of cycle can never be completed because of the separation of myself from the work that I do. And this is the difference between alienated and non alienated labor.

Ellie: 7:43

Yeah. And I'd say here that it's not just about a separation of myself from my work, because all products are separated from their producers in a certain way, but it's the separation is a sort of fragmentation or cut off-ness, to put it in a weird way, where as you mentioned, you know, I can't get that reflection of myself back on myself. The concept of alienation originates in Marx's 1844 manuscripts, which are some of his early work. And he's really working in this text with a picture of human nature where humans are by nature world builders. We seek to externalize our essence by putting it out there in the world and creating things in accordance with a given end, according to laws of beauty and usefulness. But the ability to project ourselves outside of ourselves through work is a beautiful part of what it means to be human, according to Marx.

David: 8:42

Yeah. And I think this is an important point to stress because a lot of people who are not particularly familiar with the ins and outs of Marxist theory often believe that communists believe that work is bad, that work is not good. And Marx is actually of the exact opposite opinion. He believes that it is through work that we achieve our human nature, what he sometimes calls species being. It is through work that we build a world with others in solidarity, which is very much in the spirit of communism, right, building a world together in which we are collectively free. And so the point is not so much to get away from work, but to work in such a way that we achieve that world building function that, as you say, is cut off under conditions of capital.. Okay.

Ellie: 9:32

Yeah, and I think we can return later to what it looks like to have non alienating work. For now, let's talk more specifically about what alienation looks like. According to Marx, alienation has four different manifestations. let's talk a little bit about these four manifestations of alienation. And if you can't keep track of them as we talk about them, it's not the end of the world. They're really different sides of the same phenomenon. Alienation in the product, in the activity, alienation from species-being, and alienation from other people.

David: 10:10

So Ellie let's begin with the first one. How do you think about alienation from the product?

Ellie: 10:16

Alienation from the product is basically the fact that when I'm working at the Teva factory, using a sewing machine to sew the Velcro strip onto the fabric, and doing that over and over and over again throughout my day, I have no investment in the actual product. one, I'm not using it myself, right. Once I'm done sewing the Velcro strip on, I start sewing the Velcro strip onto another Teva, and all of the products are totally replaceable to me. And I have no commitment to them because I'm not going to end up wearing them or seeing other people who were. And in addition to that, I lack a sense of the creative whole and the use value of the Teva itself. I'm putting my time and

David: 10:58

Hmm.

Ellie: 10:59

into creating something that is unable to give me recognition of my essence back because belongs to somebody else, right. I don't ever even own the Teva that I have. I am being paid on an hourly basis to create something that belongs to the owner of the Teva factory. Who then will sell it wholesale, et cetera, et cetera. It goes through this long process of changing hands and those hands are not mine.

David: 11:25

Yeah. And I think it's really important to recognize that for Marx, a big part of the problem here, in terms of thinking about our alienation from the products that we create, is precisely that most workers, and of course he's writing in the context of the late 19th century, so he's thinking about industrial work. Most workers are wage laborers, which means that the relationship they have to their bosses is a relationship in which they don't own anything that they produce; rather they make an agreement or a contract with an employer to sell their time in exchange for a specific wage. And it's that dynamic that according to Marx is the condition for the possibility of this kind of alienation. It's because of that that I don't own the thing that I produce, because I'm basically selling my time rather than working on something that is mine.

Ellie: 12:17

Yeah. Marx thinks that wage labor is inherently alienating because money is a sorry substitute for a connection to your actual creation.

David: 12:27

Well and because there is a major gap, right, between the amount of money that I get paid to work those eight hours a day and the amount of value that my work actually produces for the boss, right? This is where exploitation kicks in because I bring in more money than I'm actually paid.

Ellie: 12:43

Yeah. And In this process, I, Marx says, as a worker, become enslaved to the product that I produce, because the product allows me to exist. get wages for producing the product. And only in so doing am I able to survive. And so basically what happens is this weird feedback loop where the more time and energy I put into the product, the more hold the product has over me. I'm losing my power through this relation.

David: 13:12

Yeah. In Marx calls this objectification where the product becomes this external object that is way bigger than me and that I no longer control. And so it becomes this mysterious force. He uses that language. And so I'm basically at its mercy rather than the other way around. The second form of alienation that Marx talks about in the 1844 manuscripts is alienation from the activity of work or from the means of production. So let's assume that I work in a Teva factory. By the way, I don't even know what a Teva is. So let's just bracket that for this whole episode and move on.

