alienation and community

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Alienation and

SOONER or later, any Socialism worth its salt must cometo grips with the problems of alienation. Since the

Industrial Revolution, thoughtful men of all political per-suasions and religious beliefs have grappled with anindefinable sense of loss; a sense that life in modern societyhas become impoverished, that men are somehow ' derac-inate and disinherited,' that society and human nature alike

have been atomized, and hence mutilated, above all thatmen have been separated from whatever might give mean-ing to their work and their lives. This sense of declinehas run alongside and, as it were, in counterpoint to theeuphoric visions of Progress which had such a followingin the nineteenth century and, somewhat defensively, stillas inseparable from the process of industrialization itself,retain considerable influence in this. Both were seen

in terms of child labouis this all that our socialMore important, is this

/. WHAT IS AL

Why a man works ahave been central questthought. It has been saiout of fear of starvationas expressing any purpoown. To this the reply ever been allowed to w

Universities & Left Review 5 Autumn 1958



servitudes, its basic orientations, form a pattern; a wholewhich is meaningful in this quasi-artistic sense to the onewho lives it. Thus it is no answer to those who talk of alienation under capitalist society to point out that most

men have not given their lives a consciously defined pur-pose : this has not always been essential to a meaningfullife in the past. But, by the same token, we cannot expectit to be sufficient in the future ; we cannot recreate eventhe general pattern of the past. Liberal thought is oftenguilty of this kind of anachronism: it dismisses the problemof alienation on the grounds, first, that human nature hasnever changed and therefore our age has no special prob-lems (therefore why worry); second, that human naturewill never change and the perennial problems are ineradic-able (therefore no use worrying).

Thus one of the features of work in industrial societythat one minority stream of socialist critique (e.g. Marx,Morris, Fridham) has clearly delineated, is the radicalseparation between work hours and the rest of life, whichnow becomes the rule. It is clear that work cannot bemeaningful under these conditions, but it it usually assumedthat the rest of a man's life doesn't necessarily suffer over-

The recovery therefore be a sienough time and of proliferating th

also re-acquiringno doubt that tdegree.

The IdeoloBut it is not

Utilitarian modeture is in anothein industrial soapproximate to ta sense true thais distinct from lto be more passtrue not only in as unrelated to tthose things whiin other words, a



nothing is changed if the search is successful, there areno intrinsic criteria of achievement; the search is potenti-ally endless. (Cf E. Durkheim: Suicide, Bk. II, Cp. 5).Some socially established external criterion of success for

different classes and groups is therefore a necessity. Thegoal of Pleasure and the avoidance of Pain becomes thatof possession of the visible signs of ' ful l' life. The statushierarchy, laying down the standards of present requiredachievement, and of achievable future ambition becomesa psychological necessity. Status tensions, inevitable in amobile society, begin to carry a lethal psychic charge.Anxiety over futility merges with anxiety over the gapbetween required and achieved status.

This anxiety is, of course, fixed on and intensified by

mass-media advertising. Advertising, as today practised inBritain and America, both exploits and helps to give shapeto the status hierarchy. It trades on the anxiety over statusby convincing people that the products it recommends arethe pivotal criteria for having arrived. But this is not theonly arrow in its quiver. It also gives recognition to theanxiety over futility. This is if anything intensified bythe diversion of the search for Pleasures as a Consumer

class and elite against 'pop' cuthe two is inexresentments. B

which immediabrow ' indirectlthose who do extent by thosebecoming the pa set of privatelect recognise edoesn't seek tothe existing bain a hotbed atmas trivialized a

raised its wallsthe theatre whithe form whichto address a individuals, whtion which onlpossible.



societies grew up in the new industrial towns, usually onthe basis of a local tradition, the fact that work-hoursbecame so many lost hours did not at once destroy thetraditional conceptions of meaning in life ; r ath er some-thing like a common culture grew up in the different

working-class communities, based on the values of soli-darity and mutual trust. The fact that the sense of solidaritywas largely based on a mistrust a nd hostility to ' THEM 'has often been cited to show the narrowness and parochial-ism which infected the working-class community, butwhatever the faults and virtues of this culture it provideda sense of meaning in life alternative to the standardutilitarian one of the alienated man in mass society. Thegradual, weakening of these groups has made ind ividualsuncertain of their status and has opened the door to thestatus tensions, which are exacerbated by the fact that they

provide the only criterion of success. (This represents , infact, the growth of " Consumer Capitalism," which StuartHall analyses at length in his article in this issue.)

The Break-up of the Primary Group But this fragmentation of the primary group is often

h di i f lib i f h i di id l f

to us via Marx, does mormena, it represents also a offering us a model, that becoming foreign to mancourse, the groundwork t

is therefore far more tha' alienation ' is the right te

A rival term is that of ' aThis concept fits naturallytory model, that of a breato be accepted. Anomicrules, no boundaries. Dweakening of the social bothat men become more insociety becomes more var

is at the root of what, alienation. According to of human activity whichsurvival are given meaninitself jncarnated and indi(Suicide, p. 212). Thus through a development cannot but raise a question



former would have to create and nurture the ' primarygroup' with a conscious purpose: to make people happy ;while the latter would have to be conditioned unreflectinglyto feel themselves a part of the larger whole. These are

already the terms of reference with which much work in' human relations ' in American industry is done. But thiswork is bound to fail, and the problems it is meant tosolve to recur as long as America remains a democracy.

Even more futile is the attempt to become both manipu-lator and manipulated characteristic of the way of life of the Organization Man. In the part of his book entitled" The New Suburbia." Whyte describes the community lifeof the new, highly mobile middle class of America — the' pioneers ' of Riesman referred to above. The belief under-

lying their emphasis on participation, Whyte points out,is that the individual cannot live the ' good life ' withoutclose bonds to his society. The important need to fill isthat for a 'sense of belongingness.' But to the extent thatthis is seen as another good to be 'consumed,' to the extent.therefore that people try to administer it to themselves,to manipulate themselves and others, they must be muchtoo sophisticated, much too highly conscious of their tech-

criterion of this and failures: onecan therefore beonly those wh

prisoners of a ruwhich they cann

Riesman aIn his most

David RiesmanThe Lonely Cfocusses attentiomore precisely, main question i

is how to give oeuvre inside a therefore transprecreation of thby individuals open one. ' Aucapable of confsociety but



Positively, the road is not so clear. The premium puton individual mobility in a capitalist society, the style of life, i.e. consumption pattern, which represents its highestgoal of achievement, have not only contributed to thebreak-up of the primary group but have tended to create

actuation where those which survive are the most stag-nant and resistant tochange. The struggle for survivalhas often resulted in a stifling parochialism. The attemptto build new primary societies cannot be based on the exist-ing ones alone. But it cannot start without them. If weneed the sense of a common lot, intertwined with that of a common purpose, we can only find it here, even if thepurpose seems now largely lost and the lot for the mostpart negatively defined. The most urgent job is thereforeto rescue the old communities, to prevent their sinking into

the amorphous mass of the surrounding conurbations, toopen them out by rescuing the local theatres, art galleriesand museums from financial asphyxiation, to plan therebuilding so that the old relationships are not torn downwith the condemned housing, to give their development

some of the impetto associate the projects.

This salvage wthe development

schemes in commwere pilot schemeopment cannot bcommunity can oand not the othewith the old commreal in this contethe newer urban

Of course, thisrequires a contex

industry. Alienatthough it is true tis about Industry second is a simplof socialist policy

alienation and community

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