Despite Marx wrote his manuscripts more than one hundred years ago, we may find that most of his theory is still “useful” for those Scientifics who advocate their lives trying to understand the human and social beings.
The term of alienation arose in a particular historical context. The Industrial Revolution changed most of the daily and social routines, increasing the time and the mechanization of work. The new models of labor implemented by industries were accompanied by the phenomenon of the urbanization. Those aspects of the social organization changed the treadmill of production creating new social orders not only in the social sphere but also in the familiar or domestic ones. Industrialization and mechanization of labor changed the composition of families and incorporated women in the labor force. That particular aspect would change the family model existed until the beginning of the nineteenth century. The labor time created a great temporal dependency between people and their jobs and daily routines. Those changes were described by Marx who stated an anthropological model of social nature which implied that human being was divided and alienated of its natural state as a consequence of political and economic development.
Marx’s concept of alienation has to be contextualized in his description of social organization and his definition about class or political organization, identifying two main spheres, those who are the owners of the production means (bourgeoisie) and those who are workers (proletarians) or labor force. The conception of social organization is described with certain lack of history about those concepts, but in certain manner illustrates the modern political and economic order characterized by the capitalism. Those who have capital are part of the spheres of power and owners of the means of production. According to Marx and in contrary of other economic theories such as David Ricardo, the economic value earned by the bourgeoisie is taken from the plus-value of the labor force. That means that the capitalist will try to increase the time of work in order to get more money or capital. Consequently, the labor force spends much more time in the production. From Marx’s point of view, that time means more capital for the owners of the means of production, and that creates that workers lose their lives, spending a lot of time in their jobs. That point is not the only aspect of alienation. The line production described by Marx in The Capital chapter and showed at class by the Chaplin’s movie, implies that workers only know an specific part of the line of production, ignoring the whole process of the final product of value. That is a great difference if we compare with the production before the Industrial Revolution and those economic theories which assigned economic value to the whole cycle of production mainly for those productions which implied only one or two people.
Today, we may find many examples of alienation and those aspects described above.
During the last months the Meatpacking Plants in Iowa were named and showed by the news as a consequence of the Immigration raids of illegal people who were working there. The issue is that during the 90s the meatpacking plants started to employ immigrants because of the hard conditions of labor that characterized that production. The job in those plants implies between eight and twelve ours of work in bad and unhealthy conditions. Incredibly, that phenomenon is not new and we may find that in 1906 Upton Sinclair published the famous novel “The Jungle” which described the same conditions of labor that we may find today. The workers have to stay in both sides of the production line cutting pieces of meat with an amazing speed of the line. There no exists communication among during the labor time and they have to ask if they have any primary needs and they are exposed to 40 degrees F. I have hade the opportunity to interview some of the workers and I have found that many of them have health problems as a consequence of those jobs. That mean of production not only create alienation between humans and nature, but also create alienation between humans and society, being part of the unknown voices of our society. That aspect is worse if we consider that most of those workers have not legal documents. That means that the alienation exists not only in their jobs, but also in other social spheres, being ignored by the whole community.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
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