Ellie: 13:47

It's a sandal, it's a sandal that- it's like, it's like a nerdy sandal that- you've definitely seen them, It's Birkenstock. The Teva reference is totally going to date us because they're like cool again in 2021. And they're going to be very out again in a few years.

David: 13:59

Oh, well, they will date you cause I don't even know what they are. Um, so the second kind of alienation has to do with the means of production and the activity of working. So when I work at the Teva factory, Marx says on top of not owning the very Tevas that I create with my hands, I don't own any of the means through which I work. So to create a Teva maybe I need a sewing machine or a hammer or some kind of machine for creating the sole or the straps or the Velcro. All of that, the entire factory, of course, is owned by a rich person who pays me to work for them. But it means that even the activity itself no longer feels mine. So the activity itself is alien. It's something that stands out over and against me in a way.

Ellie: 14:49

Yeah. And Marx talks about this as sort of deadening the creative faculties. Like

David: 14:54

Yes.

Ellie: 14:55

just there basically as a machine to help the job get done. And I'm sort of enslaved to the object and enslaved to the employer, I really am just like losing my soul through this. Marx writes the worker is at home when he is not working and when he is working, he is not at home. So think about the worker who is just like miserable at work all day and is just thinking about what happens when she comes home from work. It's like time to actually be on her own, dinner, to watch some Netflix, like also kind of sad, you know, that our leisure time is- just reduced for so many people to a means of recovery from the alienating conditions of work.

David: 15:36

And that's an interesting question that I want us to return to later, which is that for Marx, leisure time is in many ways a pristine state that is free of the alienation brought about by the activity of working in a factory. I don't know to what extent that still holds true, but we'll talk about that. Um, the point here being the act of working is no longer enriching. It's no longer something that makes me feel like I am able to put my signature on the world, that I can put part of my being or my spirit out there in order to feel at one with the world, like the world reflects me and I reflect the world. That kind of loop again is interrupted by the organization of labor.

Ellie: 16:17

Yeah. I think that leads us into the third manifestation of alienation, which is alienation from species being, which as you said is just like such a great phrase. Species being is basically human nature or human essence for Marx, although I think species being is a better term for it because you avoid the presumptions

David: 16:38

Okay.

Ellie: 16:38

nature or essence that imply that there's like a fixed idea of what the human is at all times, right? Marx is very much one of these thinkers who thinks that humans are sort of a historical idea developing over time. And so it makes more sense to talk about our being or our condition than it does about our essence or nature. In any case, our species being is to be active humans who create, homo We are the kind of beings who make things. we make things by transforming nature. Humans, according to Marx, are the only creatures who are able to orient ourselves within our world, understanding it and the way it works. According to Marx, humans have freedom. In comparison with non-human animals, we are able to stand apart from nature, recognize ourselves as part of that whole to produce our own creations, according to the laws of beauty. what happens in alienated labor that we actually not only lose our human capacities by virtue of not being free or able to realize ourselves through creative activity, we in fact become inferior to non-human animals. He says, and I know David, as somebody who works on animal cognition, you're probably like, wait, what are these humanistic assumptions here? I think this is maybe the aspect of alienation that's sort of like rubs post humanist thinkers the wrong way. But according to Marx, the bottom line here is really that labor reduces us to the kinds of beings who are able to meet our animal needs. We're able to feed ourselves, shelter ourselves, and perform our basic bodily functions thanks to the wages we receive from wage labor. this actually means that our species life becomes a way of supporting us as animals and we're even less free than animals.

David: 18:36

And I think that concept of our species being is one of the trickier concepts in Marx. And I liked the way in which you define it, which is in terms of our freedom, our world-building activity, and our understanding of laws of beauty, which allow us to create beautiful things, beautiful buildings, beautiful social relations, beautiful works of art. Now to those three categories, freedom, work and beauty, I think we can add a fourth one, which is our awareness of death, because one of the things that, according to Marx, makes the demand to create a world with others so pressing is our implicit understanding of our own finitude, the fact that we have one shot at this, we're going to die. And that means that in the time that we have in this world, we ought to aspire to building a world in which we can be free with others. And this is what would make Marx essentially an existentialist.

