I go outside, look at my phone and smoke.
There’s a drain on the ground full of cigarette butts, presumably travelling to the nearby sea. Out of it curl the leaves of some sort of Hawaiian plant, like the arms of a monster of the deep.
An image of a starving child flashes across my screen. Appalled yet confused, I toss my cigarette into the sea-travelling drain not knowing or even questioning where it goes or from where it came.
A familiar frustrated gnawing – suppressed and barely audible: what is the point?
I don’t know. Even if I found out I would still have a million other questions after that, concerning the nature of war crimes or waste or production in this vast global system, and my place within it all, that even the most complex computer would not seem to be able to calculate, let alone me with my biases, my soft and all too human preferences.
And even if I did know, how could this even change my actions?
The questioning gets dimmer on the next inhale… A moment of hazy softness before my mind flickers back to the long to-do list at work – that exhausting mountain I climb every day in order to eat, to pay rent.
I guess I should be grateful.
Perhaps the above scene is familiar to some – a feeling of powerlessness against the clear signs that things are very wrong in the world. We inhabit separate worlds. The world of a body and its slow subtle orientation to space/time, and a spectral world of the economy which dictates this body, its movement, even its desires. The economy is spectral because it is so vast and globally entangled that it is dizzying to try to understand, but also because the nature of money is thoroughly disembodied. Our net worth or survival ticket is imaginary, money or potential debt is written across screens, few people even use cash any more, and yet it controls every aspect of our lives.
Each moment is quantified: it is either the result of money spent (rest) or the guarantee of money earned (work). We experience the global ripples of crime at the most banal local moments – such as watching the genocide in Gaza off our phones, or witnessing the progression of climate change as we put out the bins.
For Marx, the key to addressing this powerlessness and disconnection is to change our analysis: to recognise that this subjective feeling of isolation is itself historically contingent and dependent on capitalism. Instead of starting from me/my perspective against a global hostile world we may start by analysing the historical conditions of this world which lead to my isolation. Marx’s concept of alienation can help in our analysis and understanding of how capitalism drives naturally social creative beings into separation – and how we can overcome this.
Alienation for Marx
So what exactly is alienation, according to Marx?
Alienation is the division of aspects of our humanity. Kieran Allen notes that the original meaning of individual was something which cannot be divided.1Allen, Kieran. Marx and the Alternative to Capitalism. London: Pluto Press, 2011, p.49. This changes with capitalism and neoliberal individualism wherein one’s humanity becomes ever more separated and dispersed.
For Marx, human beings are naturally creative, social and productive. Our work is an expression of our humanity and we naturally engage in productive activity. This involves manipulating nature in a reciprocal, creative way, such that our creations are reflected back to us through results. Alienation occurs in capitalism because it separates people from the product of their labour, such that they can no longer witness their creations or their impact in the world. Instead, the products belong to someone else, existing in a completely different world, completely unknown or potentially hostile. It also separates workers from the work itself, since what we are producing has no connection to his desires or creative life force. The worker is simply working to live, instead of being alive so that he can work holistically and creatively.
Further, the workers, alienated from themselves are also alienated from others— there is no opportunity for meaningful connection. All political, social and even romantic relations are dictated by ghostly numerical figures, or as Marx would say “Everyone carries the social bond in his pocket”, meaning cash2Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Translated by Martin Milligan. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1959, p. 37.. The consequence of all this is that we are alienated from our humanity. Marx writes : “What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal”3Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Translated by Martin Milligan. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1959, p. 28. . This is because in both rest time and work time we are alienated. Both activities become less-than-human: the rest is spent mindlessly scrolling, eating, sleeping and work time is also spent on wage-labour.
Allen notes how these aspects of our humanity that are taken from us are then sold back to us through advertising. Fulfillment is promised by buying the next pair of jeans. Or as Marx would put it “The industrial eunuch plays the pimp between the despot and his need… so that he can demand cash for this service of love”4Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Translated by Martin Milligan. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1959, p. 38. .
Alienation today
The factory line provides a vivid material example of how capitalism divides and alienates us in this way. Humans engage in miniscule tasks with no influence on how these tasks interact with the means of production, in a larger managerial or economic reality. In contemporary neoliberalism, many workers are still in factories, or in workplaces that engage similar managerial styles, such as McDonalds. However, even beyond factory-style work places, alienation is the condition of capitalism today because it pervades daily life. To understand how, we must appreciate how Marx was a thorough materialist, and how today our lives are controlled by thoroughly immaterial forces of technology and money.
The cornerstone of Marx’ philosophy is the fact that he was responding to German idealism and Christianity, both thoroughly disembodied ideologies. He writes “Communism begins where atheism begins” and also “In direct contrast to those German philosophers who descend from Heaven to Earth we ascend from Earth to Heaven”5Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Translated by Martin Milligan. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1959, p. 114.. He emphasises that the material embodied reality we inhabit as the basis of his philosophy.
His concept of alienation was inspired by a philosopher called Feuerbach, who was in critical response to Christianity. Feuerbach said of the monks, that through the image of the Virgin Mary, they simultaneously idealise love/eros on a spiritual plane and deny it on a physical plane.6Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The German Ideology. Edited by C.J. Arthur. New York: International Publishers, 1970, p. 47. This leaves them alienated from their own desire.
A similar move happens in late-stage capitalism. As we have seen, the invisible hand of the economy dictates our lives. And at the same time all of our embodied experience (since every experience has to be in a body) is controlled by it. We either paid money to experience it or we are working for the experience. These experiences are quantified and measured via capital or social capital on social media and dating apps, which exploit people’s desire for connection and meaning. An Observer investigation has found that dating apps engage similar tactics to gambling products. This is part of a more general negative impact of capitalism on our mental health – over 40 per cent of Irish adults have a mental health disorder and one in ten have attempted suicide. Deep discontent and disconnection is pervasive in capitalism, not just in our work but in all our lives.
Paths to freedom
The path to freedom is to reconnect with our humanity, not as an abstract ideal, but as a body, as limited. It is natural to be creative in the world and to need to see the results of this labour, with our actual eyes and human senses.
So much of our work is taken from us and becomes part of an abstract machine of capital that we cannot see, let alone control. As such the path is to focus on what we actually can work with and towards. Rather than manifest from an ideal place towards a fantasy, workers can manipulate from a material place in tandem with reality. As a worker, I exist in this particular space, in this particular time, with these hands and these feet, the questions I can ask are: what can I do with the tools that I have? How can I give back to the community that I’m in touch with? It is this limited, human thinking and action which will help us in a world of disembodiment and steep competition, where we project idealised versions of ourselves onto screens, hoping that somehow the image will bring us home. Home is already here, in the making, in our bodies and bones through activism and community which leads to real change we can witness.
