Work and alienation

WORK & ALIENATION

#0120

18th January 2021

Extraordinary edition

Victorian Age

VS

21st Century

WORK BY: Valeria De Pasquale, Gianluca Gentile, Carolina Monaco 5B

INDEX

01

02

03

What is alienation?

Historical Contex

Life conditions & Long hours of work

Social class division & Low wages

04

05

06

Marx & Alienation

Loss of status as woker

07

08

What about today's life?

Side effects of technology

What is alienation?

Alienation is the state or experience of being isolated from a group or an activity to which one should belong or in which one should be involved. When man feels aimless and does not enjoy his life, his job or his friends, he could be experiencing alienation from the world around him. Alienation is linked with all aspects of our lives.

Historical Context

Although new methods and machinery simplified work and increased output, industrialization introduced new problems as well. Industrialization impacted society in different ways.

During the Industrial Revolution, labor and processes traditionally performed by hand were replaced by new machines that could perform tasks more efficiently.

Life Condition

Victorian Age

Industrialization also exacerbated the separation of labor and capital. Those who owned the means of production became disproportionately rich, resulting in wider income inequality.

There also were health issues brought on by dangerous working conditions or factors as noise and dirt. Air and water pollution and soil contamination resulted in a significant deterioration of quality of life and life expectancy.

Long hours of work

Rapid urbanization brought on by industrialization lead to the general deterioration of workers' quality of life and many other problems for society, such as crime, stress and psychological disorders.

Long working hours lead to poor nutrition and consumption of quick and low-quality foods, resulting in increased incidences of diseases such as diabetes, heart attacks and stroke.

Social class divisions

Low wages

In pre-industrial times, most workers were fairly to highly skilled and were paid by the quality of the product. In industrial times, most workers were less skilled and were paid by the hour or by the piece. In fact, employers wanted to cut costs to maximize profits, and a key way was to cut wages.

Industrialization also exacerbated the separation of labor and capital. Those who owned the means of production became disproportionately rich, resulting in wider income inequality, that was accentuated by the lack of economic subsidies. In fact, there was no workers’ compensation for workplace accidents, no unemployment insurance, no social security.

Loss of status as a worker

Industrialization lead to the migration of workers to cities, automation and repetitive tasks. Due to these factors, factory workers tended to lose their individuality, had limited job satisfaction and felt alienated.

With the introduction of mechanization, workers became like the machines they used. Many workers felt they lost control over their work process, and felt dislocated and alienated from their work.

Marx and Alienation

Workers lose the ability to determine their lives and destinies by being deprived of the right to conceive themselves as the director of their actions, to determine their actions, to define their relationship and to use or own the value of what is produced by their actions.

According to Karl Marx, alienation of people from their “species being”, is the results of a capitalist system. When he talks about species being, Marx refers to what he sees as the intrinsic essence of the species: all beings possess the tendency and desire to engage in multiple activities to promote their mutual survival, comfort and sense of inter-connection.

In a capitalist society (which co-evolved with the Industrial Revolution), the working class own only their labor power and not the results of production. The capitalists employ the proletariat for a living wage, and, in turn, they keep the products of the labor.

Karl Marx

What about today's life alienation?

Alienation at work was described by Marx in the 1840s, but continues to be relevant today. The problem persisted into the 20th and 21st centuries, particularly in low autonomy jobs.

Today factors such as division of labour, and the displacement of certain skills contribute to alienation despite the automation of manual labour.

For this reason the alienating and de-alienating aspects of technology in the 21st century are relevant but should be viewed within the social and economic context in which the technology operates. These include disintegration of skilled jobs, polarisation of demand for skills and a widening income gap.

Despite the technological changes, the key factors causing alienation remain similar to 1840s and can be traced back to the dehumanisation of work and workers by the capitalist system.

SIDE EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY

Infact Kuecker shared, “The things that I do, teaching, writing, and publishing, eventually the computer is going to be able to do, and do it better. And the economics are going to say we have to do it.”This technology has not created a temporary business boom, but changed the entire structure of production.The melt of technology and globalization in the postmodern age has given capitalism the tools it has always wanted to perfect its chase for profits.

Today, the proposition of work is an unstable one. Though most of us consider work to be a fixed and ordinary aspect of human life, time has come to question it. Given the conditions of our postmodern economy, we may be moving from a conversation about the nature of work to one about the existence of work

SOURCES

• https://midnightmediamusings.wordpress.com/2015/07/11/alienation-in-the-21st-century-the-relationship-between-work-and-technology/
• https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/072815/what-are-some-drawbacks-industrialization.asp
• http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~ppennock/L-ImpactWorkingClass.htm