The Concept of Alienation in Capitalism - Coursework Example

?Blauner's Operationalisation in Marxism Introduction Marx used the term ‘alienation’ to describe worker’s sense of separation from what they produced, from others, and from self in a capitalist type of production. In the 19th century, Marx use of alienation resulted from continued absence of control of worker’s over products, production of goods aimed at making a profit not for social goods, and a rapidly increasing division of labor that reduces work to near meaningless activity. In addition, alienation results from the increasing economic relationships that displaced social relationships. On the other hand, Blauner critically examines the idea of alienation through research, and indentifies four main dimensions of alienation. These are meaninglessness, isolation, powerlessness and self estrangement. Comparing the view of alienation by both Blauner and Marx portrays major similarities and differences. The similarities include: the idea of powerlessness that workers experience in a capitalist society, meaninglessness as described by Marx to result from increasing division of labor, and isolation that Marx explains to result from exchanging social relationships with the economic relationships, which are also covered by Blauner. Therefore, comparing Blauner to Marx’s ideas on capitalism, there is some degree of Marxism in Blauner through his entire research and classifications. Marx Alienation Marx broadly described alienation as the lack of a sense of meaning that could possibly be a motivation for action taking in the society (Elster 1987, 41). To this, Marx explained four main ideas that contribute to alienation in the society today. These are the activity, product, social, and species. In product alienation, Marx views the producer of goods to have little or no control over the goods that they produce. On the other hand, Marx explores the way division of labor has contributed to meaninglessness of work in a capitalist market. This amounts to lack of self realization, which has to motivate people to create a society where the desire for a meaningful life is satisfied (Elster 1987, 41). Blauner’s work Blauner, alienation exists when the workers are not in a place to control their immediate work processes, to develop a sense of purpose (Anderson 1974, 88). Blauner formulated 4 main ideas linked to work conditions. These are: powerlessness, which is a measure of the degree to which the workers have power or control over their work; meaninglessness, which measures the meaning of the work activity to the workers performing such work; isolation, which measures the extent to which workers feel as part of the society; and lastly, self estrangement, which is a measure of whether workers are psychologically involved in the work, or whether they have thoughts regarding better jobs than their jobs. (Schwalbe, 1987). Blauner’s industries Printing. This was part of the craft industry that has been rapidly replaced by the current electronic publishing. The job required both skills and initiative, and had low division of labor as there were no smaller tasks that required specialized skills. Each worker was skilled and worked on self initiative. Due to the high demand of the job, workers had a high job security, and the wages were high. The degree of control was therefore high, and the sense of meaninglessness in this job was conspicuously small as workers had skills and knowledge over the process, resulting to unique products. Mass Production. This was the second area investigated by Blauner. This industry related to the mechanization of crafts that included textiles and weaving; these sectors involve high specialization of labor, where tasks were reduced to just simple roles. According to Scott & Abcarian (1971, 122), this industry offered low job security, poor wages and labor intensiveness. The control in this job was low raising the degree of powerlessness in the job, and textile workers had higher degree of meaninglessness and isolation. However, Blauner found that the workers had a high sense of belonging to the community that dissolved the sense of meaninglessness and therefore led to low isolation levels (Scott & Abcarian 1971, 122). Assemble work. The assembly line according to Blauner was found to have the highest degree of alienation, with workers having no community to substitute this isolation. Since the production line dictated the speed and pace of the job, the degree of control of workers was low, workers had a low regard in the society, as they were considered to have low skills. Scott & Abcarian (1971) further argues that this job had low job security that led to social alienation, and without any traditional occupational communities. The workers in the assembly line were found to only be interested in the pay to survive, and hence were hostile and unsatisfied with their own work. Continuous process. The high technology lines that made up the continuous process jobs such as in chemical industries and oil industries required both skills and knowledge. The workers had both high control, integration and a high involvement that reduced the degree of alienation felt in the assembly line (Scott & Abcarian 1971, 122). In addition, the automated industry, apart from freeing workers from the assembly line drudgery, it provided a sense of mastery to the workers and ample control, as the workers were knowledgeable in monitoring and maintaining the highly efficient processes (Blauner, 1964). Comparing Marx and Blauner Blauner bases his arguments on the idea of universal skepticism that rejected the “automatic alienation” of Marxism and the “myth of the happy worker” that this advanced by capitalist apologists (Schwalbe 