[prince781]

Alienation isn't a historical event. It's a term that describes how a human being, in the present, relates to the things he creates.

The concept is simple:

Most people today are put in the unusual position (anthropologically speaking) of creating things they do not themselves sell. From this flows a lot of consequences for social conflict, politics, mental health, etc, something we should try to understand.

[dalbasal]

Alienation is/was a term coined at a particular time. It was easy to understand at that time, because it was related to changes in the world that were happening. You didn't have to be a marxist to use it in a sentence.

Today it is still used, because it's part of abstract theory, to which other abstract theory relates, in ways that are entirely meaningless outside of this theory. What's the non-alienated version of an amazon worker, a door-to-door salesman?

>> From this flows a lot of consequences for social conflict, politics, mental health, etc.

Whether or not this was ever true, it was at least a legible statement 200 years ago. Today, it's a completely meaningless, mumbling piety.

[prince781]

The term remains easy to understand. Whether you agree/disagree with it is a separate matter.

> What's the non-alienated version of an amazon worker?

An Amazon worker that can exclusively determine who gets to be on the board of directors.

>> From this flows a lot of consequences for social conflict, politics, mental health, etc.

> Whether or not this was ever true, it was at least a legible statement 200 years ago. Today, it's a completely meaningless, mumbling piety.

Is your contention that alienation is _not_ one source (among many) of social conflict? Certainly history is not on your side here.

[dalbasal]

It's my "contention" that alienation is a term, very abstract, not a discrete thing that can have consequences.

I contend that in the early 19th century, the term made for good rhetoric. IE, you could use it to describe the world and convey ideas. If it hadn't been coined then, but someone coined it now, it would be weak rhetoric. An uncompelling abstraction that doesn't describe anything, convince anyone or explain anything... like a joke that needs to be explained. No one would give it any attention. It's not even wrong, it's just irrelevant. Marx was wrong about lots of things, right about other things. He was rarely irrelevant though, at least until his later years.

I'd also point you to the fact that this kind of mumbo jumbo is why an amazon union vote failed a few weeks ago. The corporate culture BS that amazon (the point of this article) is teaching in schools now makes more sense and has more meaning to workers than the marxist theology that this article is written in. The present is not on your side.

I'll finally contend that a young Karl Marx himself would not be writing or talking like this, or reading Jacobin. He had new ideas, that made sense in his time. He got those ideas by observing the world, not arcane language written by some 15th century philosopher. That's what conservatives do. It ain't radical.

Workers don't want to hear about their alienation. They want a raise, dignity, childcare and a stake in the game. They don't want to be surveilled, or fired by an email generated by an NN.

>> The term remains easy to understand

The term is 100% unintelligible.

[prince781]

> Workers don't want to hear about their alienation. They want a raise, dignity, childcare and a stake in the game. They don't want to be surveilled, or fired by an email generated by an NN.

All of those things are encompassed by a single word—alienation. They are all a consequence of a loss of control over your working life.

[dalbasal]

Ah yes! The fact that workers find this shite meaningless is further proof that it's true. Of course all those things are encompassed by alienation. Alienation encompasses everything, because it doesn't mean anything. Thinking back on teenage me on may day. What an embarrassment. I'm done.

[selimthegrim]

Has the term ‘wooden language’ fallen out of use these days?