Notes on Alienation
A whole series of alienations has spread to separate us from all that surrounds us; social alienations, so commented upon by anarchists and Marxists alike, include private property, exchange, and the division of labor: all that separates us from our conditions of existence. Within capitalism, social alienations interpose themselves between humans and their activity. Most directly, alienation is the gap between desire and what is socially valued (for capitalism, valued as productive of surplus value). Yet alienation occurs on another level as well: that of the alienation of power, our power to act, which is separated from us and instituted in the State form. The young Marx commented on this, although in later Marxists a critique of alienated power is painfully absent. The maintenance of alienated power is what politics is all about: it is the apportioning or arrangement of alienated power. Parties are political in that they try to claim a portion of alienated power by claiming to represent the interests of a section of society. An anti-politics is a self-organization of people’s power not a claim on alienated power; it is the self-activity of people reclaiming their power by using their power and the fight against its realienation into permanent institutions.
Unfortunately, many
anarchists today also seem to lack any critique of alienated power: this has become especially clear during the
recent sweep of anti-globalization protests.
Some anarchists are calling for a shift to a form of alienated power
different from the one we have at present, and yet not questioning the
alienation of power in general: this
usually takes the form of a vague call for more democracy, which maintains and
institutionalizes a separation between decision and action (See our article “The Anarchist Ethic in the
Age of the Anti-Globalization Movement” in this issue for a more in depth
discussion of alienated power and the current anti-globalization
protests.) Secondly, it is important to
understand value as an activity and pertaining to activities; in this society,
economics usually defines value as pertaining to objects, thus activities and
processes are ideologically reified into things. Therefore, capitalist valorization also alienates us from our
power to act, from our activity, and from our desires.
Yet some anarchists take the
critique of alienation much further.
Social alienation, in the form of private property, exchange, the
division of labor, and alienated power, can be thought of as second order
alienation. These are specific forms
that first order alienation takes in our society. The split between Subject and Object is a first order alienation;
it is based in a consciousness which is self-reflexive in its understanding of
itself. This alienation of Subject and
Object, of human and nature, is mediated by productive activity and
language. However, rejection of all
mediation and alienation in general is close to a mysticism in its idealization
of the identity of the Subject and Object.
This is an idealization of nature and demands forgetting species
consciousness, language, etc.
While we certainly believe
it is important to have a more critical perspective on these second order
alienations, we think it is a mistake to believe that social revolution can
bring about a unity between Subject and Object, between self and nature, in the
fullest sense. Overcoming first order
alienations, of course, is impossible without first overcoming second order
alienations, and if a successful social revolution were to finish off the
State, and private property and the division of labor were to disappear,
individuals may wish to attempt the task of overcoming first order
alienations. Those who try to overcome
the first order in the present usually wander off into the realm of the
mystical, Hakim Bey being a notable example (this is not to suggest this is
something individuals should avoid--it is, of course, entirely up to them
whether to undertake such a task--only that to begin with the first is to
attempt a mystical unity and to depart from humanity and from any attempt to
overcome second order alienations socially).
It seems like the focus on first order alienations is in part derived
from an extreme pessimism towards the possibility of any fundamental change in
our society; in this sense it is a symptom that is closely related to New Age
philosophy.
Primitivism distinguishes
itself in part by its thorough critique of all forms of alienation of first and
second order. Yet as a critique it
tends to concentrate its force on first order alienations. Most primitivists clearly understand that
the first order of alienations could not be overcome without a social
revolution, but a focus on the first order instead of the second offer little
insight to how we are to overcome either orders of alienation: this is because
most of these critiques grow out of philosophical reflection rather than a
theoretical reflection upon practice.
If we are to develop an
insurrectionary anti-politics, we need to be clear and thorough in our critique
of alienation without falling into mysticism or politics, and without
idealizing a unity that may never have existed and to which social revolution
cannot return us.