Karl Marx's Estranged Labor vs. Adam Smith's Division of Labor - Research Paper Example

?KARL MARX’S ESTRANGED LABOR Karl Marx’s Estranged Labor vs. Adam Smith’s Division of Labor Lawrence Ruzagiliza ? Dr. Robert Jones ? Course: Contexts for Contemporary Business: BUAD 610 Word Count: 2225 (9 pages)? I. Introduction Without a doubt, the very novel philosophical ideas set forth about estranged labor in Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and Adam Smith’s ideas about the division of labor in part one of his Wealth of Nations are some of the most revered in the world. While Marx sought to minimalize the effects of capitalism, Smith sought to emphasize the brilliance of the free market economy. Naturally, these two individuals’ ideologies clash, but there is value in both perspectives, as one shall soon see. Karl Marx’s ideas about estranged labor, Smith’s ideas about the division of labor, and a comparison of the two ideologies will be herein attempted. II. Karl Marx’s Estranged Labor Karl Marx identifies estranged labor as labor alien to man. Marx explains the condition of estranged labor as the result of man participating in an alien to his nature. It my interpretation that man is alienated from his labor because he is not the reaper of what he sows. Because he is never the recipient of his efforts, the laborer lacks identity with what he creates. For Marx then labor is alien to the worker and does not belong to his essential being. Marx identifies two explanations of why man’s lack of identity with labor leads him to be estranged from labor. The explanation that the laborer does not develop freely his physical and mental energy, but instead mortifies his mind, may extol the virtue of communism. In other words, labor fails to nurture man’s physical and mental capacities, and instead, drains them. Because the worker is denied any nurturing in his work, no intimacy between the worker and his work develops. Although, it’s very hard to see how working in a sweat shop in Communist China, for example, is creating intimacy with one’s work to the point that one is able to develop one’s energy freely. Thus, this quote “lack” of an intimate relation with what he creates, man is summarily estranged from his labor. Furthermore, labor estranges man from himself. Marx argues that the labor the worker produces does not belong to him, but to someone else. Given this condition, the laborer belongs to someone else and is therefore enslaved. As a result of being enslaved the worker is reduced to a “subsisting animal,” a condition alien to him. As an end result man is estranged from himself and is, in his words, mortified. Marx points to these situations as the reason man is essentially estranged from his labor. The incongruence between the world of things the worker creates and the world the worker lives in is the estrangement. As the worker gives up his or her contribution to the work, he or she begins to lose importance to the work and the work becomes more superior to the worker. As this happens, the owner of the company or organization accumulates more wealth and power and is able to overcome competition and have more power over the worker. ? I find this to be true based on my personal experience when I worked for a logistics company as a shipping lead. The harder I worked, the more powerful the department became, hence the more powerful the company became—and the less important I became to the company and its superiors. The department improved a lot under my leadership whereby it generated more revenue. The result was that the company became more important than the person—as stated by Marx in the above paragraphs. ? The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever-cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. According to Marx in Calhoun and Gerteis (2007), “On the basis of political economy itself, in its own words, we have shown that the worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities; that the wretchedness of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production…” (pp. 86). With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in the direct proportion the devaluation of the world of men. According to Marx, labor produces not only commodities, but it produces itself and the worker as a commodity—and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally. ? Not only does the company become less dependent on the worker because of the maturity of the company’s policies and procedures, but it also becomes less reliant on the worker to produce the work the worker did because the computer system now produces the work. Similar displacement of workers was also seen during the industrial revolution—the time at which Adam Smith wrote his Wealth of Nations—when machines took over many of the tasks workers used to perform. ?Whatever the product of his labor is, he is not. Therefore the greater this product, the less is he himself. At this point, one argues, labor becomes useless in a free market economy—because it is only making the people at the top wealthier and wealthier. Once there is no requirement of a higher mode of production, “…capitalism is no longer justified, and no longer stable. It loses its rationale, and it becomes a ‘barrier’ to further human development. It ‘enters into the same relation toward the development of social wealth and of the forces of production as the gild system, serfdom, and slavery…” according to Cohen (2007, pp. 201). It is this realization that makes one realize the value of working for oneself in a free market economy—if one can accomplish that. That is basically what Adam Smith was arguing, which shall be herein discussed in the section to follow. III. Adam Smith’s Division of Labor Adam Smith believed that the division of labor was inconsequential to the fact that the same people who wanted a job were all vying for it. He thought it was human nature for people to buy and sell—just as he put forth in the beginning of the chapter entitled “Of the Principle Which Gives Occasion to the Division of Labour,” of Book One of his Wealth of Nations. According to Smith (1902), “This division of labor, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual, consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another” (pp. 55). Smith portended the idea that there was something inimitably sacred about the free-market economy and how the whole process works. He knew that if a person could persuade others to think according to the way that person thought, this could be the basis for such an economy in which the