Alienation, Dignity and the Division of Labour

The division of labour has ramifications on how people relate to each other at work. Here, Marx argues that “in the production process of capital labor is a totality—a combination of labors—whose individual

component parts are alien to one another, so that the overall process as a totality is not the work of the individual worker, and is furthermore the work of the different workers together only to the extent that they are [forcibly] combined, and do not [voluntarily] enter into combination with one another” (Marx 1973: 470). In addition, the commoditisation of labour engenders competition between workers. Morris (2009), in his discussion of these issues maintains that a further consequence of this aspect of alienation is that workers “encounter one another as competitive individuals and not as essentially cooperative beings” (Morris 2009: 144).

Thus we can see a contradictory process at work. Workers are obliged to cooperate with each other, both at an immediate level, and even when there can be significant spatial and temporal distances between them, as well as when they are also in competition with each other. Within this contradictory relationship, workers simultaneously see each other as a threat and a necessity. Implicit in Marx’s view of labour is that it is essentially a collective activity, where the dignity of the individual can only be guaranteed by the dignity of all. The competitive nature of commoditised labour working under an intense division of labour undercuts any notion of collective dignity. This contradictory condition undermines the possibility of shared, dignified relationships with other workers. A further consequence of this experience is that just as workers create and recreate the conditions of their own denial of dignity, they simultaneously do the same for other workers.

These, then, are the two constituent parts driving the alienated experience: under commoditised labour: the worker has no control over the products of her labour, which include her own labour power. Further, she has no control over the relationship of labour to the act of production within labour. Marx argues that these constituent parts exist in relation to each other; they both arise from and contribute to each other. They provide the basis for a denial of dignity within the working environment.