Post by Stallit 2 de Halfo on Jun 10, 2008 22:37:54 GMT
Marxism, Estranged Labor,
And My Work Experience
David San Filippo, M.A., LMHC
September 25, 1992
Introduction:
In this paper, I will discuss the Marxist theory of estranged labor and it impact on the worker and the value of the product of the worker's labors. I will then compare Marx's positions to my own work experience.
Marx's "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844" were specifically researched for Marx's philosophies of the value of the worker and his/her work. Due to the period in time that these manuscripts were written, the worker is always related to as "man", or by other male vernacular. In order to maintain the integrity of Marx's comments, I will not alter the gender of the worker but will refer to the male and female worker in the comments by the writer.
Marx does not delineate the worker as being either the skilled or unskilled laborer or the management of organizations. However, he does separate the workers from the owners/masters of the organization. He calls the two separate entities the "property-owners" and the "propertyless workers" (Marx, 1978). In this essay, using my work life as an example, I will be referring to the differences occurring between my position in management and the organization/company.
Marxism and the Worker:
Early Marx writings commented that after the worker had put his or her efforts and period of life into an object or work product, his or her efforts and life belonged to the work product and not to the worker. 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 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.
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 the inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production; that the necessary result of competition is the accumulation of capital in a few hands, and thus the restoration of monopoly in a more terrible form; that finally the distinction between capitalist and land-rentier, like that between the tiller of the soil and the factory-worker, disappears and that the whole society must fall apart into the two classes - the property-owners and the propertyless workers (Marx, p. 70).
I find this to be true in my work of developing and running companies, that I am doing currently and have done in the past. The more I have given to the companies, the more powerful the companies have become and the less important I have become to the companies and those that run the companies. The companies have grown in size and in revenue. The result is that the company becomes more important than the person. According to Marx,
The worker become 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. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion the devaluation of the world of men. Labour produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity - and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally (p. 71).
After a company has been developed and begins to thrive on its own, the need for the individuals that helped to start the company and/or improve the company become less important and necessary. The company begins to operate effectively with the procedures and policies that have been put in place and the need for some management is removed. With the evolution of the information age and the development of computer technology, many workers, which were previously necessary to operate a large company, are no longer necessary. In paralleling the industrial society in Marx's period and the information society of today, during Marx's time land ownership was essential to power and wealth. In our information society, the possession of information is a powerful tool that is controlled by a few. According to social futurist John Naisbitt (1985),
Self-management is replacing staff managers who mange people; the computer is replacing line managers who manage systems.
What really enables us [U.S. businesses] to shrink middle management is the computer, which gives top executives immediate access to the information previously obtained from middle managers.
Now with the computer to keep track of information and people, middle managers are seen as disposable. These technological innovations ousting the middle manager are further reinforcing the new emphasis on self-management (pp. 16-17).
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 worker were also seen during the industrial revolution, when machines took over many of the tasks workers used to perform. The rift between the working and ruling class continues to exist. The worker becomes alienated or separated from the product of his or her labor. The labor thrives without the need for the worker.
Whatever the product of his labour is, he is not. Therefore the greater this product, the less is he himself. The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labour becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that becomes a power of its own confronting him; it means that the life which he conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien (Marx, p. 72).
My Experience as a Worker:
For the past 10 years I have either owned or managed several companies. I sold my companies and merged one of them into a new company, which I was hired to help develop from a start-up operation. I spent countless hours developing procedures, policies, and systems to support the growth of this service company. The company's product was a specialized service to the insurance industry and the industrially disable workers. By selling the company and becoming one of the workers, I became susceptible to the potential alienation from the work that I was to perform in building the new company.
After 3 years of labor, the company began to operate more self-sufficiently. Management personnel and service delivery personnel were in place and experienced, 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 and the computer system was able to provide upper management, operations management, and technical personnel with the information needed to perform their tasks.
As the company became less dependent on my contributions, based upon the work I had performed for the past 3 years, 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 - his inner world - becomes, the less belongs to him as his own (Marx, p. 72).
My position was "down-sized," or as some like to say, "right-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 services/work had been exhausted, I was discarded. The work that I had created, the company, had become a power of in its own right and the "life" of the company became "hostile and alien."
If the product of labour does not belong to the worker, if it confronts him as an alien power, this can only be because it belongs to some other man than the worker (Marx, p. 78).
Conclusion:
My experiences as a 20th century corporate worker is similar to the experience of the 19th century Marxist worker. Both workers are subjected to a ruling class and produce work that ultimately consumes them in its growth and power. The need for the individual worker is diminished to the needs of the company and the ruling class. The company is no longer part of the individual but the individual has become part of the company. The individual rights of the worker are reduced for the betterment of the company and its owners. As Marx stated,
Through estranged, alienated labour, then, the worker produces the relationship to this labour of a man alien to labour and standing outside of it. The relationship of the worker to labour engenders the relation to it of the capitalist, or whatever one chooses to call the master of labour (p. 79).
In my opinion, 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.
Man becomes ever poorer as man; his need for money becomes ever greater if he wants to overpower hostile being; and the power of his money declines exactly in inverse proportion to the increase in volume of production: that is, his neediness grows as the power of money increases (Marx, p. 93).
In my vocational journey, I have chased the dollar and have been intoxicated by the power of ownership and mastery over other. However, after personal reflection, I have found that by finding pleasure in the work, I have found satisfaction in my vocational and personal life and found a new admiration for the workers of our society who are willing to give up their works for the prosper of others and betterment of themselves.
References:
Marx, K. (1978). Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. In R. C. Tucker (Ed.), The Marx - Engels reader (pp. 66-125). New York: Norton & Co.
Naisbett, J. & Aburdene, P. (1985). Re-inventing the corporation. New York: Warner Books.
