DeAlienationunderCapitalismAlienationunderSocialism

DeAlienationunderCapitalismAlienationunderSocialism

byJoachimIsrael

Source: PRAXISInternational(PRAXISInternational),issue:2/1986,pages:148158,onwww.ceeol.com.

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DE-ALIENATION UNDER CAPITALISM ALIENATION UNDER SOCIALISM? Joachim Israel I. Introduction: A case of self-management in a Swedish factory. In the early 70s a number of young dissatisfied workers began to spend more time together on the job, discussing conditions in the company and trade union matters. They soon discovered that their problems were not individual but collective. This small group of workers decided that something had to be done, and that the first step was to democratize their union. These workers quickly gained the support of other employees and a workers collectivity developed. In 1972, the informal leaders of this group were elected to lead the local. The informal workers collectivity then merged with the formal union organization (L. Svensson, 1984). The quotation stems from a doctoral dissertation, which recently has been presented in our department in Lund. The central theme of this thesis treats the successful attempts of the workers to gain self-determination within a privately owned company and administered according to traditional capitalist principles, which have the maximization of profits as their overriding goal. The company, Almex, is owned by the Wallenberg-group, the largest Swedish capitalist group controlling a major part of Swedish industry, among it several large multinational corporations and being closely interwoven with the dominant financial capital in Sweden. The company manufactures ticket machines for busses, a large part of its products being exported. In 1978, when the study was carried out, the company produced two thirds of the world market demand of ticket machines. Profitability was high amounting to 17% of working capital. Once the union local received support from a united workers collectivity, it was able to more easily influence management decisions. In the beginning this was not a simple task (op. cit. p. 237). The impetus to establish self-government came when the production process was radically changed from assembling mechanical machines to electronic ones. The change required new skills and knowledge which the workers did not yet possess. They arranged themselves through their union training courses in which they acquired the skills needed. During the seventies there developed a tendency in Sweden to introduce group participation in the production process within industry and in public service. Usually these attempts for an organizational change were initiated by the employers or by committees formed jointly by representatives of the union and management. The goal was to test new forms of organization. Though there was some talk

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about democratization of the production process, the goal of management was to create flexible and stable conditions for the process of production in order to increase productivity. The working group was used for social control and for creating or increasing motivation to work. (For a summary of these attempts and their results, see L. D. Svensson, 1984.) Usually these trials were initiated and set to work without receiving the consent of the employees concerned, though their union representative had to agree. The attempt mentioned at the beginning was quite different. It was initiated by the workers themselves. The local union was weak, union officials usually were promoted and became foremen. Hence the workers created an informal collectivity and succeeded in taking over the leadership of the local union. Thereafter in 1975 the workers succeeded in achieving self-management with regard to the production process in which they were involved and participation through their representatives at the board of the company, at an economic committee treating the economy of the company, including production and export, at an environmental protection committee, in which the workers were in the majority. In addition, there were daily contacts between workers representatives and management. Participation in decisionmaking was the pre-condition for self-management on the production level (for details see Gardell & Svensson, 1981). The process of production can be viewed as a game in which workers are transformed into objects leading to lack of knowledge concerning their own conditions and splitting up the workers collective with atomization and individualization as a result. The first step in the process of transformation was the workers discovery that they had common problems. That in turn made them eager to acquire knowledge about conditions on a macro- as well as on a microlevel. The workers arranged study circles, acquired new knowledge and developed solidarity between themselves. Their changed consciousness made them act: first by organizing wild-cat strikes, by reorganizing the local union and making it into a strong instrument for their fight and, finally, by demanding and achieving self-management and participation in decisionmaking. By their own efforts the workers succeeded in transforming themselves from objects exposed to the arbitrary actions of management and its representatives, into subjects being able to control their own fate. In interviews, the workers expressed this process of the transformation or Umkehrung. They perceived themselves as human beings and not only as objects or things. Contributing to their experience was the fact that they themselves had been able to fight for their rights and to obtain them without any help from outside. In fact their central unionthe metal workers unionwas skeptical in regard to these attempts. The trade union organisation LO was opposed, since its leadership in a bureaucratic manner favoured central negotiations and wished to monopolize initiatives. The change in the production process affected various areas of the workers life. They became more active in union affairs both at the local level and in the organisation in general; they took active part in political processes in political parties. Finally they discovered that they were persons, having problems in

