While labour builds the world, the worker grows powerless before the world they have built. Alienation is lived as an emptiness inside the individual, yet its source is usually in our shared order.
Sometimes, after working all day, a person cannot answer the question “what did I do today?” Files have been completed, messages answered, numbers may have risen; still they feel no bond with what emerged. Work grows heavy not only because it is tiring but because it makes a person look at their own activity from outside. The concept of alienation describes this strange disconnection: what we produce, our process of working, the people we work with and finally our own capacities begin to appear as though they were not ours. While labour builds the world, the worker grows powerless before the world they have built.
Why does the product move away from its producer?
In waged work the product that emerges usually does not belong to the worker. The goods made in a factory, the software written, the report prepared and the customer relationship established turn into the company’s asset. The worker receives a wage in return but cannot decide how the product will be used, to whom it will be sold or what consequence it will create. The object of their own labour returns to them as an alien property.
This distance can grow as production expands. A person makes only a small part and does not know what the whole is. Whoever writes a line of an algorithm may not see whom the system will exclude; a finance worker may not see which community the transaction they prepared will affect. The division of labour raises efficiency but breaks meaning and responsibility into pieces. Everyone does their task; the owner and the author of the result become uncertain.
Who controls the process of work?
Alienation does not arise only from the ownership of the product. When a person cannot decide how, at what pace and in what order they will do their work, their own activity appears imposed from outside. Their skill and experience are used within the limits of an instruction. A performance system measures every movement; break times and the sentence to be said to a customer are determined in advance. The worker ceases to be the manager of their own body and attention.
Today’s flexible forms of work may look as though they had abolished this control. A courier chooses when to open the application, a freelancer which job to take. Yet the wage algorithm, ratings and invisible prioritisation narrow the field of decision. The manager leaves human form and becomes an incentive inside the screen. Because the worker counts as a free entrepreneur they carry the risks alone; in return they cannot determine the system’s rules.
From workmate to rival
Although production is a joint activity, the work regime can set people against one another. When bonuses, promotion and job security are limited, a colleague’s success looks like our own loss. Hiding information rather than sharing it, and waiting for another’s mistake to become visible rather than correcting it, can become rational behaviour. A person comes to see whoever they produce with not as a partner in solidarity but as a rival in the performance ranking.
This competition does not only spoil relations; it also leads workers to mistake their own problem for personal failure. While everyone tries alone to be faster and more compliant, shared conditions go undiscussed. Whoever grows tired is counted inadequate, whoever objects difficult, whoever falls behind unmotivated. People living under the same pressure may take one another’s silence for contentment. Alienation divides a common experience into private shames.
How does a person become estranged from their own ability?
Labour can be not only a means of livelihood but the way a person develops their skill and sees their effect in the world. Yet when work is tied constantly to repetition, to targets and to another’s decision, ability narrows. A teacher may have to arrange education according to exam scores, a doctor care according to the number of procedures, a journalist a story according to clicks. A person knows the value of their profession yet moves away from that value in order to fit the institution’s measure.
In time they may give up their own judgement, saying “this is how the job is done.” Practices that troubled them at the start come to seem normal, and they begin to forget the difference between good work and the work the system rewards. The deepest state of alienation is perhaps not a person’s failure to notice the pressure but their complete identification of their own desire with the institution’s goal. Producing more, being more visible and advancing constantly are taken for personal wishes.
Reclaiming labour
The remedy for alienation is not merely finding work we love. Even the most passionate job can become alienating under the fear of losing a livelihood, one-sided management and limitless pressure to perform. The problem lies less in personal attitude than in the relation of production. The worker must have a say over the purpose of the product, the rhythm of the work, the technology and the division of earnings. Being able to see the whole of the work and to build a relation with those affected by its result can give labour meaning.
Not every job will be wholly creative and enjoyable; society will have necessary but tiring tasks. Rather than leaving these to invisible people, they should be reduced, shared in rotation and fairly rewarded. Shortening working hours matters not only for rest but so that a person can build their identity in activities outside work. Although alienation is lived like an emptiness inside the individual, its source is usually in our shared order. As our say over the world we produce grows, labour can cease to be merely the time we sell and become a conscious part of the life we build together.