E.G.

I've never been particularly thoughtful or knowledgeable about what's called "alienation" in Marxian circles, but I've been teaching Philosophy of Work this term, and in the course of that I've been reading a bit and thinking about this topic. I take it that people in the Marxian tradition generally say that alienation is important, widespread, and problematic. I don't know if they are right. But here I'll see if I can home in on something about alienation that might count as a good worry, a worry worth having.

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What is (allegedly) being alienated from what? What does this (alleged) alienation amount to? Different users of alienation talk will answer these questions differently.

On the first question, I think Marxians will commonly answer that it is a worker, or consumer, or citizen, or more broadly, either a conscious individual subject X or collective subject X (e.g., the working class), which is being alienated from some object Y, where Y is some thing or process.

Sometimes Y is X's own body; sometimes Y is X's labor; sometimes Y is a product of X's labor (here Y might be a tangible artifact or something intangible, like knowledge); sometimes Y is the stuff that X consumes, purchases, or finds in her immediate environment; sometimes Y is the society in which X lives; sometimes Y is just the world.

On the second question, I seem to have noticed a number of different conceptions of alienation in circulation, including these:

Legal alienation: X is legally alienated from Y when the law of X's society does not recognize an expansive right on the part of X to use and dispose of Y as X sees fit.

Humanity alienation: X is humanity alienated from Y when (a) X has produced Y (or participated in producing Y) but (b) in a manner that does not make use of X's specifically human capacities (e.g., X's human rationality or autonomy) in such a way that (c) it is as if X were a "mere machine" or "mere animal."

Emotional alienation: X is emotionally alienated from Y when certain emotional links between X and Y are lacking (say, X doesn't love or care about Y, or vice versa).

Expression alienation: X is expression alienated from Y when (a) X has produced Y (or participated in producing Y) but (b) Y is not an expression of X, which is to say that Y is does not represent or capture anything about X as a unique individual, in the way that, e.g., an artwork produced by X would typically do.

Familiarity alienation: X is familiarity alienated from Y when Y is in some important way foreign or strange to X. X and Y are, as is sometimes said, estranged.

I think these different conceptions, and various blends of them, are all in use. The common thread, I suppose, is that when X is said to be "alienated" from Y, there is supposed to be some literal or metaphorical distance or disconnection between X and Y.

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The cause of alienation is said to be capitalism, or social and economic phenomena that are integral to capitalism (e.g., marketplaces), or cultural and technological developments that are correlated with capitalism (e.g., industrialization).

I think it is probably true that as a matter of historical and social fact, capitalism is causally responsible for workers being alienated in their workplaces, in various senses of 'alienation.' For example, workers in a factory owned by a capitalist in, say, the early 20th century United States, would typically have been alienated from their labor and from the products of their labor in all five of the senses delineated above (and more besides). Their alienation in that circumstance would be an effect of capitalism.

But I think it is a mistake for philosophers, activists, and others to make much of this capitalism/alienation link. For one thing, as many have observed, non-capitalist systems are similar to capitalist systems in the present respect. Factory workers and farm workers in the USSR, for example, were alienated in their work in many (all?) of the same ways that workers were alienated in the USA during the same historical period.

Relatedly, alternatives to capitalism envisioned by some Marxian thinkers seem just as likely as standard-issue capitalism to cause workplace alienation. For example, I doubt that David Schweickart's proposal to replace capitalism with what he calls "economic democracy" (in which workers in a firm have democratic control of the firm) would be a remedy for workplace alienation. If economic democracy is a good idea, it is not because it would eliminate alienation. On the contrary, alienation (in many or all of the senses above) is typical in democratically governed systems. The USA is a democracy in 2025 but many (arguably, all) American voters are in a state of political alienation. This being so I do not see that a democratically governed workplace would always, or even usually, be less alienating than workplaces governed in what are today the more standard ways (e.g., government-by-corporations).

It seems probable to me that there is no feasible alternative to capitalism that would eliminate or even appreciably reduce the forms of workplace alienation that people find problematic.

Also, barring certain kinds of catastrophic scenarios, capitalism is evidently entrenched and unavoidable.

And capitalism is highly diverse, i.e., there are many different ways to have a capitalist system, some of which are terrible for people and some of which are not.

My opinion is that people who think alienation is bad should be pushing for forms of capitalism in which alienation is reduced. But they should not be pushing for the abolition of capitalism. That is a lost cause, and in part for that reason, it is not a good cause.

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What's the opposite of alienation? Maybe we should call it intimacy. Should we want to be intimately connected with our work? Some of us, I think, should want this, but some of us shouldn't.

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Recently I watched the old 90s movie Clockwatchers for free on Youtube.

The main character, Iris, takes a temp job in an office. I think it is fair to say that she and all her coworkers are alienated from their work in most or all of the various senses of 'alienation' that I outlined above. And perhaps because of this, at the beginning of the story, Iris is miserable.

But then Iris meets Margaret (played by Parker Posey). I think Margaret can be characterized as joyfully alienated at work. She finds amusement in the meaninglessness of her job and camaraderie with others who are in the same boat with her.

Iris, Margaret, and a few others form a friend group, and all is well for a while. Iris seems to have found some kind of happiness. But then someone in the office starts stealing things, and everyone begins to suspect everyone, and no one can identify the culprit. Friendships disintegrate and by the end of the movie, everyone is miserable again.

The moral of the story, I think, is that people do not always feel or have a need to have an intimate connection with their work. I think it is more common for people to want an intimate connection with the people they work with. I am not sure whether alienation from one's work needs to be a significant obstacle to having the friendships and other relationships that we want to have with the people we work with.

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Many academics care a lot about, and identify closely with, the projects we're working on. If a project succeeds, it's wonderful, but if a project fails, it's like a part of you has died. I have known many academics who have expressed some degree of envy for people who feel no strong connection with their work, though I also generally have the impression that most academics would not trade their work for anyone else's.

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We spend many hours at work (the famous claim is that we spend 80,000 hours at work per lifetime) and so it matters a great deal whether our work life is good for us. And I am sympathetic to the idea that we should not simply say that one's work life is going well as long as one is enjoying it. I am drawn to the idea that our work should be meaningful to us, as well as (or even, in some cases, instead of being) enjoyable. If talk of alienation is a way to get at the sort of meaning that one should have in mind here, then maybe that is the respect in which it makes sense to worry about alienation. That said, it seems to me that one can take a work project to be meaningful even if one feels (or has) no intimate connection with it, i.e., even if one is alienated from it.