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their private life, e.g., marriage problems, which made them arrange study circles and contact a psychologist. Let me briefly mention the situation to-day about ten years later. The company did not succeed in developing new products and tried to acquire an English company which already had developed a new machine. The acquisition turned out to be a failure and workers were dismissed. In the summer of 1984, management abolished the formal contract guaranteeing self-management and participation in decision-making. The production system has been computerized and allows for a strict control of workers. Hence traditional capitalistic leadership and control has been restored and workers are again labour power only. Still I think the case is interesting from a point of view of workers strategy as well as from a theoretical point of view: Is de-alienation possible under capitalistic modes of production and if not, do the changed relations of production as in the countries of real existing socialism lead to dealienation? Obviously in the latter case the answer is obvious. But the question concerning possibilities of de-alienation under capitalism is worth analysing. In order to do so, however, let me briefly review some of the theoretical aspects of alienation and reification. II. A summary of the Marxian theory of alienation. In order to analyze the results of the empirical study discussed and their relevance for a theory of alienation and de-alienation, I want to summarize briefly the Marxian theory of alienation and then examine the relation between the concept of alienation and that of reification. Following Marx, I previously in my work on alienation distinguished the sociologicalphilosophical use of the concept of alienation from its use in describing psychological processes and/or states (1971, 1985). Marx speaks of alienation as the social power, i.e., the multiplied productive force (German Ideology), which appears to the producers as a natural (naturwchsige) force. This social power is characterized by the fact that it appears as existing outside the individual and independent of his intentional and intended actions, and in fact acting in contradiction to his intentions. This social force dominates the producer and transforms him into an object in the process of production. Whereas in the precapitalist mode of production, the producer, representing living labour, is the subject in the societal process of production and dead labour, i.e., the objectified products of living labour, is the object in the process of production, capitalist production accomplishes a Umkehrung, a negation to speak in Hegelian terms. Dead labour produced and created by living labour now becomes the subject of the process of production, subjugating living labour under its own dominance and transforming the producer into the object of the process. Hence living labour creates the means of its own enslavement in a continuous way. I have pointed out in another place that the process of alienation as conceptualized in this way is modelled in accordance with Hegels famous master-servant relationship, where, however, the Umkehrung works in the

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opposite direction. The servant, being originally the object, liberates himself through his own labour and becomes the subject of the historical process (1985). There are mainly three factors, which according to this conceptualization are instrumental in creating alienation. First, there is the societal division of labour which confronts the producer, being a powerless object in the process of production, with the societal power, personified through the owner of capital. Therefore a second factor is the private ownership of capital, i.e., of the means of production. This does not only allow for the private appropriation of the results of the societal process of production and hence for the increase in power of decision-making by personified capital, it also strengthens the societal division of labour. Hence private ownership and appropriation presupposes the societal division of labour with regard to power and decision-making, and at the same time maintains and eventually strengthens it. A third postulated factor is the existence of abstract labour, producing commodities in a process in which the labour power of the producer itself is transformed into a commodity and exposed to the arbitrary functioning of the market. In the market economy, market relations dominate and all types of social and societal relations tend to be transformed into market relations. As a consequence of the process of alienation, to which the producer is exposed, and into which he is socialized, he becomes alienated from his own activity, from the result or product of his activity, from his social relations to his co-producers and finally from himself and his creative abilities, conducive for self-realization as well as accepting a false consciousness (which in this context refers to the acceptance of alienating powers as natural ones). According to G. Markus (1981) alienation is a philosophical category used to characterize whole epochs and social systems from the point of view of radical criticism. Its value content is based on a conception of history as progress (G. Markus, op. cit.), specifically, progress viewed as the historical extension and intensification of that network of social contacts, into which the individuals are enmeshed (ibid.), a process not being controlled by the individual and which therefore represents a case of involuntary socialization. One must add, however, that the process of involuntary socialization is central in societal praxis and hence a human product. III. The conceptual relation of alienation to reification. In any process of production there occurs objectification, i.e., the production of objects through human purposive and intentional action, objects being necessary or desirable for the reproduction of the individual and society. These objects hence represent the mental, intellectual and manual capabilities of man, created by means of a conscious project, i.e., the societal praxis predominating in a given historical epoch. Hence objectification is the externalization and materialization of human powers. The process of objectification, i.e., the process by which objects and societal institutions are produced, occurs in any economic system and serves

