Alienation in the Post Cold War Era
Chapter 1
Global Capitalism and the
Intensification of Human Alienation
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The tendency to resolve social antagonisms in an individualistic way without the support and solidarity of the community and the workplace reflects the lack of social consciousness and the low level of social struggle today. This combination aggravates the tendency to depend on the psychological and sociological baggage that we all accumulate from being raised in a nuclear family environment. The nuclear family trains us to think, feel and act as individuals separated from the social structure of a larger, positive, supportive community. This leads to distorted and even disturbed thinking and behavior that starts in childhood.
The fear of random violence forces parents to restrict their children’s experience in the community at large. Competitive individualism is encouraged in children by competitive parents, and it is further reinforced in the playground and in the classroom. The lack of meaningful contact with busy parents keeps children from learning appropriate social skills, which would enable them to establish friendship and solidarity. Instead, they enter this new social system as painfully separate individuals. Their individualism expresses itself either through aggression or its opposite, acute shyness.
The low level of social struggle and the lack of hope for real change particularly isolate working people, who must toil for long hours to survive and do not have time to lead a full life. Their powerlessness and atomization reinforce in them an individualist approach to life, which is based on competitiveness and individual aggressiveness. Overwhelmed by negative feelings that come from antagonistic relations with others, the person loses the potential for love, tenderness and compassion; experiences intense feelings of separateness, and becomes afraid of taking the risks necessary to build a positive connection with others. In this way, individualism weakens the humanity of the working individual, whose motto in the corporate culture becomes: “I manipulate you to get what I want, and I stab you in the back if it advances my interests.” This individualization then combines with increasing commercialization and commodification of life under global capitalism. When we are forced to move at the hectic pace imposed on us by the current social environment, life becomes a business running “24/7,” in which we only have time to treat each other as passing things. Our alienated existence is unmitigated and nonstop.
Women, because of their connection to the home and to their children, used to be somewhat immune to individualism and aggressive behavior. This is no longer the case. Capitalism has now incorporated a relatively thin layer of middle class women into its upper ranks, allowing them to penetrate into privileged, previously all-male jobs and fields of work. But as the price for their “success,” these professional women have had to internalize global capitalism’s ruthless drive for maximum profit. The adaptation to an aggressive, competitive personality can be very stressful for these women, who are not conditioned, in our society, to be as aggressive and competitive as men. Our social system takes for granted that men are working machines and thus are not supposed to have deep relationships with their children. Now this standard has begun to extend to women, particularly those who want a career in the corporate world. Many professional women choose to hire a nanny, even when their husband’s or partner’s income would allow them to stay home, thus sacrificing the quality of their relationship with their kids so that they can pursue a high-powered career. Working class women, on the other hand, are often forced to work overtime in order to pay for expensive daycare and/or baby-sitters. The result is the same, however; they too do not have enough quality time with their children.
The stress level of professional women is enormous. To succeed and climb the social ladder they have to put on the socially-expected “pleasant personality” mask, but combine that with a more overt aggressive, competitive personality. This is even more difficult for women than for men, since in addition to coping with common problems of sexual harassment and discrimination, professional women also have to contend with the contradiction between the stereotyped “feminine” social image and the demands of the work world. On the one hand, as women, they are expected to be more “pleasant” than men, and are perceived as “bitchy” if they do not conform to that expectation; on the other hand, if they are too meek, they are criticized for not being as aggressive and driven as their male colleagues, and may be denied challenging work assignments or promotions.
A good example of the type of personality a woman needs to exhibit in order to rise to the top is shown in the movie Working Girl. The main character, Tess, is a secretary whose boss—also a woman—is forced to take time off work for several weeks due to an injury. While her boss is recovering, Tess steals information from her office, and arranges to meet with her powerful connections. Tess demonstrates that she is better at her boss’s job than her boss is, and also manages to discredit her. The boss loses her job, and Tess climbs to the top of the corporate ladder.
Tess starts out as a good-hearted secretary, but once she decides to use her “ideas” to advance her career, she quickly learns the game of “stab your competition in the back, and kiss up to the people who can help you get ahead.” It is interesting to note, however, that even though Tess gets ahead at her boss’s expense, the audience is not meant to perceive Tess as an obnoxious or unsympathetic character, but rather as a decent woman who simply wants to be fairly rewarded for using her considerable brains. At the beginning of the movie, she loses her previous job for refusing to capitulate to sexism and sleep with her boss. At the end, after moving into her big new window office, Tess decides to treat her secretary better than she was treated when she was a secretary. Magnanimously, she tells her that she only has to get Tess coffee when she is getting some for herself.
Thus, Working Girl shows that it is acceptable to undermine and betray your boss and coworkers, as long as you have something better to offer the capitalists than your boss. Moreover, Tess provides a good example of a woman who rises to the top by exhibiting just the right combination of ruthless competitiveness and a soft “woman’s touch.” Middle class women face enormous pressure in trying somehow to reconcile and balance the cunning, heartless personality needed to succeed in the vicious corporate world with their socialized “feminine” tendency to be warm and supportive.
Alienation at the beginning of the new millennium can be summarized as follows. Intolerable stress and anxiety are penetrating and undermining the alienated person’s protective shield of conformity. These stresses are eroding the inherently superficial comfort level of the market personality—that is, the conformist personality whose life centers around consumerism and superficial, materialistic relations with other people. The combination of the conformist personality of the mid-20th century with today’s increasingly aggressive and individualist character is producing severe insecurity in people. They are being driven ever deeper into the busyness of compulsive activities and escapism in order to alleviate the unbearable pain inflicted by the social reality of global capitalism.