labor is divided equally according to hierarchical structure. According to Smith (1902), “[Man] will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favor, and show them that is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them…It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest” (pp. 56). Adam Smith, politically speaking, also knew that, in order for an economy to survive, not only needed its workers but also legislation that worked with the markets. According to Phillipson (2010), Smith “…grasped the fundamental truth that the happiness of a people had more to do with the ‘equity and expediency of the laws that are enacted’ than with voting and participating in the political process” (Ch. 11, pp. 2). As an example from real life, one of the difficulties that the U.S. is currently experiencing is due to a lack of fiscal responsibility at all levels of government and private industry—especially with regard to banking. Accountants are the only people who really have fiscal accountability, and apparently they are not doing their jobs properly. The U.S., like many other nations such as France, Spain, Italy, and Greece, are wallowing in pools of debt. The U.S., most notably, owes $1.16 trillion to China due to the U.S.’s quote “addiction to debt” (China’s words). In short, capitalism within the free market economy only works if everyone is doing their math correctly. Otherwise, people are going to be on the losing end. So, in order to “win” at financing, people must plan carefully for fiscal success, so to speak. IV. Comparison of the Ideologies of Marx and Smith According to Marx, the alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him; it means that the life which he conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien.? Within the company which I worked for four years as a shipping lead, the department began to operate more self-sufficiently. Everything was in place. A computerized tracking system was developed, and the basic policies and procedures were written and in effect. A consistency in service delivery, both to the customers and to the technical workers had been achieved. ?As the company became less dependent on my contributions, based upon the work I had performed for four years working for them, my value to the company diminished. The product of my work, the company, began to become alien to me, and my perceived worth was diminished. The more the worker spends on himself, the more powerful the alien objective world becomes which he creates over-against himself, the poorer he himself so his inner world-becomes, the less belongs to him as his own. ?My position was “down-sized’’ and my contributions to the company became routine and less rewarding to me. I became a “cog” in a large system, a worker that just produced work, but did not have an opportunity to continue to grow. When it was decided by the corporate administration that their need for my work as a shipping lead was no longer needed, I was demoted. The work that I had helped create, this company, had become a power of and in its own right and the “life” of the company became “hostile and alien.” As Marx said, if the product of labor does not belong to the work, if it confronts him as an alien power, this can only be because it belongs to some other man then the worker.? Also, if the individual worker is to find satisfaction in his or her work, the worker needs to find pleasure in the production of the work and not in the ownership of the work or the acquisition of money. In the pursuit of money, the individual may find that enough is never enough and will not find happiness in working harder for more money. ?As Marx writes, man becomes ever poorer as man, and his need for money becomes ever greater if he wants to overpower hostile being; the power of his money declines exactly in inverse proportion to the increase in volume of production. Thusly, his neediness grows as the power of money increases. In Smith’s view, I would have been contributing to the overall net worth of the company, driving the price of its stock up. This made me not only a contributor to my company, but a willing participant in what one would label “the free market.” The services I provided to my company were administered on a contract basis, in terms of, “I will be a shipping lead, and in return you provide me with X amount of dollars (and other various perks).” Smith, in the beginning of his treatise on the division of labor, says that it is only humans that make contracts, instead of competing for labor. For example, two dogs chasing after a bone will not make a deal in order to see who wins the bone. But humans excel at deal-making—except for the politicians in Washington, D.C., it seems. They are motivated by money and a whole host of external factors, which basically is political grandstanding. For several reasons, government is only as useful as the people who populate it. Therefore, something as simple as, say, reaching a debt ceiling deal—might be lost on politicians who are have either checked out mentally, or have checked out ideologically, or both. The point is, contracts are made within various groups so that they can operate cohesively—instead of a competitive system which precludes the fact that everyone present must use the brain cells they have working to produce a saleable solution to a problem. Thus, this proves that our system is only effective insofar as it works. Once the system doesn’t work, it must change. However, it might take awhile before that can happen. V. Conclusion Marx argued initially that the main cause of frustration about a man’s labor was he became estranged from it because he didn’t “own” his work; meanwhile, Adam Smith argued in his treatise Wealth of Nations that peoples’ contentment or relative discontent with the division of labor had to do with how wealth was distributed. Whether one agrees more heavily with Marx (the godfather of Communism) and his estranged labor, or Smith (the godfather of the free market economy) and his division of labor principles—both ideologies have been compared herein. Future generations should read both authors for their intrinsic value. REFERENCES Calhoun, C. & Gerteis, J. (2007). Classical sociological theory. “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,” by Karl Marx. US: Wiley-Blackwell. Cohen, G.A. (2001). Karl Marx’s theory of history: a defence. US: Princeton University Press. Phillipson, N. (2010). Adam Smith: an enlightened life. US: Yale University Press. Smith, A. (1902). The wealth of nations, part 1. US: Collier. Read More