Sample: Alienation and its Alleviation in American Economic Culture
The American worker is not content. This pervasive dissatisfaction may be observed not just from anecdotal evidence but from the real-world economic consequences of skyrocketing labor losses, ongoing battles over minimum wage, and bitter political contests between parties who both assert an equal claim over the rights of the middle class. Clearly, some fundamental needs of the working class in America have failed to be met by the actions of government, individual employers, and the system of economic structure at large, and this failure is nothing new.
Trends across the past several decades chart the progression of these financial strains, and the resulting tensions these placed on the development of personal and interpersonal fulfillment. These key social goods, which provide the foundational building blocks of a healthy community, have been deemphasized to detrimental effect on the fabric of society. Yet the keenest obstacle to reclaiming these goods remains, for many Americans, the structure of their work life itself; the very means that originally existed for the preservation of these goods.
So insurmountable does this paradox appear that a growing number of citizens, particularly those in their youth, have begun to view not just the practice of the country’s economics but the roots of the economic structure itself as suspect, and incompatible with the life of greater personal flourishing they hope to attain. With this fundamental distrust comes the rise of inclination towards more controlled, centralized forms of economics, as evidenced by the toleration of socialist and communist ideologies among a wider swath of the population than in many preceding decades.1 Such trends clearly demonstrate that the “spectre of Communism,” or at least some of its central theories, has gained a certain hold on the American consciousness.2
The aim of this present inquiry will not be either the condemnation or elevation of this particular economic ideology, but rather, the explanation of the core philosophical complaint at its heart; namely, the theory of alienation. The nuances of this concept will first be explicated independently, and secondly contrasted to a deeper analysis of the problems at the root of the American work crisis. The progression of this endeavor will demonstrate first the inherent, practical consequences of alienation on both the individual and societal levels, before proceeding to ascertain whether, and in what ways, the American economic culture is experiencing the impacts of this separation.
Once both a full exploration of the term and its implications for the future of American economy have been established, discussion will conclude with the question of a way forward for such a compromised economic culture, without either resorting to the extreme and dubious solutions further posed by Marx or remaining in the same inefficient and potentially perilous alienated circumstances. In each of these three endeavors, analysis will remain grounded in the words of theorist Nicolas Gomez Davila, who identified “two equally erroneous attitudes towards Marxism: disdaining what it teaches, [and] believing what it promises.”3
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1 Lydia Saad, “Socialism as Popular as Capitalism Among Young Adults in U.S.,” Gallup, November 25, 2019.
2 Karl Marx, The Portable Karl Marx, trans. Eugene Kamenka (New York: The Viking Press, 1983), 203.
3 Jonathan Askonas, “International Political Economy: Intro Lecture,” (Politics 673, The Catholic University of America, 2 Sept. 2021), PowerPoint presentation, 19.