Ellie: 19:32

Yeah. Although Marx would hate being called an existentialist, which was a term not

David: 19:36

Yeah.

Ellie: 19:37

after his death.

David: 19:38

Yeah-

Ellie: 19:38

but that has connotations of

David: 19:40

I did-

Ellie: 19:40

subjective freedom as opposed to structural conditions.

David: 19:43

So I don't think he would hate it as much as just be confused by it, but yes, uh point well taken.

Ellie: 19:49

Okay. Tell us about the fourth type.

David: 19:51

Now the fourth type of alienation is for me the most important, which is our social alienation, that is to say our alienation from other people. In a society that is dominated by a combination of wage, labor, and private property, Marx says people no longer relate to one another as comrades who are capable of working together to build a communal world; rather, we only relate to one another as members of our specific class. One of the problems for Marx is that capitalism creates an asymmetrical distribution of wealth, where those who own the means of production start accumulating more and more and more wealth because as I mentioned before, there is that major discrepancy between what they pay me and the amount of money that I actually produce from them. And this imbalance just starts becoming a self-reinforcing loop. The more money they make, the more they can actually oppress their workers. And so for Marx, it means that society, over time, is split into two camps, which he calls the bourgeoisie, the haves, and the proletariat, the have-nots.

Ellie: 21:04

And the proletariat is made up of wage laborers.

David: 21:06

Exactly. And so in capitalism, I no longer relate to other people as people that I might engage in all kinds of meaningful projects with, I simply relate to them in their capacity as representatives of a particular class. I relate to you either as a fellow worker, if you are another person trapped in wage labor, or I relate to you as a boss, as a rich person that in theory could help me feed myself by buying out my labor time. We only relate to each other through our class identity.

Ellie: 21:40

Yeah. And you know what this

David: 21:41

Yeah.

Ellie: 21:42

prevents is the possibility for solidarity. On the one hand prevent solidarity between classes, right, because if I am a wage labor, I'm driven to be hostile towards the owners of the means of production, and commercially, if I'm an owner of the means of production, I'm going to be hostile towards the wage labor, because I want to pay them as little as possible in order to make me as much money as I can get. then there's also a lack of solidarity between the workers and between owners of the means of production, right? They're not really meeting on common ground either.

David: 22:12

Yeah. And the reason here is because across classes, our interests are pitted against one another as you point out, but internal to the particular class that he calls the proletariat, it means that I see other people with whom in theory I could develop solidarity because we're both oppressed by the economic system as competitors, because we're competing for those scraps that are handed to us by the owners of the means of production. And so, unfortunately, instead of joining hands with other workers, what happens is that I simply enter into competition with others. I only see them as people who in theory could get my job if I don't get it first.

Ellie: 22:53

Absolutely. We're all sort of these replaceable units are just like retreating at the end of the day into our own private homes, but in the public sphere are in competition with one another. This is a really sad picture of human existence. And one that I think is evident in a lot of ways in our culture. Like the idea that vegging out is what we need to do at the end of a long day, or the idea that you're always going to be sort of manipulating behind a coworker's back to try and be the one who gets a promotion.

David: 23:23

Yeah. And I think those examples might show the continued relevance of the Marxist concept of alienation. In the 180 years since Marx penned his 1844 manuscripts, where he introduces the theory of alienation, a number of things have changed in our political economy. We have new forms of post-industrial labor. So think about things like cognitive labor or the service industry, or even the gig economy. Think about your Uber drivers, your Lyft drivers.

Ellie: 24:15

Yeah. It's like is a TikTok influencer alienated,

David: 24:19

Yeah.

Ellie: 24:19

Or, you know, even though we still have the Teva factories and all kinds of other literal factories, also have the rise of like the IT department. do we talk about alienation in the product with somebody who is a marketing specialist?

David: 24:34

This raises the question of the extent to which Marxist concept of alienation still applies in our present reality, or whether we need a new term to really name the experience of workers under these new conditions and in these new markets.

