Rationalizing Alienation

On the left there is a longstanding critique of the terms of work for an employee under capitalism entailing multiple "alienations." Simply put, on the job they are not in control of the product or process of their labor--what is done with what they produce, and their work activity in producing that. During that work process to produce that product they do not control they are also required to ignore all their other human needs, desires, potentials and interests in favor of "getting the job done," while also being compelled to in all this see in their fellow humans competitors rather than comrades, with all that means for the particular human needs of solidarity and community. More recently, in the age of the "service economy" especially, the worker is increasingly required to deny their own personality by putting on a false face at work--appearing cheerful in front of the customer regardless of how they really feel.

The thinkers commonly identified with this thought are, of course, anathema to mainstream opinion, which is likely to respond with outrage at the mere mention of these ideas. Yet the fact remains that, certain far from unimportant theoretical differences notwithstanding (the leftist sees the extraction of surplus labor as part of the alienation, the orthodox economic thinker rejects any such notion out of hand), they do not actually deny the basic alienations. Instead where the leftist sees these attributes of capitalist life as oppressions and, along with other failings, grounds to desire its replacement with a different system, the mainstream holds that acceptance of the alienations described here is not only socially necessary (how else meet society's material requirements?) or morally obligatory upon society's members (who must contribute if they are to have a claim on the "social product"), but as personally edifying, the gracious endurance of the alienations--the subordination, the focus on assigned tasks to the exclusion of all else, the competitiveness against others, etc.--the essence of what it is to be mature, an adult, a man, and that indeed if work's requirement of all this did not already exist it would have to be invented, a sentiment we see in the sneering of the conventional at the prospect of a post-work society. Of course, others have different ideas about that--and indeed one may imagine that many more than dare admit it would be a lot happier being done with the whole thing.