Alienation- The Modern Condition

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Sacred Heart University Review

Volume 7Issue 1 Sacred Heart University Review, Volume VII,Numbers 1 & 2, Fall 1986/ Spring 1987

Article 3

1-1-1987

Alienation: Te Modern Condition

Nicole Cauvin

Sacred Heart University

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Recommended CitationCauvin, Nicole (1987) "Alienation: Te Modern Condition," Sacred Heart University Review: Vol. 7: Iss. 1, Article 3.Available at: hp://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/shureview/vol7/iss1/3
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N I C O L E X A V I E R C A U V I N

Alienation: The M odern Condition*

Sociologically speaking, one of the chief early sources,of theprob lem atics of alien ation is found in Rou ssea u's Second Discourse.In it , he depicted the na tural goo dness of men and the ir co rrup tion bysociety, stressing the equality which nature established among menand the ineq uality which men have insti tuted.1 He also contem platedthe havoc that society had created in i ts impact upon human nature.All this stimulated his critical views of the fallen condition of man,for the individualism of the Second Discourse was followed by theequally defiant collectivism of the Social Contract.Ro usse au's in dictm ent of society and its deleterious effect was acom m on theme also amo ng G erm an thinkers of the. late 18th andearly 19th centuries. These thinkers deplored, just as Rousseau did,the torn condition of man in modern society. Schiller, for example,claimed that man was torn asunder by the modern division of labor,and that as a specialized cog in the clockw ork of mod ern society, onecould n o longer develop one's full po tentialit ies. The them e was tha tm od ern m an is eternally bou nd to but a small fraction of the who le,and becomes but a fraction and never develops the harmony of hisbeing.2 Instead of representing the totali ty of mankind in one's ownnature, man became but a replica of his business, or his science.

Similar indictments of the al ienat ion of modern man are commonam ong other representatives of Germ an idealism. Fichte, for exam ple,characterized the modern age as marked by "breakdowns."These early thinkers were united in their crit icisms of them odern con dit ion as they highlighted the various m anifestat ions ofcapitalist alienation and as they raised alarm about these manifesta tions over all sph ere s of life. As a wh ole, how eve r, they failed toidentify the causes of the m anifestations of capitalist alienation. T his

is why Marx's greatest sociological contribution to the problematicsof alienation is to be found in his view tha t aliena tion is a function of* This paper is based on a talk delivered in the Spring of 1986 at the SacredHeart University Honors Forum.

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Cauvin: Alienation: The Modern Condition

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N ICO LE X A V IER CA U V IN 33the relationship between human activity and the objects andinstitutions created through his activity.

Alienation may be described as a condition in which.men aredo m ina ted by forces of their own crea tion , forces which confro ntthem as alien powers. This condition creates a feeling of non-involvement and estrangement from one's society and one's culture.Such estrangement renders man incapable of control l ing his owndestiny and incapa ble of identifying with a com m on cu lture, both ofwhich make him incapable of having any significant effect on theevents of the world thr ou gh his own act ion . Th us, m an has beco mean object and not the subject of events.3M od ern society has gon e thr ou gh a series of significant chang eswhich resulted in major alterations in the relationships betweenhuman activity and the objects and institutions created through thisactivity. These changes have greatly diminished the individual 's roleas initiator, the result being a major break in the relations betweenman and the external world, man and society.In modern society, al ienation partakes of four broad relat ionswhich in their distrib utio n cover the who le of hu m an existence. Theyare:

1) Man's relation to his productive activity.2) Man's relation to the product of his activity.3) Man's relation to himself.4) Man's relat ion to the social community.

I refer to aliena tion in the first two relation s as the economic form ofalienation, and in the last two relations as the socio-culturalform ofalienation.

Let us now briefly e xam ine alien ation in each of these re lations.Man's relation to his productive activity.

Alienation here is the result of a break between the individualand one's life activity. That is, he is estranged from his productiveactivity because the aims, means, and methods of his productive

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34 S A C R E D H E A R T U N I V E R S I T Y R E V I E Wactivity are dictated to him. He has no control over the productiveprocess because his movements and tempos are predetermined,designed in a vacu um in an entirely dehu m anized way accord ing tothe rhythms of the machinery and/or of the bureaucratic organization.4 This is true for the assembly-line worker as well as thecollege teach er. In this situatio n, the individua l has become the "fleshand blood app end age " of the machine or of the organiza t ion w herehis par t icipation in organizational decis ion-making is absent or solimited th at it is totally irrelevan t to th e process (e.g., allow ing facultyto pa rticip ate in the budg et p rocess of a university in such a limitedway that their par t icipation has no impact at al l) .Ma n's relation to his product.

