Confused about alienation

[t0pg4dg3t]

Hi all, I'm confused about the idea of alienation. According to how I've read it, it comes from our work being directed by someone else because of private property, instead of by ourselves. But I don't know how to apply this concept, for example how alienation might lead to mental illness or to religiousness.

Also I'm confused how a socialist society would do away with alienation, how would society be able to function without people having to do things that they wouldn't do naturally if they were self directed?

[Kamaradas]

Alienation isn't coercion generally, it's a specific manifestation of this. Likewise, 'patriarchy' or opposition to it wouldn't imply opposition to coercion, but to a specific form of it.

Alienation isn't merely coercion directed upon a person, it's a way in which the person can act - which involves coercion eventually. It isn't workplace hierarchy, it rather concerns how this work takes place, and how people treat their own social relations. They work, and this work because of how it is usually done then forms an edifice standing above them - people can direct their work, but they are not merely the work itself or the people's own activity. You are generalising to simplify things, but by that point the question becomes vague.

Feudalism was very much about formalised top-down authority, but capitalism is about what people can themselves do, and it rising above them. If alienation can survive here, then, its origin is not in formalised authority but in the origin of this.

Alienation was originally applied economically, not psychologically. Alienation was concerned with religion in some ways, but in terms of the social phenomenon or organised religion rather than just in similar terms to 'mental illness' and psychological inventions.

[Wessex Way Monster]

how would society be able to function

Do you think that really matters to an insurgent who is being coerced into the relationships that force it to do labour it prefers not to? No, the only thing that matters is autonomy.

[t0pg4dg3t]

Do you think that really matters to an insurgent who is being coerced into the relationships that force it to do labour it prefers not to? No, the only thing that matters is autonomy.

OK when you put it like that it seems a silly question. So will society not exist after the revolution or is there another way to ensure that people do what needs doing? How do we work out who cleans the toilets for example?

And does autonomy lead to less mental illness, religiousness and other symptoms of alienation? And how/why? What's the connection?

[Wessex Way Monster]

So will society not exist after the revolution or is there another way to ensure that people do what needs doing? How do we work out who cleans the toilets for example?

This is the same question asked in a different way. Again, none of that matters to the insurgent.

And does autonomy lead to less mental illness, religiousness and other symptoms of alienation? And how/why? What's the connection?

I would argue that mental illness isn't as simple as just being a reaction to alienation. I will say alienation can be a cause of mental illness, but that more than one might expect of mental illness would remain after the destruction of capital. Religiousness is a pretty vague term so I won't comment on that.

[(A)]

It basically comes down to power.

Power to direct ones own life and to work together with people.

Capitalism takes the productive power away from society and concentrates it in the hands of the land owners.
The ability to be productive and control ones own product is freedom, freedom from rule.

Now for Humanity what this means is that if we lose this power we have to fight each other for the ability to produce created by the Dictatorship over production.
This fight destroys our society as we are not meant to fight each other. We know humans only managed to dominate the planet by cooperation.
If other animals could cooperate as well as us we would be fucked as they have sharp teeth and claws.

Capitalism alienates us from society. This alienation really fucks with people. People in power become sadists and people without become aggressive towards each other with just the slightest push.

EDIT*

I happened upon this and I thought it would help. https://youtu.be/FqPwr-cVz_M

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

A few provisional thoughts:

1) Alienation, in Marx's usage, refers specifically to the separations between producer/product/society, in which one's productive activity produces products - and, collectively, produces an entire society - which the producer can not take part in directly, but only through the wage/money. Social life, in this context, takes the apparent shape of relationships between things - the flow of money and commodities - rather than relationships between people.

2) How will people do the things worth doing without the mediation of money/wages/etc.? Well, the way they did through the vast majority of pre-state human history. People, generally, are wont to organize their collective food/clothing/shelter simply for its own sake. Hell, people will usually even go above and beyond, creating art, ritual, rules for collective living, etc. without any sort of coercive intervention.

3) On alienation/autonomy and mental illness, I don't think I can possibly do justice, but will recommend the work of RD Liang, as well as the Frankfurt School.

[Fellow_Human]

It basically comes down to power. Capitalism takes the productive power away from society and concentrates it in the hands of the land owners.

Seeing that we've moved past feudalism, I'm curious why you singled out landowners from the rest of the bourgeoisie.

