Abstract
We introduce an exercise designed to make Marx’s theory of alienated labor accessible to students in a Sociology of Work class. Through a role-playing activity where students create and sell goods under conditions of both alienated and nonalienated labor, students actually experience the different material and social consequences of these conditions. The article briefly describes the exercise and shows how it can be used with Marx’s original writings. We assess the effectiveness of the exercise, using students’ answers to open-ended questions about the activity, and discuss possible limitations.
Marx posited that the ability to do productive work at their own discretion for their own purposes was what made people fundamentally human (Marx [1844] 1988). Under capitalism, workers are forced to sell their labor. This separates workers from the products of their labor, as well as from what makes them human and connects them to other human beings. Marx’s concept of alienated labor illustrates that work can and has been organized in many other ways aside from wage work. While this can help students cultivate a sociological perspective on work by placing wage work in historical context and providing an opportunity to think about alternate ways of organizing work and subsistence, students often find Marx’s writing and the concept difficult to understand. Marx wrote about alienation in the early nineteenth century and his writing was translated from German, making his language unfamiliar and inaccessible to students. In addition, abstract theories like alienation often frustrate and intimidate students (Holtzman 2005; Lowney 1998; Pedersen 2010). To bring this theory to life, we set up mock production processes with Play-Doh, creating experiences with alienated and nonalienated labor and providing students with a concrete example to improve comprehension of Marx.
Undergraduate students often find sociological theory intimidating and anxiety-provoking (Lowney 1998; Parotta and Rusche 2011; Pedersen 2010; Segady 1990). After 10 years of informally surveying her theory students, Lowney (1998) determined students often felt anxious about their ability to understand sociological theories. Lowney (1998) helped alleviate her students’ anxiety by having them assemble puzzles and then likening their strategies for assembling puzzles to theories. Segady (1990) found that active learning techniques can help lessen anxiety and improve comprehension.
A number of scholars have developed active learning strategies to teach sociological theory that have resulted in improvements in grades, comprehension, or comfort. Lippman and Aldrich (2003) developed an exercise involving observations of a fast food restaurant, skits, and class discussion that helped improve students’ grades and subjective reports of their understanding of Ritzer’s (2000) The McDonaldization of Society and Weber’s (1946) theory of bureaucracy. Brown (2003) found that students produced better explanations and analogies illustrating Goffman’s theory of social embarrassment after fabricating an embarrassing incident in class. Holtzman (2005) found that students were better able to articulate the tenets of conflict and structural functionalist theories after performing an activity in which they were assigned to different groups involved in building irrigation canals and had to compete with one another for resources. Hoop (2012) found that students were better able to grasp theoretical questions surrounding social connection after abstaining from technology for 72 hours. Following these studies, we developed an exercise to improve students’ understanding of Marx’s theory of alienated labor.
Methods: The Cup-Making Exercise
Before they arrive in class the day of the activity, all students are assigned to read an excerpt from Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, drawn from Wharton (2005). When they arrive in class, students are asked to answer a pretest question: 1
Give me an example of a job that involves alienated labor and an example of a job that involves non-alienated labor, based on Marx’s concept of alienation. What is it about the first job that makes it alienated? What is it about the second job that makes it non-alienated?
The question is used as pretest data to gauge students’ ability to identify and explain alienation prior to the activity but after reading the selection. After they complete the pretest questions, the first author asks students to make cups using Play-Doh that they will have to buy and sell to other students (see Appendix A for detailed instructions). We divide students into four groups and distribute materials and instructions (see Appendix B). Depending on the size of the class, there should be one to two groups with about 5 students each and two or more groups with 8 to 10 students. In the larger groups, the instructor designates a leader. 2 During class, the instructor refers to the smaller groups as “nonleader groups” 3 (nonalienated groups) and the larger groups as “leader groups” (alienated groups). The nonalienated groups are meant to resemble collectives of skilled crafts workers, while the alienated are intended to resemble factory-based, capitalist production.
For the nonalienated groups, the instructor gives each group member a small container of Play-Doh, $20 of fake money, and instructions for the activity. In the alienated groups, only the leader receives Play-Doh (we recommend fewer containers than there are students), $200 of fake money to distribute as they see fit, and instructions for the activity. In the nonalienated groups, the members each read his or her instructions and find that each member owns his or her own Play-Doh and has discretion over the type, size, and number of cups she or he wants to make. They can decide individually or as a group how to set prices.
