Summary: From a discussion at campus Marxist-Humanist reading group – Editors
Paul Kim
November 10, 2024
https://imhojournal.org/
What is alienated labor? It’s labor that doesn’t unfold your personality and capacities through the fruits of your labor because it expands that which is alien to you. What alienated labor expands is an alien, impersonal, and abstract wealth, measured as a pure and homogenous quantity (money), that has an independent power over production and exchange. This alien, impersonal, and abstract wealth is Capital. Under capitalism, the whole point of labor, production, and exchange is Capital. Under capitalism, Capital isn’t made for us because as alienated beings we are made for capital. As alienated beings, we’re born into this world of capital for capital to become a mere appendage of capital or a mere personification of capital. As a mere appendage of capital, we exist to sacrifice our time and energy on the altar, on the clock, of capital. Through alienated labor, our time and energy transform into capital and then capital in return yanks more of our time and energy from us to further expand itself. It yanks our time and energy through its personification, capitalists, who increase productivity in the labor process. Increasing productivity for capital reduces us into cogs in the machine of the labor process. As cogs in the labor process, we mass produce commodities for profit that become an investment for more productive and automated machines that will replace us. It’s through our alienated labor that we render ourselves replaceable and expendable. It’s through alienated labor that we “sink to the level of a commodity” and become “the most wretched of commodities.”
When a machine discharges its cogs, we return to the job market as owners of a special commodity, our ability to work, and enter into a transactional relation to our prospective purchaser: capitalists. Our ability to work is our “life-activity” that embodies our time and energy in our creation through which we unfold ourselves to ourselves. We unfold ourselves through our creation when it becomes a use-value for others to enjoy. When others enjoy our creation, an authentic expression or “objectification” of our unique personality, they extend their recognition to us and confirm our sense of self-worth. This life-activity that is essential for discovering our unique self-worth through others is reduced to a commodity among a world of commodities. Unlike our creation which expresses our unique self-worth, a commodity’s worth is an abstract and homogenous value, making it exchangeable with the most abstract commodity: money. Unlike our unique self-worth, a commodity’s worth is measurable and calculable according to our standardized and homogenous labor-time. Such calculable and measurable worth can’t capture our unique self-worth. In a commodity, our unique self-worth is expunged by homogenous abstract value that renders a commodity exchangeable with money. When our life-activity becomes a commodity, whatever we create doesn’t authenticate our self-worth because it is merely another commodity among a homogenous sea of commodities. We create commodities to expand capital, but we don’t create to expand ourselves.
As Capital expands exponentially, it collapses under its own weight. Capital rises again like a phoenix, but then burns out its fuel and comes crashing down. Capital’s cycle of death and rebirth is a vicious cycle in which workers are trapped. But workers aren’t merely passive victims who are trapped in the vicious cycle of alienation. Workers resist by securing as much of their free time as possible because they know, in some sense, that the secret of Capital is their alienated labor. Their alienated labor in the form of capital is their opposite that stands opposed to them. In this sense, alienated labor, in the form of capital, is the negation of workers. Workers unconsciously yearn to reappropriate their alienated labor from capital. Workers’ yearning drives them to negate their negation in order to retrieve their alienated essence. The yearning of workers becomes their self-movement of transcending alienation. The workers’ self-movement, the collective overcoming of alienation, is the real movement of history. The abolition of capital is at the same time the birth of a new and unalienated humanity.
What is alienated labor? It’s labor that doesn’t unfold your personality and capacities through the fruits of your labor because it expands that which is alien to you. What alienated labor expands is an alien, impersonal, and abstract wealth, measured as a pure and homogenous quantity (money), that has an independent power over production and exchange. This alien, impersonal, and abstract wealth is Capital. Under capitalism, the whole point of labor, production, and exchange is Capital. Under capitalism, Capital isn’t made for us because as alienated beings we are made for capital. As alienated beings, we’re born into this world of capital for capital to become a mere appendage of capital or a mere personification of capital. As a mere appendage of capital, we exist to sacrifice our time and energy on the altar, on the clock, of capital. Through alienated labor, our time and energy transform into capital and then capital in return yanks more of our time and energy from us to further expand itself. It yanks our time and energy through its personification, capitalists, who increase productivity in the labor process. Increasing productivity for capital reduces us into cogs in the machine of the labor process. As cogs in the labor process, we mass produce commodities for profit that become an investment for more productive and automated machines that will replace us. It’s through our alienated labor that we render ourselves replaceable and expendable. It’s through alienated labor that we “sink to the level of a commodity” and become “the most wretched of commodities.”
When a machine discharges its cogs, we return to the job market as owners of a special commodity, our ability to work, and enter into a transactional relation to our prospective purchaser: capitalists. Our ability to work is our “life-activity” that embodies our time and energy in our creation through which we unfold ourselves to ourselves. We unfold ourselves through our creation when it becomes a use-value for others to enjoy. When others enjoy our creation, an authentic expression or “objectification” of our unique personality, they extend their recognition to us and confirm our sense of self-worth. This life-activity that is essential for discovering our unique self-worth through others is reduced to a commodity among a world of commodities. Unlike our creation which expresses our unique self-worth, a commodity’s worth is an abstract and homogenous value, making it exchangeable with the most abstract commodity: money. Unlike our unique self-worth, a commodity’s worth is measurable and calculable according to our standardized and homogenous labor-time. Such calculable and measurable worth can’t capture our unique self-worth. In a commodity, our unique self-worth is expunged by homogenous abstract value that renders a commodity exchangeable with money. When our life-activity becomes a commodity, whatever we create doesn’t authenticate our self-worth because it is merely another commodity among a homogenous sea of commodities. We create commodities to expand capital, but we don’t create to expand ourselves.
As Capital expands exponentially, it collapses under its own weight. Capital rises again like a phoenix, but then burns out its fuel and comes crashing down. Capital’s cycle of death and rebirth is a vicious cycle in which workers are trapped. But workers aren’t merely passive victims who are trapped in the vicious cycle of alienation. Workers resist by securing as much of their free time as possible because they know, in some sense, that the secret of Capital is their alienated labor. Their alienated labor in the form of capital is their opposite that stands opposed to them. In this sense, alienated labor, in the form of capital, is the negation of workers. Workers unconsciously yearn to reappropriate their alienated labor from capital. Workers’ yearning drives them to negate their negation in order to retrieve their alienated essence. The yearning of workers becomes their self-movement of transcending alienation. The workers’ self-movement, the collective overcoming of alienation, is the real movement of history. The abolition of capital is at the same time the birth of a new and unalienated humanity.
The International Marxist-Humanist Organization (IMHO), the publisher of this journal, aims to develop and project a viable vision of an alternative to capitalism - a new, human society - that can give direction to today’s freedom struggles.
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