If other animals could cooperate as well as us we would be fucked as they have sharp teeth and claws.

To be fair, though, besides cooperation, the rise of civilization also required the ability to create and operate complex tools/technologies. The relations of production are largely limited by the means of production.

I happened upon this and I thought it would help.

Yes, the increasing encroachment of the transactional into the personal. The dehumanization coming with commodity fetishism demands a strict separation between one's private life and one's career. Instead of the personal taking over the commercial, the commercial is taking over the personal. That's the main reason why most company policies frown on hiring and placing relatives/couples in the same department (even without a supervisory/reporting relationship), because they'll bring their "personal baggage" to the workplace, failing to make it "professional." "Professional," for them, necessarily means impersonal, being at all times ready to cut each other's throats for a promotion's sake. And the higher up the pay ladder the occupation is, the worse it is. Instead of the workplace being one's second home and coworkers being natural friends, friendship is reduced to "networking," and marriage to cohabitation with insurance benefits.

Quite interesting how Bookchin's ideas influenced Rojava in Syria.

[(A)]

I have been arguing with capitalists so my arguments have been about property lately and how it correlates to capital production and the ability to control the market.

If you have exclusive rights to a means of production then you have direct control over the society's productive capability. This power to control production and distribution is a large part of alienation and what is wrong with
any mode of production from the feudal system to our current one. I believe only by ending the controls and systems over society's productive power can you really end the capitalist relation between ruler and ruled.

It is not enough to transfer ownership to a government or a new set of owners who still possess private and exclusive power to direct production.
That is simply capitalism by another name.

For me worker control means each worker controls his own production and distribution according to his needs. As we are interdependent on each others needs this will create a cooperative mode of production that will
end the need for exchange value and commodification far better and far more likely then giving ownership of the factory's to the government.

[ComradeAllende]

Hi all, I'm confused about the idea of alienation. According to how I've read it, it comes from our work being directed by someone else because of private property, instead of by ourselves. But I don't know how to apply this concept, for example how alienation might lead to mental illness or to religiousness.

I'm not quite an expert on Marx's theory of alienation, so forgive me if I butcher it too much. Basically, Marx developed his theory of alienation during the second wave of the industrial revolution in Europe (1840-1870?). As we all know, that period was one of great contradictions, most notably the increasing productivity of labor and the horrid conditions in working-class slums. New technologies and modes of organizing production arose, displacing the skilled craftsmen and artisans with unskilled and semi-skilled workers. At the same time, there decrepit housing infrastructure, polluted water pumps, uncollected garbage, etc. Not to mention the workplace itself, were hundreds if not thousands of semi-skilled and unskilled workers would work on machines for hours on end. Marx and his philosophical successors theorized that the increasingly automated and standardized nature of work was turning men into machines, that their humanity was drained from them as they effectively became one with the machines that they worked on. The monotony of working-class work, as well as the capitalist's desire for efficiency and "rational" production techniques, contrasted with the relatively relaxed mode of production under the old craftsmen, who were skilled at their profession and had a great deal of control over their simplistic means of production (workshop, tools, etc). Many of these workers had previously been farmers who moved to the cities due to the increasingly automated and efficient agrarian sector, which reduced the number of land-owning peasants and yeomen. In response to the general shock of factory conditions (as opposed to the "relaxed" nature of agricultural work), many workers embraced religion as a panacea to their internal suffering. Basically, working in a degrading job tends to make your life miserable, both physically and emotionally. Ask anyone who's ever worked in a blue-collar or even service-sector (namely retail) position.

Also I'm confused how a socialist society would do away with alienation, how would society be able to function without people having to do things that they wouldn't do naturally if they were self directed?

Socialism, to the best of my knowledge, would eliminate (or more realistically minimize) alienation in three ways. The first is that socialism would allow workers to control the production process democratically, as opposed to the modern system of capitalists and managers dictating policies. Part of the reason why blue-collar work is so alienating is because you don't have any control over what you do; your boss gives you orders and you obey them without hesitation.
Second, socialism will separate the means of consumption from employment and grant everyone access to food, medical care, and housing (communism assumes the virtual abolition of scarcity and the elimination of various rationing schemes such as the labor voucher system or a greatly compressed wage-differential system) regardless of their status in employment (in any case, full employment would be prioritized). This (along with measures that allow for job flexibility) will allow workers to choose jobs/careers based on their tastes and skills, rather than the need for compensation.
Finally, socialism will enable us to eliminate degrading and humiliating jobs via automation and thereby reduce the number of "dirty jobs" for people to do. As any minimum wage opponent will tell you, mandating a living wage for low-skilled work will eventually lead to automation. The capitalist will interpret this as a defense of low wages. The socialist, in contrast, uses this to agitate against low-skilled labor and the alienation it engenders, opting for an automated future and an egalitarian distribution of the wealth and time-savings.