Ellie: 24:52

Yeah. I mean, I think that the concept of alienation has really fallen out of fashion in recent decades in social critique. then now it's seeing a resurgence thanks in part to the work of German philosopher Rahel Jaeggi who wrote a book called Alienation that has made waves in the past few years. And I think here, like is in part to what extent does the notion of alienation presume some sort of utopian idyllic state of non alienation where humans are living out their full expression of who they truly can be, like that picture of the utopian expression of human nature, I think is really far removed from the cynicism and post-modern tendencies of philosophy in recent decades.

David: 25:40

Well, and another reason why it's fallen out of fashion has to do with the fact that a number of philosophers have made critiques of alienation as a concept. So for example, I'm here thinking about the work of the Marxist philosopher, Louis Althusser who is by far the most famous French Marxist of the 20th century. And his critique is very technical and we don't need to jump into the details, but he makes the claim that the Marxist concept of alienation really is not the best in Marxist repertoire of conceptual tools for thinking about capitalism, because the concept of alienation focuses on the experience of a subject, right? Like I feel alienated because of the particular kind of job that I have. And Althusser made an argument that became quite influential in Marxist theory and political philosophy, which is that we should not be thinking about capitalism in terms of subjective experience. We rather ought to think about it in terms of structural social relations. And so that critique really pushed the concept of alienation onto the back burner and a number of very influential Marxist philosophers started moving away from it. And so I think you're right, Ellie, that, yeah, like a we've alienated ourselves from the Marxist concept of alienation. But as you say, it seems like there's a resurgence of interest in this concept as we're coming to the realization that we need to theorize that lived experience of workers who are performing new kinds of labor, but whose labor may nonetheless lead to some recognizable forms of alienation.

Ellie: 27:20

Yeah definitely. It's like if the IT worker who feels disengaged for most hours of the day doesn't fit the exact picture of Marx's original concept of wage labor under capitalism, when they report having an extreme malaise, feeling only at home outside of work, feeling disconnected from the fruits of their labor or feeling like there aren't even any fruits of labor, how do we explain that? And something that's interesting to think about here is the phenomenon that anthropologist David Graeber calls bullshit jobs,

David: 27:55

Yeah.

Ellie: 27:55

jobs that like don't really add any value to the world.

David: 27:59

Yeah.

Ellie: 28:00

says, Hey, capitalism has gotten to the point where most of us could probably work far fewer hours and still have the economy tick along. And yet that's not the case. Americans are

David: 28:11

Okay.

Ellie: 28:11

longer and harder than ever. is that?

David: 28:14

Yeah.

Ellie: 28:14

are we doing then with our time? Actually, what a lot of us are doing with our time is basically nothing. There are so many jobs, many of which are precisely in these new forms of the economy, like the service sector, don't really add any value to the world. And that don't actually do anything for the company or the laborer. And interestingly, to your point about subjective experience, David, you know, you mentioned that it had really fallen out of fashion with the Althusserian

David: 28:43

Yeah.

Ellie: 28:44

And what David Graeber says is actually one of the ways that we can define a bullshit job is based on the subjective experience of the worker. If the worker thinks that their job doesn't add any value to the world and they feel crappy about themselves and about their job, then it's likely that they are working in a bullshit job. So that's actually the main criteria of a-

David: 29:05

a bullshit- job. Yeah.

Ellie: 29:06

your job bullshit.

David: 29:08

And what Graeber calls bullshit jobs, the philosopher Emmanuel Renault calls post-Fordist jobs. In Renault's account, the transition from Fordism to post Fordism amounts to the following: with the rise of the Ford assembly line, there emerged a new model of the worker that differs in significant ways from the classical industrial wage laborer that Marx had in mind in the 19th century. So what defines the Fordist worker is that even though they are wage laborers, they make relatively high wages. So think about 1950s, middle of the century, American dream kind of blue collar work. You work hard, you make enough money to buy the very products that you produce. And so this new model of the worker is working in a factory, but making a lot more money. Now, in our post Fordist reality, Renault says we've moved away from that American ideal. Now what we have are, again, these bullshit jobs, which are defined by things like short term employment contracts, right? Like, think about the independent contractor. That's a post-fordist job.

Ellie: 30:25

Been there

David: 30:25

They are defined by an extreme lack of security when it comes to things like health insurance or other forms of protection. So think about, for example, in academia, something like the figure of the adjunct that doesn't receive the same protection as tenure- track.

Ellie: 30:40

there.