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the reproduction of the system and its members. Within the capitalist mode of production the process of objectification is reified. According to Marx there occurs a fetishization by which social relations between men are transformed into relations between objects and relations between commodities, i.e., objects, appear as social relations. The theory of reification comprises four aspects (F. Fehr & A. Heller, 1979): the criticism of commodity production, the criticism of institutions (functioning in a reified way), the criticism of ideologies, i.e., false consciousness and the criticism of the acceptance of everyday life and knowledge of it as natural and given. According to G. Markus, alienation and reification can be conceptually differentiated such that alienation refers to the antagonistic character of mans socialization in history and reification to the antagonistic character in which labour as metabolism with nature becomes detached from social interaction between men (op. cit.). He adds that both alienation and reification are aspects of the one and the same historical process, aspects differentiated only through abstraction and in reality mutually presupposing each other (ibid.). I have tried to analyze the relation between alienation and reification in a somewhat different way. Alienation as a societal process is seen as the consequence of three inter-acting processes: private ownership; the societal division of labour; and market relations, which are allowed to dominate other societal relations. In highly developed industrialized societies, independently of whether they are capitalistic or the type of social system, manifested in Eastern societies, problems of ownership conditions, essentially ownership of the means of production becomes increasingly subordinated to control and the disposition of the means of production. Without going into details, in modern capitalist societies, the means of production are not necessarily controlled by those who own them. This fact transforms the problem of ownership into the problem of societal power: control and disposition of material sources whether in the West or the East allows for control over individuals in three areas: in the process of production where human beings are transformed into the commodity labour power; in the process of distribution of the societal product in which human beings are transformed from consumers into buying power and where the distribution of wealth becomes responsible for what is produced. Finally through technical development, i.e., through the development of productive forces, a process of concentration occurs, creating huge bureaucracies in private enterprises in the West. Furthermore state bureaucracies in the West are the consequence of the necessity of state intervention into the economy, whereas in the East the state and party bureaucracy is the result of a specific societal development. Bureaucracies then are the third factor which transform human beings into objects. Hence the problem of reification, i.e., human beings transformation into powerless objects and treated as such, is then, according to my opinion, the way alienation manifests itself in our epoch and in the social systems which have developed in the West as well as in the East. Furthermore, reification is the central problem in the societies of real existing socialism.