Peters, T. (1987). Thriving on chaos. New York: Harper & Row.
And My Work Experience
David San Filippo, M.A., LMHC
September 25, 1992
Introduction:
In this paper, I will discuss the Marxist theory of estranged labor and it impact on the worker and the value of the product of the worker's labors. I will then compare Marx's positions to my own work experience.
Marx's "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844" were specifically researched for Marx's philosophies of the value of the worker and his/her work. Due to the period in time that these manuscripts were written, the worker is always related to as "man", or by other male vernacular. In order to maintain the integrity of Marx's comments, I will not alter the gender of the worker but will refer to the male and female worker in the comments by the writer.
Marx does not delineate the worker as being either the skilled or unskilled laborer or the management of organizations. However, he does separate the workers from the owners/masters of the organization. He calls the two separate entities the "property-owners" and the "propertyless workers" (Marx, 1978). In this essay, using my work life as an example, I will be referring to the differences occurring between my position in management and the organization/company.
Marxism and the Worker:
Early Marx writings commented that after the worker had put his or her efforts and period of life into an object or work product, his or her efforts and life belonged to the work product and not to the worker. 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 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.
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 the inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production; that the necessary result of competition is the accumulation of capital in a few hands, and thus the restoration of monopoly in a more terrible form; that finally the distinction between capitalist and land-rentier, like that between the tiller of the soil and the factory-worker, disappears and that the whole society must fall apart into the two classes - the property-owners and the propertyless workers (Marx, p. 70).
I find this to be true in my work of developing and running companies, that I am doing currently and have done in the past. The more I have given to the companies, the more powerful the companies have become and the less important I have become to the companies and those that run the companies. The companies have grown in size and in revenue. The result is that the company becomes more important than the person. According to Marx,
The worker become 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. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion the devaluation of the world of men. Labour produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity - and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally (p. 71).
After a company has been developed and begins to thrive on its own, the need for the individuals that helped to start the company and/or improve the company become less important and necessary. The company begins to operate effectively with the procedures and policies that have been put in place and the need for some management is removed. With the evolution of the information age and the development of computer technology, many workers, which were previously necessary to operate a large company, are no longer necessary. In paralleling the industrial society in Marx's period and the information society of today, during Marx's time land ownership was essential to power and wealth. In our information society, the possession of information is a powerful tool that is controlled by a few. According to social futurist John Naisbitt (1985),
Self-management is replacing staff managers who mange people; the computer is replacing line managers who manage systems.
What really enables us [U.S. businesses] to shrink middle management is the computer, which gives top executives immediate access to the information previously obtained from middle managers.
Now with the computer to keep track of information and people, middle managers are seen as disposable. These technological innovations ousting the middle manager are further reinforcing the new emphasis on self-management (pp. 16-17).
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 worker were also seen during the industrial revolution, when machines took over many of the tasks workers used to perform. The rift between the working and ruling class continues to exist. The worker becomes alienated or separated from the product of his or her labor. The labor thrives without the need for the worker.
Whatever the product of his labour is, he is not. Therefore the greater this product, the less is he himself. The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labour becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that becomes a power of its own confronting him; it means that the life which he conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien (Marx, p. 72).
My Experience as a Worker:
For the past 10 years I have either owned or managed several companies. I sold my companies and merged one of them into a new company, which I was hired to help develop from a start-up operation. I spent countless hours developing procedures, policies, and systems to support the growth of this service company. The company's product was a specialized service to the insurance industry and the industrially disable workers. By selling the company and becoming one of the workers, I became susceptible to the potential alienation from the work that I was to perform in building the new company.
After 3 years of labor, the company began to operate more self-sufficiently. Management personnel and service delivery personnel were in place and experienced, 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 and the computer system was able to provide upper management, operations management, and technical personnel with the information needed to perform their tasks.
As the company became less dependent on my contributions, based upon the work I had performed for the past 3 years, 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 - his inner world - becomes, the less belongs to him as his own (Marx, p. 72).
My position was "down-sized," or as some like to say, "right-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 services/work had been exhausted, I was discarded. The work that I had created, the company, had become a power of in its own right and the "life" of the company became "hostile and alien."
If the product of labour does not belong to the worker, if it confronts him as an alien power, this can only be because it belongs to some other man than the worker (Marx, p. 78).
Conclusion:
My experiences as a 20th century corporate worker is similar to the experience of the 19th century Marxist worker. Both workers are subjected to a ruling class and produce work that ultimately consumes them in its growth and power. The need for the individual worker is diminished to the needs of the company and the ruling class. The company is no longer part of the individual but the individual has become part of the company. The individual rights of the worker are reduced for the betterment of the company and its owners. As Marx stated,
Through estranged, alienated labour, then, the worker produces the relationship to this labour of a man alien to labour and standing outside of it. The relationship of the worker to labour engenders the relation to it of the capitalist, or whatever one chooses to call the master of labour (p. 79).
In my opinion, 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.
Man becomes ever poorer as man; his need for money becomes ever greater if he wants to overpower hostile being; and the power of his money declines exactly in inverse proportion to the increase in volume of production: that is, his neediness grows as the power of money increases (Marx, p. 93).
In my vocational journey, I have chased the dollar and have been intoxicated by the power of ownership and mastery over other. However, after personal reflection, I have found that by finding pleasure in the work, I have found satisfaction in my vocational and personal life and found a new admiration for the workers of our society who are willing to give up their works for the prosper of others and betterment of themselves.
References:
Marx, K. (1978). Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. In R. C. Tucker (Ed.), The Marx - Engels reader (pp. 66-125). New York: Norton & Co.
Naisbett, J. & Aburdene, P. (1985). Re-inventing the corporation. New York: Warner Books.
Peters, T. (1987). Thriving on chaos. New York: Harper & Row.