[t0pg4dg3t]

This is the same question asked in a different way. Again, none of that matters to the insurgent.

So you're saying that an insurgent doesn't care about the future that they're creating for themselves and others? Or am I reading you wrong here?

I would argue that mental illness isn't as simple as just being a reaction to alienation. I will say alienation can be a cause of mental illness, but that more than one might expect of mental illness would remain after the destruction of capital. Religiousness is a pretty vague term so I won't comment on that.

So would you say that mental illness is caused by genetics or something rather than as a response to society? Usually I see Marxists arguing the latter but it doesn't seem you're a Marxist anyway. By religiousness I meant like having religion as a way of coping with the world

[t0pg4dg3t]

Thanks for the video, I'll take a look when I get the chance

[t0pg4dg3t]

A few provisional thoughts:

1) Alienation, in Marx's usage, refers specifically to the separations between producer/product/society, in which one's productive activity produces products - and, collectively, produces an entire society - which the producer can not take part in directly, but only through the wage/money. Social life, in this context, takes the apparent shape of relationships between things - the flow of money and commodities - rather than relationships between people.

I'm a little confused on this point. What do you mean by taking part directly rather than through a wage? Like, at the moment if I want to see Spurs play I pay for a ticket, get a seat and turn up to watch. Which bit of this isn't direct (paying for the ticket I'm assuming but not too sure what you mean here) and how would this experience be different in a socialist society (assuming there is still organised football?!)

2) How will people do the things worth doing without the mediation of money/wages/etc.? Well, the way they did through the vast majority of pre-state human history. People, generally, are wont to organize their collective food/clothing/shelter simply for its own sake. Hell, people will usually even go above and beyond, creating art, ritual, rules for collective living, etc. without any sort of coercive intervention.

I have to admit that I'm pretty clueless here. But the impression I've always had from others I've spoken to (usually online, and none of them socialists it has to be said) is that the state came into being to manage human activity when communities got too big to manage themselves? Like, communities of a couple of families or whatever can get along without official authority but tribes of thousands of people need a bit more coordinating?

3) On alienation/autonomy and mental illness, I don't think I can possibly do justice, but will recommend the work of RD Liang, as well as the Frankfurt School.

I'll keep it in mind for the future, thanks. Right now I'm still struggling a bit with the basics!

[t0pg4dg3t]

Basically, working in a degrading job tends to make your life miserable, both physically and emotionally. Ask anyone who's ever worked in a blue-collar or even service-sector (namely retail) position.

Thanks for the history and for this summary. I work in a retail job at the moment. So basically having to do the same thing over and over again for 50+ hours a week with little real human interaction is what alienation is? And then some people use religion to cope with this, or others slip into mental illness?

The socialist, in contrast, uses this to agitate against low-skilled labor and the alienation it engenders, opting for an automated future and an egalitarian distribution of the wealth and time-savings.

Your explanation was helpful but this bit confused me. So socialists should argue for higher minimum wages to try and make less people employed/employable in certain jobs? And if we do this won't more people just be unemployed and have to rely on benefits which are being removed/limited?

[Wessex Way Monster]

So you're saying that an insurgent doesn't care about the future that they're creating for themselves and others? Or am I reading you wrong here?

I'm saying that an insurgent is unconcerned with the function of society,becaise what we collectively recognize as society can only be seen as coercive.

So would you say that mental illness is caused by genetics or something rather than as a response to society? Usually I see Marxists arguing the latter but it doesn't seem you're a Marxist anyway. By religiousness I meant like having religion as a way of coping with the world

I think that a lot of mental illness does come from a response to our social settings, yes. But I do think that we will be surprised ad to the amount that doesn't emerge from these social settings, and instead the social settings leftists want to create. And tbh I wouldn't be surprised to find that what we consider mental illness changes radically if we were to destroy capital and coercion.

Religiousness would go away with no coercion I suspect. But not spirituality.