Empowered Consumer and AlienationEssay Preview: Empowered Consumer and AlienationReport this essayIn the “Estranged Labor” chapter of the Paris Manuscripts, Karl Marx exposes his theory of alienation. Marx states that wage labor system corresponds to the most profound form of alienation. Since wage workers sell their labor power to earn a living, and the capitalist owns the labor process, the product of the workers labor is in a very real sense alien to the worker. It is not the workers product but the product of the capitalist. He adds that “Labor produces not only commodities: it produces itself and the worker as a commodity Ð- and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally.” (EPM, p.71, Prometheus Books)
As labor becomes commoditized, Marx argues that man becomes disillusioned and enslaved. Man is reduced to a subsisting animal void of any capacity of freedom except the will to labor. In such a state of the world where “labor is external to the worker Ð- i.e. does not belong to his essential being that he, therefore, does not confirm himself in his work, but denies himself, feels miserableД (EPM, p.74, Prometheus Books)
This is terribly upsetting for Marx. He believes that workers are being alienated not just from their work but also from their very humanity in the process. According to Marx, we are different from animals as human species because we are free and conscious. Using our conscious freely, we can make our “life-activity” an object of our will. The workers that produce commodities do not have any conscious input to their life-activity (production). Although they have the freedom to choose their employer and occupation to some extent, once they do get employed, they do not have any autonomy over their own work. Thus, their alienation results in the erosion of their unique human qualities of consciousness and freedom.
Should this be upsetting today? Paris manuscripts reflect upon Europes transformation in the Industrial revolution. Majority of her production were commodities. Man was enchanted by the consistent, abundant and standard goods that its machines produced. Innovation was driven only by academic scientific progress and the highest level of ownership. Companies competed on costs and consumers chose based on price.
Today, the picture of the economy in the developed markets is very different. In effect, we have outsourced most of our commodity production abroad. Ours is a knowledge economy and for most companies people are their biggest asset. Technologies, products and structures can be copied by competitors. No one, however, can match highly charged, motivated people who are internal to the production process. People are modern firms repository of knowledge and they are central to its competitive advantage. The workers of the knowledge-based enterprises are increasingly involved with what they produce; they increasingly have more autonomy over their work so that they can be creative in what they do. Furthermore, they are increasingly motivated through profit-sharing schemes. They are, in effect, freer, more conscious and more motivated in their work environment. In Marxs terms, they are more human.
The rise of this shift is particularly striking because of the great change in the relationship of capital to society as a whole. To paraphrase Gramsci, capital is everywhere, the human being is all parts of the whole. It is everywhere to which they have always been. Thus, from the day one began, capital has changed much in our country. We had more government services than we ever had before — and today there is a wide range of services, from food security to health care. In China we have, on average, 3 times the share of government services as we did 20 years ago, so large areas of our nation, too, are growing. The government and the economy are much more efficient, have much better, better things to do. For example, in 2001 a group of government analysts found that only 0.4 percent of the economy now was managed by government services. We now have a government service in 9.9 percent of the total, in the country for which we are so fortunate. This is a remarkable number. It is much higher than we do now.
Today, all of these measures are seen as giving rise to a more efficient and more responsive national economy. In a few months, there could be a national average of 7 trillion, a new economic phenomenon called unemployment. We’ve done this for 20 years. There is now a trend in the economy. Since the 1950s, when Japan’s economic boom occurred, we’ve seen huge expansion in private sector, particularly in health services, which has made up 50–60 percent of our domestic sector. Now we’re witnessing that in many sectors. These are the trends that we saw before; for example, in the health services sector, we have seen an increase in spending on primary care over the past two decades, and in those areas private companies have been much more aggressive about making money, by changing the business practices of most of the state. Private companies don’t want to be seen as being too big to fail, because they have to do more work in the private sector because of higher productivity. (So, let’s say we did not see the growth in total government revenue and debt, that will happen, but we still see a large part of the growth happening in the private sector. In a few years about 50 percent of total GDP will have to go abroad again.)
In the next few decades, in the rest of these sectors, we will see big increases in government revenues of more than 10–15 trillion. We won’t need as much of those receipts to cover the ongoing effects on our national economies. The most important thing is to see that more of those revenues are going to the country for benefit of those in power, and more of those revenues to the people. With the private sector, though, the government’s primary goal is to make itself available, because most people are not willing to do things on their own in an inefficient way. They must be taken into account if they are to ensure the continued existence of the private sector. Our economic situation is changing so much that we must have a set of priorities to follow. First, we need to understand how people, and the economy and the economy in general, work with others in order to do their jobs well and prosper. This requires us to do something about the public sector, in such a way that it can help make people better. In the case of state enterprises, it can help make them more efficient, in a way that reduces the need for employees in these firms. Second, we need to think about how we can help our private sector in such a way that it
This doesnt alleviate our concern for the workers of the emerging world who are part of commodity producing enterprises. However, for them too, the picture is quite different than it was for their European counterparts in early 19th century. Availability of information and the speed at which it travels is fascinating. What is also fascinating is consumers increasing ability and desire to shape the companies that deliver them commodities. Companies have to listen to their consumers more than ever before