Alienation is a teleological principle of materialism: the presupposition that there is a world out there necessitates alienation of human endeavor — I am, therefore I think about. The nonrational animal extends its activity no farther than the limitations of its species truncating surplus labor — with the exception of some hoarding instincts — yet the input of its life is cruelly disproportionate to the use value of its output. A good share of its labor is wasteful, competitive, futile and often resulting in injury and death. What separated humanity from the lower kingdom was that it was able to cut through its perceptions and take notice of other members of its particular species as being different, an otherness beyond size and shape, possessing skills that arrived at use values in less time than the self could; just as the jackal in contradiction to his genus stopped to admire the efficiency of the lion that turned his bloated belly to the sun though half his meal awaited the circling buzzards. The concept of ability, then, synthesized a primitive dialectic: subject-object, labor-survival, division of surplus and leisure.
This agreement among later aborigines to divide labor for maximum survival precluded the organic nature of the subject designed to orchestrate within the spoor of its own natural existence. Remove an Irish Setter from the fields and it no longer functions as an Irish Setter. Disturb humanity’s delicate agreement with nature and it is no longer a subject, a manipulator of its total environment but alienated from itself, relegated to the sense-free, inorganic realm of matter in motion.
Without a sense of perspective of matter in motion, even though our species may concede that it too is a part, though apart from, humanity loses its innate commanding position over the environment which is essential to the meaning of the human species. One need only to view TV commercials for a time to grasp the theme of getting hold of yourself with the contradictory elements of being overloaded with meaningless control.
The division of labor—aside from its dialectic necessity—had brutalized the spirit of our species concurrently with masterly development of civilization. Ironically this builder of civilization has not the mastery of its own individuated fate, its own unique existence. Even though, Marx wrote in the context of his time — the gross brutality of capitalism caught up in the vicious regressive dialectic of necessary labor, surplus labor, thus unrelenting capital led to the species inhumanity to itself — the sinister motivation for capitalism had always existed.
Surplus value historically reared its ugly head the first time the species realized its unique ability exceeded its needs and subsequently emerged triumphant from the vortex of the work-cycle, sensing power of free time, either to begin a new work-cycle or another skill of production compounding surplus. Another less ambitious fell prey to idle time, grew fat from the land, then fell prey to one with more ambition. Still another transformed idle time to true leisure to discover a world beyond work, the world of science, philosophy, art and poetry. Ah, but always another possessed the way of a sophisticated, devious world. In passing his skill to the family, he retained just enough not to render himself useless to the brood. His son developed the skill to a point that he could command a work force without revealing the total know-how of the work-cycle, thus preventing a take-over by the hired hands.
Labor, then, from the dawn of history, is sad testimony to the variety, divisiveness and inequality of nature. Those endowed with ability set out, as the hawk circles the flock, to impose their will and satiate their appetites. Just as the nucleus commands the electron to swirl crazily in its orbit, the strong will the weak to submit to labor in behalf of the stronger. The necessary labor of the universe is self-sustaining in the nebulae and the electro-magnetic field; still, there is the labor of gravity that mysteriously commands the others into a shaping force by its innate concentration of power which then ineluctably perhaps reluctantly, divides into a schematic system of controlled labor. This surplus power is life, is self-destructive, is self-exploitative. Only in a dialectic Marx never dreamed of, is there perhaps the key to why we are subject to the exploitation and a1ienation of ourselves.
The horrendous paradox of dialectic materialism or idealism—for that matter any schematic view of life conceived as dynamic progression toward self-sufficiency and gratification in a communal, spatial-temporal continuum — lies in the brutalizing psychology of wilful alienation of the self in order to obtain the illusion of objectification. Without the mirror of human vanity — the only reason for existing — without the procreation of our species, without the molding of matter in the individual’s own image, without the subjection of others to the stronger will, there is no pressing motivation for life.
Soon, however, is the realization that there are others governed by the same ruthless competitive spirit, the same will to conquer, and the individual — as wolves in a pack to savage at least a remnant of the assault — reluctantly submits to compromise and to salvage a chip of the shattered mirror. This tenuous pact, however, does not negate the seething warfare underneath. The inner conflict is very much alive in the driving will to win, the will to power as a means to self-gratification of the ego and its ultimate objectification of a stratified oligarchy. As Wordsworth suggests “we are too much with the world.”
Overt conflict, according to Hegel, is precarious and self-destructive; thus the need for strategic withdrawals in the euphemism of contracts and treaties until one party can get the upper hand in the next skirmish of undying pursuit of power. Hobbes, on the other hand, does not see this as an endless struggle since it eventuates in the static power of the divine right of kings. Marx, too, sees unilateral power reign supreme, labor power, the final blow to multilateral struggle by the hand of the proletarian dictatorship. To put an end to class struggle is perhaps one thing but to put an end to the events of an unfolding history is reductio absurdum. The atavism of primitive society will remain with us, still negotiating with stubborn reality, but lying in ambush is the higher order to move the course of history and mirroring Hegel's struggling, alienated godhead negotiating with the material to break through the rind of mere nature, sensuousness, and that which is alien to it, and to attain the light of consciousness in itself.
There is no pretension here to defend Hegel, but it seems only fair that Marx, who is infamous for riding piggyback on any thought he can exploit to fit his scheme, should at least make the effort to deal honestly with the sorrow of alienation due to humanity’s drive to exploit and alienate labor no matter what class reigns.
Whatever Hegel had in mind by the struggle of freedom and thought eventuating consciousness unto oneself—that is, when attained what does one do with it, rather, what does the state do with it, or even more accurately what does the Logos do with it?—he certainly did not mean that its perfected embodiment hinged on material production of labor predestined to forge utopian complacency. Could he have simply meant that through sincere reflection one finds a kinder, gentler world out there?
All humanity should be free to think, to function with integrity [in fullest meaning] in the dialectic of family, peers and environs, to clear the mind of deceit and doctrinal oppressiveness that debilitates the rhythm of mind and body and further alienates the individual soul from the preposterous claim of the state as the symbol of this integrity. The philosopher Croce pulsates that the cosmic integrity of Hegel's logos is simply “no thinking at all.” Preposterous — for that would mean the perfection of alienation — The Man with the Hoe, or cleaning toilets for a living!
Hegel meant no more, no less than Socrates’ pursuit of oneself: great thinkers always submit to the torment of their own sub-reality— there must be more to it than this!—of a jealous for-self, rather than in-self. This ineluctable convolution is the underlying antithesis of Hegel's "centrifugation" of thought; it is the reluctance to break from jail, sensing that the centrifuge of illusion builds its own walls. However comforting material enlightenment, the structure of a cosmos that uncovers all truths in the energy of the stars invariably invokes some honest wretch who will ponder, “When the stars go out, then what?”
Denial of this schizothymia by the smugness of the world may lighten the burden of the caravan of philosophy but the attenuated freight will starve the mind. Far worse than this pretense of closure to all there is to know is the mundane ideology that dares to presume a social philosophy underscored by teamsters and sweatshop slaves wresting from John Paul Getty the keys to the kingdom of heaven.
It is questionable that preoccupation with management of production and labor, which, however advanced, is nothing but preoccupation with survival of the fittest, will lead one free from anxiety to an organic harmony, non-alienated. Capital and commodity are but strata of existence; they are but the naps of waking hours; the dreams are wherein reality moves through the process of getting to know the real self gifted with leisurely labor for its own sake.
Copyright © 1999 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: December 7, 2003