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We have already given a hint that ownership conditions as such seem to have become less important in capitalist societies. Let me give a concrete example. Volvo, the largest Swedish industrial company, congratulates itself that it is owned by more than 120,000 shareholders, but that no one of them owns a sufficient amount of shares to dictate the policy of the company (one of the largest owners, possessing about 5% of the shares, is the state pension fund, which at meetings of the companys board is represented by a worker and a white collar representative, both employed by Volvo). Decision-making rests in the hands of the managing director and his board, controlled by him, though he himself does not possess an amount of shares, which would insure him ownership powers.1 Volvo thus is an example of the separation of ownership and control as well as disposition over the means of production. Though the managing director controls the company, his control is affected by market and competition conditions, nationally and internationally. At the same time, Volvo has such a central position in the Swedish economy that no government social democratic or bourgeois could act in contradiction to the companys interest without affecting the Swedish economy. As a consequence the Swedish social democratic government has formed a partnership of mutual interest with Volvo.2 If Volvo would consider it favourable for its production and productivity, management could with the consent of the workers introduce selfmanagement and participation in decision-making.3 At the same time, as the Almex case indicates it could abolish such a change when it so wishes. However, one conclusion stands out: Private ownership conditions as such are not sufficient conditions for the functioning of capitalism and hence for the creation of alienation and reification. In fact, the abolition of private ownership does not prevent alienation and reification. IV. 1. A short note on value and exploitation. The above conclusion is also suggested by another line of reasoning. One of the arguments used in marxist thinking for overcoming private ownership is the acquisition of surplus value and hence the exploitation of workers, which in turn is based upon the value theory. This theory in turn is based upon two assumptions, regarded as logically related: 1) All value is created by human labour, and 2) The value of a commodity is determined by the socially necessary labour time to produce it. The first thesis may be correct if it is placed within a historical context, where in the beginning at least human labour created value. It is, however, not correct if we assert that such is always the case in a capitalist society. This is, however, only a minor objection. The main argument is the following: The second thesis does not follow logically from the first one and can even contradict it (see Steedman & Sweezy, 1981). Assume that we have a commodity, which previously was not produced by human labour, but is now,

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e.g., unpolluted air bottled up. Unpolluted air, before it became a produced commodity, had a value not produced by human labour. It may now have a value which may be derived from the socially necessary labour time to produce it. Take another example. We may have another commodity, the production of which previously needed labour time, but does not now, e.g., oil which is pumped from the well directly into a tanker. This oil should not now have a value. In the first example, there exists a contradiction between the thesis that only human labour produces value and the second thesis concerning socially necessary labour time. In the second example, there exists a contradiction since there exists value without necessary labour time. The contradictions are related to another assumption, namely that value and price are related to each other. In an interesting analysis based upon Sraffas theories, it has been shown that this is not the case. (See I. Steedman, 1977.) The price of a commodity can be determined by the physical conditions of the production process, e.g., the technique used and of the wage. So can the value. Value and price, however, are not related to each other, so that the one can be transformed into the other: This can be diagramatually be represented such: Physical conditions of production wage

Profit
Value Surplus value

Price

What about exploitation? Exploitation does not follow logically from the labour theory of value with its two theses. Exploitation is a consequence of another normative thesis, stating that it is unjustified for a capitalist to appropriate surplus value. My conclusion then states that the mutual conditions of private ownership of the means of production and the labour theory of value, due to their inherent contradictions should not be used to explain alienation. If ownership conditions play a role then they do so only because of the consequence societal power they entail. IV. 2. Market and commodity relations. In addition to ownership conditions the market and commodity relations are considered to be conditions creating alienation and reification. Private ownership and a commodity market are usually thought to be interdependent and necessary conditions for capitalist production. In fact, it appears now that the historical coincidence of private ownership and market relations is neither logically nor economically necessary related. Private ownership can be and is combined with control of the market; and, state ownership can be combined with market conditions.