David: 30:40

Uh, yes. Uh, tenure track faculty, and even though post Fordism is incomparable, either to Fordism in the middle of the century or to political economy in the 19th century, Renault says it's still producing new types of work that are alienated and new forms of exclusion, like the perpetually unemployed class. There are now people who are perpetually unemployed, which in the past was not the case. Things went more in like a cycle of like a bust and boom. All these jobs that no longer had the protections that Fordism afforded or even that industrial nineteenth century work afforded are the defining feature of our reality.

Ellie: 31:24

Yeah. You know, I think that's interesting though, cause it sounds to me like what Renault is talking about is actually really different from what Graeber is talking about with bullshit jobs, because bullshit jobs, according to Graeber, are actually usually white collar, relatively well paid, and almost like secure. Like you have a job where basically your job is securing rooms for all of the CEO to have meetings in a building that the company already has, and the CEOs could easily reserve those rooms for themselves, but they just don't. And so like, your job can be done in an hour and it's something somebody else could do, as opposed to an adjunct faculty member, which I know from experience is not at all a bullshit job. Like teaching, Graeber talks about it, is like one of the least bullshit jobs possible because it produces an extraordinary amount of value for students and for the world. So I would say like, in my experience as an adjunct faculty member, that is really alienating because you don't know if you're going to have employment past the current academic

David: 32:24

Right, right.

Ellie: 32:25

buy-in to the university because you're not compensated for going to faculty meetings, you're also not compensated for doing your research, right. And so like, you have very little buy-in to the general scholarly university ideal that you went to grad school for, you also find yourself antagonistically related to other faculty members, because you're jealous of the people who are on the tenure track. Now I'm one of them. And

David: 32:50

Okay.

Ellie: 32:51

at odds with administrators because you're just begging for scraps.

David: 32:54

Okay.

Ellie: 32:55

you even find yourself at odds with the students, because all you want from them is positive evaluations so you can stay

David: 33:00

That's right.

Ellie: 33:02

Um, the alienation of bullshit jobs seems more to me to be related to a general sense of meaninglessness, that alienation from the activity and from the product, because you're not actually producing anything tangible and you feel like you have very little control over your life.

David: 33:16

So if the dominant category in Graeber's analysis is meaninglessness, then yes, I can see why there would be a significant difference here because the dominant category in Renault's account is insecurity. And that insecurity can be either a material, again, with these short-term contracts where there's no banister for the worker, or it can be psychological insecurity. So one of the examples that he gives, of a modern alienated form of labor is the position of the salaried professional, who, again, makes a lot of money in comparison to somebody working a minimum wage job, but Renault says the salary position does something that you and I Ellie have talked about in our previous episode about capitalism and temporality, which is that it denies the work or the security of knowing that they can clock out, that they can leave the work behind and recede in to that space that Marx really idealized, which is leisure time. And so you might be in a salaried position. You might be making a hundred thousand a year and be really happy about that. For Renault, it doesn't follow that you are not alienated.

Ellie: 34:24

Oh yeah. I thought you said that salaried workers were non alienated in Renault's view..

David: 34:28

No, no, no. These are all alienated modern workers. It's just alienation is not necessarily the same because the source of the insecurity is different. So your insecurity might be again, material, contractual, economic, or it might be psychological, sort of not having the ability to step away from work.

Ellie: 34:48

Mm, I see. Yeah, because like, as an adjunct

David: 34:51

Okay.

Ellie: 34:51

member, I at least had a lot of flexibility over how I spent my day, whereas the person who asked to sit in their office from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM and has maybe a pretty high salary and a lot of security from a financial standpoint feels just completely imprisoned by their office. What do you think about the idea that technology might be further alienating us from our lives, whether it's work or actually like even things outside of work?

David: 35:21

Yeah. So this raises a question about whether alienation applies only to work, and there are all kinds of positions here. So for example, Marx again makes the claim that you're only alienated when you're working and not just when you're working any kind of work, when you're working wage labor. Other people have made the argument that all labor that is productive and economic is alienated. So for example, the German philosopher, Herbert Marcuse, makes that claim. He says, as long as you're working, even if it's not wage labor, there's alienation. So it kind of expands the critique. Now the contemporary philosopher Byung-Chul Han makes the argument that it's not even just work, whether wage or non-wage, but even our leisure time has become alienated because precisely our reliance on technology. So he writes a lot about the attention economy and the way in which technologies like the iPhone, for example, or social media, are having their tentacles reach deeper and deeper into our social life outside of work that we're starting to see the reproduction of something akin to Marxist alienation in non-work settings. So think about something like information exposure fatigue, where you just like are constantly bombarded by notifications because of social media and the iPhone that you become alienated, even from your leisure time.