Alienation here is the result of a break between the individualand the object of his crea tion. Th is object is turned into a com m od itywhich is impersonal and a non ym ous . The individual who has createdit has no control over it , nor does he control what becomes of itaf terwards. The com mo dity which has been produced obeys the lawsof an entity alien to its creation, i.e., the impersonal laws of themarket.5 The problem here is that the productive activity of theindividual no longer fulfills his own goals, nor his personal projects.It fulfills the goals of someone else. In this situation, the individualceases to be a human being who determines his own needs andbecomes a means, a mo m ent in the objective process of prod uction , ameans of producing commodities .The relationship between these first two types of alienation isobvious. The creator is alienated from the result of his alienatedprod uctiv e activity. Alienated activity results in objects to which theindividual has no connection and thus from which he is estranged.

'Man's relation to himself.Being alienated from his productive activity and from theobjects of this alienated activity, the ind ividua l is also alienated from

himself . The alienation ref lected in this relat ionship is self -estrang em ent, tha t is, the awareness on the part of the individual th athe is engaging in activities that are not rewarding in themselves.Productive activity is an important-part of one's daily life, ofteninvolving more than half of one's waking hours . When work is

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N I C O L E X A V I E R C A U V I N 35meaningless, the individual perceives the self as devoting time andenergy to something unrewarding, that is , something alien. Onefeature that makes the productive activity intrinsically rewarding isvariety in the tasks to be perform ed. A noth er is tha t the pro ductivetask should give the individual a sense of mastery and self-respect.M ono tono us and boring tasks which have no room for an o ppo rtunityto exercise jud gm en t an d initiative lead to self-estrangement.6

By being external to the individual, the prod uctiv e activity is notpart of his nature; consequently, he does not fulfill himself in hisactivity. In fact, he denies himself, since in this activity he loses hisuniqu ene ss, his ability to pla n and judg e his own beh avio r. A ll this iscaused by a force outside of him, whether it be a machine or abureaucratic organization. Assembly-line workers repeating thesam e specialized task a dozen or a hun dre d tim es a day is an exam pleof that self-estrangement. In bureaucratic organizations workers,w ho have no con trol over the wo rk process and do not pa rt icipate inorganizational decision-making, experience this type of estrang em entan d dissatisfaction with their w ork . Such a w orke r has even lost thefreedom of solving non-ro utine problem s. In sum m ary, the individualis involved in an activity which is directed against himself, independentof him, and not belonging to him.Man's relations to the social comm unity.

Alienated individuals interac ting with othe r alienated individualscreate a situation in which they are all alienated from the humancommunity/What is true of ma n's relation to his wo rk an d to himselfis also true of his relationship to other men. The sense of having nocontrol over his work, the product of his work, and himself, leadsmen to have a sense of powerlessness as a generalized orientationtoward the social world. Powerless people feel that they have noinfluence on the events of the world, either throu gh the ir own a ction sor thro ug h com m un al actio ns. This is a different feeling from tha t ofa lack of co ntr ol over events in da y-to -da y life. Fo r exam ple, peoplewho experience powerlessness as a generalized orientation, towardthe social wo rld s trong ly feel tha t it is only wishful think ing to believetha t on e can really influence w hat hap pen s in society at large; tha t itis wishful thinking to believe that the average citizen can have aninfluence on gove rnm enta l decisions; th at it is also wishful thinkin g

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36 S A C R E D H E A R T U N I V E R S I T Y R E V I E Wto believe that making themselves heard will have an impact on thecou rse of world ev ents. Th is is reflected in people no t voting, which ina democracy is dangerous, for i t may lead to Fascism. This form ofalienation fragments society, a fragmentation reflected in norm-lessness, that is, estrangement from the social norms which are amajor feature of the social bond.

In addition, the fragmentation of society leads to a sense ofmeaninglessness, i .e. , a sense that what is going on around one isincomprehensible and meaningless because of the absence of adefinition of the situation and a lack of a set of meanings that theindividu al can use as guidelines for be hav ior. A lack of m ean ing is theresult of estrangement from others, since meanings arise out ofinteraction with others. Alienation from society is in fact culturalestrangement which promotes the breakdown of the commonculture, manifested in a lack of commitment to established culturalfactors, such as the cultural code, cultural values, social institutions,and the like.

