At this point, however, it would be somewhat awkward if, after rereading Hegel through Marx, we were to skip Marx and return to Hegel in order to say that since alienation is inevitably a fundamental characteristic of one’s relationship with objects and nature, it would be useless to try to eliminate it. Just as it would be awkward to accept alienation as an «existential situation,» since we know how ambiguous such an expression can be in the light of a negative existentialism, according to which any attempt to overcome the «structure of existence» would simply throw us back onto it.
Our argument should instead proceed in a different direction.
The kind of alienation Marx speaks of is, on the one hand, the same as that which is studied by political economy, namely that which derives from the use that a society based on private property makes of the objects produced by a worker. (Because he produces for others, he makes himself ugly by producing beauty and mechanizes himself by producing machines.) On the other hand, it is the sort of alienation that is intrinsic to the very process of production. This second kind of alienation is fostered by the worker, who fails to see his work as an end in itself and instead considers it as a means of survival in which he fails to recognize himself (since neither the product nor the work belongs to him).
Since these two types of alienation are necessary for the survival of a particular society, it is conceivable, following a Marxist line of reasoning, that a radical modification of the system of relationships on which that society is based would eliminate alienation.
On the other hand, even though a modification of society may liberate man from this sort of subjection (and give him back the object he produces as well as the productive work he has accomplished both for himself and the collectivity), the constant tension characteristic of his alienation «in» the object would remain (this is where Hegel contributes to a greater understanding of the problem), since the object the worker has produced is constantly threatening to control him.
This sort of alienation could indeed be perceived as an existential structure or, if we prefer, as the problem that confronts every subject who, having produced an object, turns to it with the intent either to use it or, simply, to consider it. My remarks here will concentrate on this particular kind of alienation—the one that follows every act of objectification—since I believe that this problem has its own characteristics and that it is part of the relationship between man and the world that surrounds him. Of course, a Marxist point of view could easily maintain that this problem would be confronted with greater freedom and awareness in a society that has eliminated economic alienation. But even in this case, the problem would retain most of its urgency.’
As defined here, alienation can be eliminated through both action and awareness, but not forever. If we see alienation even in the relationship between two lovers (since each of them inevitably ends up conforming to the image of the other), then we cannot possibly contemplate a civilization in which the collective sharing of the means of production will completely eliminate alienation from the dialectic at the basis of life and of every human relationship.
At this point, however, alienation is no longer confined to a particular social structure; rather, it extends to every relationship between man and man, man and object, man and society, man and myth, man and language. As such, it not only serves to explain all those economic relationships which, because of their hold on us, assume the appearance of psychological phenomena, but must also be seen as a form of psychological and physiological behavior whose effect on our personality is so pervasive as to manifest itself in all our social relationships. Alienation will then appear as a phenomenon which, under certain circumstances, goes from the structure of human groups to the most private mental behavior, and under other circumstances, from individual mental behavior to the structure of human groups. The very fact that we live, work, produce, and form relationships means that we exist in alienation.
Is there any hope for remission? Not really; neither is it possible to eliminate the negative pole of this tension. This is why, every time we try to describe an alienating situation, just when we think we have identified it we discover that we don’t know how to get out of it. Every solution we come up with is merely a reiteration of the same problem, even though at a different level. This situation— which, in a moment of pessimism, we could define as irreducibly paradoxical, «absurd»—is, in fact only dialectic: it cannot be solved by simply eliminating one of its poles. The absurd is nothing but a dialectic situation as perceived by a masochist.’
We produce a machine, and then the machine oppresses us with an inhuman reality that renders the relationship we have with it, and with the world through it, disagreeable. Industrial design seems to have found a solution to this problem: it fuses beauty with utility and gives us a humanized machine, a machine cut to human size—the blender, the knife, or the typewriter that advertises its capacities in a pleasant way and invites us to touch it, stroke it, use it. Man could thus be harmoniously assimilated to his function and to the instrument that allows its fulfillment. But this optimistic solution does not satisfy the moralist or the social critic: it is just another form of oppression on the part of an industrial power which, by rendering our relationship to things and the world more pleasant, makes us forget that in fact we remain slaves.
A paradoxical alternative project would be to devise instruments that would make our work as irksome as possible, so that we would never for a second forget that what we are producing is never going to be ours. Such an alternative, however, sounds more like the dream of a madman than like a viable solution. Let’s for a moment imagine that these objects are used by people who, instead of working for some extraneous power, work for themselves and the collectivity. Would this better justify the object that tries to integrate form and function in a harmonious way?
Not really, since in this case the users will be working as if in a trance, not for a common profit but rather in total surrender to the charm of the object. They would use the object without realizing that they are used by it. Thus, the latest car model can often become a mythic image capable of diverting all our moral energy and of causing us to lose ourselves in the selfsatisfied possession of something that is nothing more than a substitute. Nor would the situation change in the instance of a perfectly planned collectivist society in which each member worked to provide himself and his fellow citizens with the latest car model: the contemplation of a pleasing form would ease our integration into our work, and thus it would stifle our moral energy and prevent us from pursuing any goal.
Of course, the dream of a more humane society is also the dream of a society in which everybody can work for the common good: to provide more medicines, more books, and more cars. But even this would not be enough to eliminate alienation. As proof, we have the parallel experiences of the West Coast beatniks and of the «individualist» poets who protest in Mayakovsky Square.
Though intellectuals are always ineluctably drawn to support those who protest, in this particular instance it would be more reasonable to assert that both the beatniks and Yevtushenko are wrong—even though, historically speaking, they fulfill their dialectic function.
They are wrong because their protest often reduces salvation to the idle contemplation of one’s own inner void; to them, even the merest search for a remedy is a form of complicity with the alienating situation. On the contrary, the only possible salvation demands an active and practical involvement with the situation. Man works, produces a world of objects, and inevitably alienates himself to them. But then he rids himself of his alienation by accepting those objects, by committing himself to them, and, instead of annihilating them, by negating them in the name of transformation, aware that at every transformation he will again find himself confronting the same dialectic situation, the same risk of surrendering to the new, transformed reality. What alternative could be more humane and positive than this?
To paraphrase Hegel, man cannot remain locked up in himself, in the temple of his own interiority: he must externalize himself in his work and, by so doing, alienate himself in it. For if he chooses instead to withdraw into himself and to cultivate his own purity and spiritual independence, he will find not salvation but annihilation. He cannot transcend alienation by refusing to compromise himself in the objective situation that emerges out of his work. This situation is the very condition of our humanity. The figure of consciousness that refuses this sort of compromise is that of the «beautiful soul.» But what happens to the «beautiful soul»?
«When clarified to this degree of transparency, consciousness exists in its