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Furthermore there exists a traditional marxist thesis that a market economy carries with it chaotic conditions and an irrational use of scarce resources. The defenders of a market economy have pointed out the markets informative function and criticized the consequences of substituting a market economy by a planned economy: the creation of a huge and extremely inefficient bureaucratic apparatus which also leads to chaotic conditions, waste and irrational use of scarce resources. It appears, therefore that one can choose between the irrationality of the market economy and that of a planned economy. Furthermore, whereas in a capitalistic market economy, use-value is subsumed under exchange-value; in a planned economy use-value is subordinated under what I call, plan-value: It is the value attributed by the ruling class to the products through the fact that they maintain or increase its material resources used for political and social control. The subordination of use-value under plan-value leads to a dictatorship over needs (F. Fehr et. al. 1983), disregarding the wishes and preferences of the population, and especially to production without taking into account economic, social and human costs. The conclusion is that market relations may contribute to alienation and to fetishism, but that the abolition of market relations does not abolish alienation and reification. Therefore we now are left with the third condition, the societal division of labour. The main dimension within this division of labour is the societal division of power: Power is executed through four channels; 1) economic power through the control and disposition of material resources; 2) political power through the control of the state apparatus; 3) ideological power through the control of education and mass media, and finally; 4) coercive power through control of police and military. Power has a zero sum function: either one has it through the mentioned channels or one does not have it. Certainly among those who have power there may be differences with regard to the amount of decision-making to which they have access, but the dividing line goes between those with various degrees of power and those who do not have power. Those who do not have power then will be exposed to reification, i.e., their transformation into objects. The intensity of reification, according to this reasoning, varies with the concentration of the various power channels in the hands of the same group or class. Hence the intensity of reification should be strongest in the countries of real existing socialism. In countries with political democracies, political and economic power channels are separated, though not unrelated: political power has its constraints. It cannot transcend the functioning of the economic system, though it can modify it and set certain limits. Through guaranteed freedom of organization and expression, the intensity and the range of reification can be decreased. In summary, then, we consider the division of labour as expressed in the distribution of power a necessary condition for alienation and reification respectively. Furthermore the unequal distribution of power has to be perceived as unjust or morally unacceptable, or from a political point of view as wrong. Hence a moral and political position condemning lack of equality is another

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necessary variable for alienation/reification. Hence, the experience of powerlessness is a subjective indicator of alienation. If the moral position is absent then the unequal distribution of power may be regarded as unproblematic. V. Concluding remarks. We have tried to conceptualize reification in terms of the transformation of human beings from beings who are subjects into beings who are objects. We have tried to show that the process of reification varies according to intensity and extension. Traditionally in marxist theory, ownership conditions as well as market conditions have been considered to be of decisive importance. We have tried to direct attention to the third condition creating reification: the societal division of power. Only to the degree that ownership and market relations are related to the distribution of power, they are postulated to influence alienation and reification. This is an important change in the conceptualization of the process of reification, a change which reflects the change in the societal functions of ownership. It is not private ownership of means of production which is an important societal relation since it is a legal relation primarily. It is the factual control and disposition of these means which is a predominant societal relation. Neither is the negation of private ownership through nationalization a sufficient condition for the abolishment of reification. The negation has itself to be negated by the control and disposition of the means of production through the associated producers. Neither do market relations as such determine reification. One has to differentiate between a market economy which has important informative functions and in which consumers can express their priorities and a market society, based upon possessive individualism and the notion that society does not owe anything to the individual and that the individual is free to act in accordance with his/her self-interests. A market economy combined with a well functioning welfare-state and political democracy are necessary though not sufficient conditions for de-alienation which is, in theory, achievable also in a capitalistic society. Free and strong labour unions, even if they are bureaucratized, represent a countervailing force against capitalist as well as against a state bureaucracy. Finally, a few words on the distinction between alienation/reification as a societal process and the experience of this process on a psychological level. It has been a tradition in empiricist sociology to define psychological alienation as experience of powerlessness, normlessness etc. In opposition to this conceptualization we want to maintain that the experience of powerlessness, e.g., in the production process, is a correct experience and may be the first and necessary step for realizing ones own situation and for attempts to change it. Furthermore there has been a tendency to downgrade activities among workers to change their daily conditions, since it has been argued that only structural changes within society at large will have a longstanding effect because only such changes can transcend (Aufheben) existing structural

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constraints. I do not share this position. Change has to be carried out on several levels: on the personal level an individual may change his outlook, his/her knowledge and his/her conduct. On an organizational level communication and social control maybe changed. These two levels are necessary complements to a change in the societal structure and they do not need to be co-ordinated with a change in the societal structure. One of the workers, interviewed in the study presented, said:
Everybody has knowledge, but if one believes that one cannot change ones situation one does not use the knowledge one possesses ... It was that which happened to us. We started to use the knowledge which was concealed within ourselves.

