Alienation in the Post Cold War Era
Chapter 3
How Marx Traces the Roots of
Alienation to Capitalist Society
(page 3)
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How Money and the Commodification of Social Needs Distort Our Humanity
Marx points out what the foundation of capitalism does to people. Money represents hostile things and alien state of being that are antagonistic to our humanity. He talks about the mutual deceit and robbery in our daily life that destroys all our potential positive human qualities. When a person is poor as a human being, money become the most important quality in life. But the life of such a person is quantitative, abstract and dead. Human relations became like the relations between money and commodities, that is, dull and abstract. We become a dead commodity, and relate to each other as dead commodities. All human emotional and spiritual qualities are subordinated to such dead relations between commodities. Love is “love” when I can swindle you and get something out of you with the sweet talk of love; or in the case of most people be depended on you, because I cannot exist in general without the false security that comes from adapting the features of the market personality — a personality that is governed by the market of commodities. Such personality gets its emotional security by possessing people and things, or being possessed by people and things. The social structure that encourages such social relations creates antagonism and a degradable dependency in human relations.
Marx points out that the system instill false needs and false emotional attitudes. The system weakens us, so that the people in power can manipulate us; they exploit our weak internal human existence to maximize their profit. This is essential for the capitalist social structure. When Marx writes about the entrepreneur swindling his neighbor by awakening unhealthy appetites in him, he also writes about today’s consumer oriented capitalist society. He had a brilliant vision of what the economic and social foundation of capitalism does to human interactions. He saw in advance the psychological features of the typical consumer. Indeed, what is the difference between the entrepreneur in the 19th century that created false needs to swindle people, and the big corporations in today’s consumer society? The scale of swindling, the sophistication of the swindlers, and the refinement of their technology. In addition, the number of commodities that people buy these days to appease artificial needs and feelings are much higher than a century ago. Nowadays, the economy will collapse if people stopped buying things to pacify such needs and feelings.
The present advertisements and intense shopping is based on the exploitation and manipulation of the anxiety of people who feel impotent and weak as human beings. With frenzy buying we try to temporarily compensate for such feelings with the illusions of manufactured imaginary positive feelings. We buy the commercial trash that we do not need to compensate for the lack of real positive feelings and existence. Every advertisement on TV basically manipulate our internal weaknesses. Take for example, recent ads run by Apple computers. The ads show us pictures of different famous people, usually people who became very successful in their fields, but also quite unusual people. The ads say “Think different”. What does it do to our psyche? In today’s capitalism, the middle class that can afford computers, lives an empty life, filled with shopping and consumption of goods made by our capitalist swindlers. The ad exploits the profound feelings of impotency, and depression that is underneath the empty life; it exploits the feeling of being nobody, for just being part of the herd[3]. These feelings are either semi-conscious or unconscious. They are accompanied by deep anxiety and dissatisfaction. These are typical feelings of the majority of the people who have false security when they belong to the herd, when they are not different. Underneath the false security the majority is anxious, they yearn to reach their humanity — to be somebody different and special. Thus, the swindler behind the ad says that “when you buy an apple computer, you overcome the feelings of being impotent and nobody; you transcend your anxiety and dissatisfaction and become like the famous people in the pictures: somebody different. You will no longer be like the majority that use an inferior computer which is under the control of Bill Gate (that you hate). If you buy an Apple computer, you think differently”. By buying the apple computer the needy feelings, of course, do not get fulfilled. People cannot become somebody different or a creative person by buying a new computer. But it helps the swindler to rob you of your money. And since the insecurities and feeling of being impotent do not go away, the swindler can strike again and again.
Marx explains how money in capitalism twists our human potential, how it transforms our feelings into manufactured feelings and manufactured needs, and how it transformed us into somebody else: an alienated human being who lives somebody else’s life — not his/her own life:
“The power to confuse and invert all human and natural qualities, to bring about fraternization of incompatibles, the divine power of money, resides in its character as the alienated and self-alienating species-life of man. It is the alienated power of humanity.“What I as a man am unable to do, and thus what all my individual faculties are unable to do, is made possible for me by money. Money, therefore, turns each of these faculties into something which it is not, into its opposite.
“. . . Money is the external, universal means and power (not derived from man as man or from human society as society) to change representation into reality and reality into mere representation. It transforms real human and natural faculties into mere abstract representations, i.e., imperfections and tormenting chimeras; and on the other hand, it transforms real imperfections and fancies, faculties which are really impotent and which exist only in the individual’s imagination, into real faculties and powers. In this respect, therefore, money is the general inversion of individualities, turning them into their opposites . . .
“. . . Money, then, appears as a disruptive power for the individual and for the social bonds, which claim to be self-subsistent entities. It changes fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, stupidity into intelligence and intelligence into stupidity.”[4]
After “translating” the 19th century language, we can see how Marx is able to show that capitalism disrupts the natural human potential for bonding and freedom (which he calls facilities) and transform them into mere servants of alienated money. In capitalism money distorts the potential of human relationship, and in this sense it makes such a relationship dead and abstract — to be mere representation of dead money. Money makes human relationships exploitative; it transforms human relationships into a relation between things — humans become commodities to be used and manipulated by greed. Money in this sense is not simply money, but it represents the alienated social forces that distorts our humanity. Marx says, translating it to modern language, that capitalist society conditions our social and psychological features in accordance with the deadening, abstract, and exploitative features of money. It instills in us feelings and thoughts which are not our own, and which oppose our humanity. In the last analysis our alien social and psychological features can be traced to the social/economic system where money plays the dominant role in human relationships. Thus, our humanity is transformed into its opposite. As alienated human beings we see a distorted representation of reality: we see the conditioned distortion of reality as reality itself. Since human relations are alienated relations that are dominated by money and commodities, potential human feelings such as love, compassion, the ability to feel joy, sadness, and to experience spontaneity must be suppressed. They are dulled by the commodification of human relations.
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[3]Traditionally the terms “being part of the herd” or “belonging to the herd” were used by some psychologists in the 1930’s to the 1960’s. The term herd is only symbolic since humans evolve from primates, which are not exactly an herd type animal. We still retained a lot from the ape’s culture. We feel secured within the small family, the extended family, the clan system, etc. The large herd and the ape’s tribe share a fundamental similar feature: they provide the basic security and belonging in a social organization in which being different is out of the question. While being different endangers the animal’s species existence, the human case is much more complicated. Yet, being part of the family, clan, nation, etc., in the human’s case, provides the basic feelings of security and belonging at the expense of developing independence. The term herd mentality is symbolic and is used in this context.
[4]From Karl Marx Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, quoted in Marx’s Concept of Man by Erich Fromm, pages 166-168, emphasis in original.