Th e fourfold aspec ts of alien ation are interrelated an d have beenwith us.since the rise of capitalism. However, I strongly feel thatduring the different stages of capitalism, some of these aspects seemto do m inate over the others. I believe that to day we are in a period oftransition: from the modern period to another, which some scholarshave cal led ei ther post - indust r ia l i sm or post -modernism. Anunderstanding of what forms of alienation are l ikely to dominate inthe next period requires an understanding of alienation in themodern period where alienation in the first two relations wasdominant, i .e. , the economic forms of alienation.

Th e investigations which have been carried ou t so far abou t thetransi t ion period point to the emerging dominance of what I havelabeled the socio-cultural forms of alienation. Although the socio-cultural forms are connected to the economic ones, they seem to begaining a* momentum of their own during this transition period.W hat can be done a t this point is to briefly p oint out som e of theconsequences of the emergence of the socio-cultural forms ofalienation as the do m ina nt ones in the transition period ; since a fullanalysis of the new dominant forms would seem premature at thist ime.

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N I C O L E X A V I E R CAUVIN 37To day m an's meaninglessness and powerlessness with regard tohimself , socie ty , and cul ture seem to have reached a larmingproportions. We are experiencing a si tuation riddled with a majorcontradiction between man the individual and man the social being.As an individual, he is the cham pion of individual freedom, bu t howcan there be individual freedom where man is powerless over thelaws, con stitution s, cu stom s, and so on that he himself has created? Ifthis is the situation, man's individual freedom becomes meaninglessas he offers allegiance to these socio-cultural items and allowshimself to be dominated by . them.Because of the increased mechanization and bureaucratizationof soc io-cu ltural life in the tran siti on pe riod , all sphe res of life a pp ea rhyper-real, i.e., exceeding reality. Fo r exam ple, the ultimate degradation

the vicarious living of many individuals th rou gh m ovie or music starsand the like has never been so widespread. To take pleasure andacq uire a form of self-fulfillment thr ou gh th e pleasures of the u nrea l,pa pe r-d oll figures crea ted by publicity is an abject confession ofemptiness.7O ur fascination tod ay with the image is again a m anifestation ofthe socio-cultural forms of alienation. The fascination with thecommodity , which was dominant during the modern per iod, iscoupled with our exaggerated fascination during the transit ionperiod with the spectacle. Both commodity and spectacle haveexcluded us by erasing all traces of produ ctive activity and m aterialsupport , which is what makes them hyper-real. They have placedman of the transition period in the passive position of spectator andco nsu m er. W e have allowed ourselves to be locked in the logic of thespectacle, just as we have been locked in that of the commodity,

because t he spectacle affects the loss of the real and provides us withthe fetishistic imag es necessary to de ny th is loss (tha t is, images whichwe worship because we impute magical powers to them). Withcommodity we have a relation between men which assumes theexag gerated form of a relatio n betwee n things. With the spectacle wehave a social relation b etween m en which take s the form of a relationbetween images. In spectacle, "alien ation is turne d into an ima ge forthe a l i ena ted to consume ." Baudrillard, in his essay on the"Precessio n S im ula cra ," laid out the now-fam ous successive phasesof the image:



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38 S A C R E D H E A R T U N I V E R S I T Y R E V I E W

the image reflecting basic reality the image masking and perverting reality the imag e m arking the absence of a basicreality the image bearing no relation to any realitywhatsoever, it is its own pure simulacrum.8

We have reached a point between the image m arking the absence of abasic reality and the image bearing no relation to any realitywhatsoever.These are only som e examples of the man ifestation of the so cio:cultural forms of alienation in the transition period. Many scholarsare investigating other manifestations, such as the breakdown of theco m m on culture and the loss of the code, as other characteristics ofthe socio-cultural form of alienation today. Hopefully, in the nearfuture we will be able to ga in greater insight into th e full im pact ofthis form of con tem po rary alien ation. Ho wev er, as opp osed to someof these scholars who view these contemporary manifestations ofalienation as the death of the social,91 strong ly feel tha t the result ofthese contemporary investigations will st imulate means by whichpower and meaning can:be regained. Or at least they will provide

insights as to how meahinglessness and powerlessness can beattacked'and fought.

ENDNOTESJean Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres Completes (Paris: Editions du Seuil,

1967), Volume 1.2Friedrich Schiller, Schiller: Essays, Aesthetical and P hilosophical(London: G. Bell and Sons, 1984).3Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Moscow:Foreign Language Publishing House, 1961), pp. 69-71."Marx, p. 72.5Marx, p. 74.

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NICO L E XAV IE R CAUV IN 396Marx, p. 76.7Hal Foster, Recordings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics (PortTownsend, Washington: Bay Press, 1985).8Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (New York: Columbia Univ. Press,1983).'Jean Baudrillard, In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities (New York:Columbia Univ. Press, 1983).

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