But a mobilization of existing knowledge and the acquisition of new knowledge was not the only effect of self-determination:
The most important was that the employees obtained a value as a human being through the change in the working organization ... This is the only chance to change society. If one is oppressed at the job, one is unable to achieve anything else. One is rarely able to live.

But even workers live only once and it is no consolation for them that a revolution in a distance future may create the necessary changes. There is furthermore one important fact: Workers did not only receive new knowledge, self-confidence and an experience of having value as human beings. They also became politically more conscious.
When I started here I did not have any idea about socialism. In the school one never talked about it. But now I have become interested and have started to think

says one of the interviewed workers, whose comment may serve as an optimistic ending to this analysis.
1. The Volvo company has developed an intricate system to protect itself against the influence of the huge financial capital groups in Sweden, controlling the majority of Swedish industrial enterprises. Together with the largest contractor and building companyone of Europes largestVolvo has created a system of cross-ownership:Asizeable part of Volvos shares are controlled by Skanska, the contractor enterprise. In turn a sizeable part of Skanskas shares are controlled by Volvo. Cross-ownership is created through an intricate system of holding companies, being themselves controlled by the two companies. In both casesVolvo and Skanskadecision-making control rests in top management, which does not own a decisive amount of shares. (Marx already pointed out in the third volume of Capital that stock companies represent the Aufhebung of capitalism in a capitalistic manner.) 2. When Swedish shipyards because of Japanese competition, started to incur huge losses, the state took over and nationalized them in order to preserve workingplaces, and continued to run them with huge yearly losses. In the beginning of 1985 the social democratic government decided to close down the largest of these yards, employing several thousand workers and being the only large working place in that town. The close-down was combined with another announcement that Volvo, receiving state subsidies, would build a large factory to ensure employment and, obviously, to make more money.
3. In fact, Volvo like all other firms must respect certain participation rules, created by laws: In 1974 the Job Security Act was originated, regulating hiring and firing of employees. Dismissal of employees has

NOTES

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to follow rules stipulated in the law. In the same year also The Shop Steward Act was inaugurated ensuring union officials company payment for carrying out their union duties. A third piece of legislation, enacted the same year, was the Job Promotion Act, intended to ensure elderly and handicapped people jobs. In 1976, theBoard RepresentationAct was enacted, insuring the Unions two representatives on boards of those companies which have more than 50 employees. In 1977, The Codetermination Act was enacted, obliging the employer to inform the union concerning changes in production, economy, employment etc., and to negotiate with the union before any more important changes are carried through. The EqualityAct of 1978 proscribes discrimination of women in working life. Finally, The Work Environment Act of 1978 insures a majority of the employees in the companys health and environment committee. Union representatives can stop production, conceived as dangerous until State inspection. Finally, in 1984, legislation created theEmployersFundsto ensure profitsharing. The act provides for a yearly transfer of about 2 billion Swedish Crowns from company profits during a five year period into four regional wage owners funds.

4. See also I. Steedman and P. Sweezy (ed) The Value controversy, 1981.

REFERENCES
F. Fehr & A. Heller, Diktatur ber Bedrfnisse, Hamburg 1979 F. Fehr, A. Heller, G. Markus, Dictatorship over needs, Oxford 1983
B. Gardell & L. Svensson, Medbestmmande och sjlvstyre, Stockholm 1981 J. Israel, Alienation: from Marx to Modern Sociology, Boston 1971 J. Israel, Der Begriff Entfremdung, Hamburg 1985

G. Markus, Alienation and reification in Marx and Lukcs Thesis Eleven 1981. No. 3 L. Svensson Arbetarkollektivet och facket, Lund 1984 I. Steedman Marx after Sraffa, London 1977 I. Steedman & P. Sweezy (ed.) The Value Controversy, London 1981

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