Ellie: 36:45

Oh my God. is reminding me when I had a short-lived blog in grad school. And I wrote a post how Instagram is a version of alienated labor, because it's encouraging us to externalize ourselves, but then Instagram more owns the product. And there was some debate at the time about whether Instagram did actually own your photos or not, even if they are technically your property, I think you could still argue that an Instagram post is a version of alienation. You're not getting that like reciprocal reflection full picture of your humanity back.

David: 37:18

I get that. When I post a selfie, just my humanity, here it is.

Ellie: 37:24

This is my creation according to the laws of beauty.

David: 37:27

I bet. Yeah and French philosopher Guy Debord has made precisely this argument in his book, Society of the Spectacle, where he says, again, even that time that we spend by ourselves having fun, looking for entertainment as a way of enriching our lives, is now itself a tool of capitalism and therefore a source of alienation.

Ellie: 37:50

Yeah. I'm also thinking about something like the trip that you look forward to for such a long time, that you put a bunch of your wages toward, then when you actually go on it, all you're doing is like taking pictures so you will remember after the fact. I think travel is very alienated in the way that we currently experience it, that in your experience is over determined by like Instagram posts that you've saved or the places you want to go. And the blogs that you've read about where you should go and your Airbnb reviews that have led you to pick a particular place. and so it's not alienation, you know, in the sense that Marx is talking about it by getting wages in return for something you're producing. But I do think it's alienated

David: 38:29

Okay.

Ellie: 38:29

sense that it is a kind of deficient mode of release. In a world where we're not getting a kind of satisfaction in the true sentence, because we're always looking through the lens of the other, whether it's the Instagram post or the blog or the after the fact reflection on, oh, when I will have been on this vacation, as opposed to I'm on this vacation

David: 38:50

Yeah, and I think we could very directly use the four categories of alienation that Marx talks about in the 1844 manuscripts and sort of apply them to a lot of contemporary phenomena, so think about the ways in which social media, which I really detest, yet participate in.

Ellie: 39:07

Minimally.

David: 39:09

The way in which it separates us from others, because we no longer relate to our friends or our followers really as people, but merely in their capacity as possible, like-givers, uh, right. So like it, it creates also a kind of competition amongst people in our social circles for attention, for likes, for comments, and so on and so forth. And so it splits us up in a way that I would say prevents the development of a modern form of class consciousness, which for Marx is the key to the communist revolution that will ultimately result in the abolishment of wage, labor, and private property and the creation of a free world.

Ellie: 40:02

Enjoying this episode? Please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can also connect with us and other listeners on Facebook and Instagram. So David, this conversation is making me want to play a game that I'm going to call alienated or not.

So, Etsy shop owner: 40:25

alienated or not alienated? I had a student write an essay about this, and I'm really curious what you think.

David: 40:34

Spoiler alert. My answer will always be alienated because I don't think there's a lot of non alienated work in our society, but like, wait, what was this specific example that you had.

Ellie: Etsy shop owner: 40:44

you make jewelry and you sell it to people yourself using the app or website Etsy. You get to set the price, you get to set the terms of your labor. And all you have to do is send it in a package and the person receives it and writes you a five star review.

David: 40:59

Huh. Okay. So definitely an interesting category. I would want to know whether Etsy sellers, for example, pay a fee to the website.

Ellie: 41:08

Ooh, that's a good question. Okay. Hold on. I'm Googling it. Yes. There are three basic selling fees: a listing fee, a transaction fee, and a payment processing fee.

David: 41:20

You see, and so there is an element of alienation there. But I also wonder how Etsy sellers relate to one another, because that would give us an insight into the question of species being and solidarity, how they relate to one another. Do they see each other as like, Hey lets unite forces as a way of improving our lot, or is it a really competitive space? I'm just not familiar enough with it.

