“Write short note: Alienation in modern society.” (1981)
Karl Marx (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, 1844) described alienation as the estrangement of workers from their product, the labour process, their creative human essence and one another, because capital owns and directs their labour. Modern society has not abolished this condition. It has changed its site: from the factory floor to consumption, the office, the screen and the self.
From production to consumption: the Frankfurt School
- Herbert Marcuse (One-Dimensional Man, 1964) argued that advanced industrial society integrates workers through false needs. Rising consumption buys consent, so alienation is no longer felt as misery.
- Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (Dialectic of Enlightenment, 1944) saw the culture industry standardising leisure itself, so free time mirrors work time.
- Erich Fromm (The Sane Society, 1955) described a “marketing orientation” in which people experience themselves as commodities.
Workplace alienation after the assembly line
- Harry Braverman (Labor and Monopoly Capital, 1974) showed that Taylorist management deskills white-collar as well as manual work by separating conception from execution.
- Robert Blauner (Alienation and Freedom, 1964) had argued that alienation peaks on the assembly line and declines with automation. Critics reply that he measured workers’ feelings rather than Marx’s objective relations.
- Arlie Russell Hochschild (The Managed Heart, 1983) identified emotional labour: service workers sell managed feelings and become estranged from their own emotions.
Late-modern forms
- Platform and gig work: algorithms assign tasks, set pay and rate workers, so control is invisible and workers have no colleagues to bargain with. NITI Aayog estimated India’s gig workforce at 77 lakh in 2020-21. In January 2026, after Union Labour Ministry intervention over rider safety, quick-commerce platforms agreed to drop “10-minute delivery” branding. The Code on Social Security, 2020, in force since November 2025, now formally recognises gig and platform workers.
- Digital self-alienation: Shoshana Zuboff (The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 2019) argues that users’ behaviour becomes raw material.
- Burnout and acceleration: Byung-Chul Han (The Burnout Society, 2010) argues that the exploiter is now internalised, as the “achievement subject” exploits itself. Hartmut Rosa defines alienation as the loss of resonance in a society of social acceleration. The WHO’s ICD-11 classifies burnout as an occupational phenomenon. The 2024 death of a young Pune chartered accountant sparked a national debate on overwork in Indian corporate culture.
Critical note
Some sociologists treat alienation as subjective dissatisfaction, as in Melvin Seeman’s five dimensions (1959), which job redesign could reduce. Marxists insist its root is structural: loss of control over labour and its fruits. Rahel Jaeggi reframes it as a “relation of relationlessness”, keeping the concept usable without an essentialist human nature.
Conclusion
Modern alienation is less visible but more pervasive: it is felt as burnout, loneliness and screen fatigue rather than hunger. Marx’s insight survives because the question he asked still applies: who controls the conditions of our activity?