1987, 20). On one hand Blauner accepts and furthers the Marxian idea that there are “powerful alienating tendencies” in the current industries. However, Blauner goes further and seeks to determine the conditions that make these tendencies to be furthered in the current industries, the factors that lead to increased degree of alienation and the effects of these to production by workers and production systems (Blauner 1964, 4). Therefore, based on this proposition, Blauner’s work may be considered as valuable source and research aimed at understanding the psychological effects of alienated labor. This is well observed from the detailed study of the four types of industries above, and the effects that the working conditions and job security in these industries has on workers. Blauner goes further than just describing the social work and conditions to investigate the feeling state of individuals, and this makes his arguments on social work to be more detailed and more descriptive of the social work aspects as compared to Marxism. Arguing from this perspective, Blauner never attacks nor calls capitalism into question, which is the main ideology behind Marxism (Schwalbe, 1987). The main issue that is raised by Blauner in this case is whether the cognitive and the affective consequences that result from alienated labor do vary in different capitalist settings; Blauner finds varying degree of these effects, and thus does not directly address the issue of capitalism but chooses to deal with the effects that may result from the capitalist market on the individual self. However, there are many similarities between Blauner and Marxism in that the four dimensions that lead to alienation in social work are similar. Both of the ideologies view work as a social and not an individual concept (Woodward, 2003). The extent of job fulfillment indicates how best workers interact with others in the society. This is the reason to the isolation feeling common with the low paid jobs, or any job that does not offer the required satisfaction to workers. The major conflict between the two ideologists was the issue regarding the level of happiness in chemical workers. To Marx, any paid worker cannot attain happiness as they are exploited for the salaries paid. However, Blauner finds the conditions and terms of their work to leads to happiness though a small sample population was involved. Critics of Blauner The research by Blauner has led to sharp critics particularly from those related to Marxism. The idea that Blauner found the chemical and process workers happy has been termed as false. According to Marxism, all workers are exploited in wages, and hence the idea of being happy in their work is false as the chemical workers formed the middle class of the society (Edgell, 2006). The overreliance on questionnaires has also raised concerns in that the respondents may give answers in a particular way that does not necessary indicate the correct situation at hand. Grint (2005) further criticizes the fact that Blauner concluded that those in the car industry were among the unhappy and alienated, while only a partly 18% of workers were involved in this industry. This was a case of bias without proper statistics to support the allegations according to Grint. In addition, Blauner has entirely involved men in his studies, and has ignored the plight of women in his studies despite their presence in these industries (Edgell 2006, 40). Blauner therefore acts as a male chauvinist in this study. Though Blauner’s study revealed the printing industry was one of the best where workers had both control and were not alienated, this sector has since changed through computer and technology innovations, and the said conditions as were at the time cannot apply to the current situation. His study as regarding this sector is therefore obsolete to this extent. In addition, the technological advancement and computer technologies have transformed other sectors. These include the Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) in both assembly lines and process industries and the textile industries (Edgell 2006, 40). To this extent the study by Blauner has been found to be incompetent, though his psychological effects of the working conditions on the individual-self still hold in the current market dynamics. Conclusion Considering the work of Blauner to Marx, they had both similar sociology ideologies and formed their arguments by the nature of work as based on a social setting. The four dimensions of work in both cases are much alike; this explains the in Blauner. However, while Marx attacks capitalist directly, Blauner deviates from this to explore psychological and affective factors relation to an individual- self. All the same, Blauner contributions in the psychological aspect of work have been accepted by the Marxians in explaining the effects of capitalism. Therefore, Marx and Blauner have similar ideologies with many similarities that explain the extent of Marxism in Blauner. Reference list Anderson N., 1974. Man’s work and leisure. Leiden: Brill. Blauner, R.,1964. Alienation and Freedom: The Factory Worker and His Industry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Edgell, S., 2006. The sociology of work: Continuity and change. London: SAGE. Elster J., 1987. An introduction to Karl Marx. NY: Cambridge University Press. Grint, K., 2005. The sociology of work: Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press. Schwalbe M., 1987. The psychosocial consequences of natural and alienated labor. NY: Sunny Press. Scott, P. J., Scott F. S., & Abcarian G., 1971. Social control and social change. Chicago. Chicago University Press. Woodward, K., 2003. Social sciences: the big issues. London: Routledge Read More