Ellie: 41:44

Well, it's certainly gotta be competitive in the sense that you are competing for additional buyers over other people and you're competing for reviews. So the success of Etsy shops depends heavily on how many five star reviews you have. And also just like how many reviews you have, right, and so that's a way that Etsy sellers are in competition with each other for sure. they're also treating their sellers as potential reviewers, which I think is probably alienating as well. If you get a nice handwritten note from an Etsy shop when you buy a piece of their jewelry, it's probably because they want a five star review.

David: 42:15

Yeah. So if you have to like do like behind the scene deals where it's like, I'll give you a five star review and you're giving me a five star review. Um, um, yeah, so I, I would say Etsy sellers, alienated.

Ellie: 42:27

Okay. My turn.

David: 42:28

So let me think. What about artists? I'm here thinking about a poet, an independent artist who does poetry and writes that and tries to publish it in various magazines who then pay him or her for that work. And he or she tries to live off of that.

Ellie: 42:46

Yes. So on the one hand, the poet is creating something according to their own plan, right. And also according to their own sort of like creative drives, which may or may not be articulated under a plan. In that sense, you might say that they're not alienated from the process. All they need is a pen and paper, which they own. They own the means of production. But they definitely are alienated from the product if they're trying to publish it and sell it because they will sell it for a price a particular or journal or whatever it is, collection.

David: 43:20

Well, I agree with you that my first intuition would be to say that they are alienated from their work because they have to sell it, especially if they have to give up copyrights to the public, which is what you and I have to do with all our articles. We basically give them away to these large corporations, but I don't know about the process of production, the means of production. And the reason that that's more complicated for me is that I wonder whether a poet, in order to sell their poetry or get it placed in the right magazines, actually has to abide by whatever conventions dominate the present moment. So like, you know, if like absurdist poetry is in and that's what the readers of the magazines are demanding, it seems like that person is having their arm twisted in an indirect way. So even though it's poetry, even though it's art, even though it's creative, I'm not sure that there is no alienation of some sort from the means of production, even though it's kind of organic and spontaneous.

Ellie: 44:21

Yeah, that's a great point. I'm also thinking about the way that, you know, when we think about alienation from species being and alienation from other people, we might say that the poet is, if they want to be successful, likely to be alienated in the sense that they have to create themselves as a product of human capital, they have to have a particular brand. I do know people who have made writing careers out of having a large presence on Twitter or some other form of social media. It's kind of a prerequisite these days to be successful in some sectors of publishing, which is just really to me for so many reasons. so that also shows that it's like, not just purely expressing your species being in connecting with other humans through writing poetry, you are crafting yourself as a brand. Like you might think about Rupi Kaur, the kind of millennial poet who's works were all over Urban Outfitters. like really banal poetry, but Rupi Kaur is like kind of force. She's one of the most famous poets I think of our generation.

David: 45:22

And anybody who is a freelance writer will tell you, making a living out of writing these days is a grind. It's a battle. Uh, not only because the market is so swamped, but because publications are dying, especially literary publications. And so I think that has to figure into our account of whether it's a kind of alienated or non alienated labor, like the material realities matter.

Ellie: 45:44

Yeah.

Jeff Bezos: 45:46

alienated or not.

David: 45:49

Well, you know, I think we might want to say yes, but I have heard the argument that celebrities embody non alienated labor and that yeah, because they live really well. All their needs are met and in many ways they experienced the world as a reflection of them, right, like not a lot of worries.

Ellie: 46:09

But not being worried and having your needs met does not mean you're not alienated.

David: 46:13

I don't agree with that interpretation of celebrity culture as I, you know, but the last thing I want to do is say that the goal of a Marxist revolution would be to turn everybody into like a modern day celebrity. Um, especially because I do think that social concept of alienation or alienation from others is the most important. And I don't think anybody clears that bar in the- status quo.

Ellie: 46:38

very cut off from the world.

David: 46:39

Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, I'm here thinking about some of the testimonies of like big stars who say I literally can't go out because everybody only relates to me as a star. They just want my selfie. I cannot interact with others meaningfully. So they are alienated in a social way as well. They are reduced to an aspect of their personality.

Ellie: 47:01

Wait but what about Bezos?

David: 47:02

Bezos.

Ellie: 47:03

Isn't just a celebrity, right? He's like a multi-billionaire, soon trillionaire.

David: 47:08

Bezos is alienation itself.

Ellie: 47:15

Bezos is the devolution of species being,

David: 47:21

He,

Ellie: 47:21

longer world builders, just pure machines of greed.

David: 47:26

I suppose he's, he's being, he's just individual being, he is the person who is for himself and for himself alone.

Ellie: 47:34

Not generous. I'm going to say he's individual non being. Oh, would be so much more convenient. If he were non being, then he wouldn't be like ruining the world.

David: 47:42

So definitely Bezos out.

Ellie: 47:45

So we should not end our episode with, um, Jeff Bezos. Let's say something briefly about what a future of non alienation might look like. So, David, you and I have had a hard time coming up with an example of non alienated labor in the current moment. Um, Although we didn't talk about people who live off the land and like a commune. Maybe we should have addressed that, but in any case, we're almost out of time. And so we can leave that to our listeners to decide whether alienation or would not still be present there within the backdrop of a globalized capitalist world. in Marx's account, capitalism is an alienating economic structure, and we're never going to find non alienated work within capitalism, which is why he proposes communism. And as you said, David, that still would involve work, but it would involve a kind of work that allows us to find an actual reflection of your human being in your work. Maybe we can just think about one proposal in the contemporary world for non alienated labor. Any candidates come to mind David?

David: 48:46

Well, it's not a candidate for non alienated labor, but it is a candidate for non alienation. And that for me is universal basic income and this notion that people should be able to have an income independently of whether or not they work out of need. And so it liberates individuals from the need to work so that they embark on those projects that are actually meaningful for them. So if I am the kind of person, for example, that loves to bake, then I can start a bakery, not because I need to make ends meet, but because I really want to put myself into my work. I want to do something that represents me well, that I feel proud of and that I know other people will love. And so I become a baker and I think universal basic income is our best contemporary shot at beginning to create a world that is not alienated in a Marxist sense.

Ellie: 49:41

Yeah. I'd have to think about that more to decide strongly either way. But I do think at the very least that the

David: 49:49

Okay.

Ellie: 49:49

wage labor for Marx is at least in part, our dependency on wage labor for meeting our basic needs of survival. And that certainly would be remedied with universal basic income.

David: 50:00

Yeah. And so I don't see what form of alienation wouldn't be solved by universal basic income if UBI was truly universally implemented, um, because it does liberate us from the need to sell our time in exchange for money.

Ellie: 50:17

Well, I think my only concern would be that UBI is a way for kind of offering a baseline of equality, but it doesn't imply that people wouldn't also supplement their UBI with other forms of wage

David: 50:28

Yes.

Ellie: 50:28

still be potential inequality, potential reliance on wage labor, potential competition. Andrew Yang is not a communist.

David: 50:35

Yeah, of course. Um, and so you're exactly right on this, uh, response Ellie, and maybe we wouldn't want to change it to a universal equal income where just, everybody makes the same amount of money. Period. Of course, that's still a second best in comparison to what Marx proposes, which is a wholesale revolution. Yeah. Proletariat takes up arms, takes control of the means of production, and establishes a new social order that doesn't have these fundamental inequalities. But what I like about UBI or universal equal income is that 10 years ago it was nowhere in the horizon, in our political discussions, and suddenly it is, right, with pilot programs starting in various places like in Canada, parts of Europe, even in California. And so it seems like a practical, plausible approach that holds a lot of promise.

Ellie: 51:29

Especially because we're moving away now from this I think very toxic, pseudo social Darwinist mentality that if we didn't have to work for wages and subsistence, we would all be lazy and never get anything done. A lot of humans enjoy productive activity.

David: 51:46

Yeah. And that's why whenever I teach Marx to my students, I really drive home the point that for marks the problem is not labor because labor is in fact the answer. It is through work that we build a better world.

Ellie: 51:59

Okay. Let's get back to work then.

David: 52:04

Okay. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please rate and review us on apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Ellie: 52:14

You can find at overthinkpodcast.com, where you can email us with questions, feedback, or even request for life advice.

David: 52:21

You can also find us on Instagram and Twitter at @overthink_pod. We want to thank our audio editor Ross Harris and our production assistants, Sam Hernandez and Lokyi Ho.

Ellie: 52:31

Thanks to Samuel P.K. Smith for the original music and Trevor Ames for our logo. Thanks so much joining us today.