For alienated groups, the leader reads the instructions to the rest of the group members. For these groups, the leader determines the amount of Play-Doh each worker will receive and the size, type, and number of cups each worker will make. Some leaders assume they should participate in the cup making. If leaders ask about their participation, they are instructed that it is up to them whether they wish to make cups as well. Leaders must pay each worker out of the $200 they receive at the beginning of the activity, but they determine the amount. Some leaders distribute funds in an egalitarian manner, but most keep the bulk of their initial capital for themselves. The instructor gives students about 20 minutes to read the instructions, create cups, and set prices. In alienated groups, the leaders are told they alone set prices, whereas those in nonalienated groups can choose to set prices collectively or each set prices for her or his own work. Next, the instructor tells all participants they must purchase a cup from someone in another group. These will be the only cups students own, so without them, they cannot eat or drink! Students in nonalienated groups keep all money from the sale of their cups. When students purchase cups from groups with leaders, they give money to the leader, regardless of who made the cup. Leaders may choose to give workers a share of the profits or keep the money for themselves. Some leaders have split the profits with their workers, but most pay workers a wage at the beginning and keep the profits for themselves. When leaders have shared profits equally with workers, the first author has asked students what would happen to leaders who were too generous in sharing profits. Students quickly pointed out that this egalitarian behavior will limit the leader’s ability to compete against less generous peers.
After the activity, all students are asked to write responses to the following questions: Did you enjoy making the cups? Why or why not? Did you make the best cups possible? Why or why not? What type of labor would Marx say that the leader groups did as compared to the nonleader groups? As a class, students discuss their responses. The instructor asks leaders how they ran the group and highlights differences and similarities between the groups. In particular, instructors emphasize that workers in the nonalienated groups had both freedom over their work and owned the profits of the sale of their goods, as opposed to the workers in the alienated groups.
The first author performed this activity in an introductory-level Sociology of Work course. This course deals with topics related to jobs and organizations of work such as skill, emotional labor, and, of course, alienation. The course has no prerequisite and fulfills a general education program requirement. Consequently, first-year through senior-level students enroll in the course, though sophomores and juniors tend to be most heavily represented. The course is typically overwhelmingly made up of nonmajors. In this case, 2 students in the class were majors (out of 40 total students). In other words, students in this course are often, and were in this case, novices with respect to sociological theories.
The project and informed consent forms were submitted to the Institutional Review Board and received an exemption. Students were told they would receive credit for their response as long as it indicated they had read the assigned material, regardless of whether they signed an informed consent release. Students were also notified that if they chose to sign an informed consent release, their response would also be used in an assessment of the activity (with identifiers withheld). Students were assured that their choice to participate or not would not affect their participation grade for the activity. Thirty-five out of 38 students present in class that day (2 of 40 were absent) signed the release form and opted into the activity whereas 3 students asked that their responses not be included. One other student’s responses were eliminated because his response to the pretest made it clear that he had not read the selection. 4 The assessment that follows reflects the remaining 34 students.
Responses were analyzed using quasi-inductive methods. The authors separated both pre- and posttest questions according to whether students had answered correctly, partially correctly, or incorrectly. Within these groups, the authors coded the responses to identify emergent patterns within the responses (Glaser and Strauss 1967). Responses to the pretest from individual students were compared with their posttest responses to determine how the activity influenced comprehension of alienated labor.
Learning Outcomes
Pre-activity Knowledge
We begin by assessing patterns of student comprehension prior to the activity but after completing the reading. Three groups of students emerged in the pretest: (1) 15 students who were neither able to give correct examples of alienated and nonalienated labor nor articulate the difference between alienated and nonalienated labor; (2) 13 students who gave accurate examples but could not articulate the conditions that differentiated the alienated and nonalienated examples, according to Marx; and (3) 6 students who gave accurate examples and were able to identify the conditions that differentiated alienated and nonalienated labor in a fashion consistent with Marx.
In the pretest, 15 students gave answers that indicated they had read the selection but were struggling with its meaning. For instance, a number confused the distinction between alienated and nonalienated with the distinction between blue- and white-collar work. One student said:
Alienated positions or jobs would be like construction position because they have to work long hours and do not get paid much. A non-alienated job would be like an office job where a person doesn’t have to give much physical efforts and also pays a lot more than construction, for example a lawyer position.
Students like this one have clearly not comprehended Marx’s distinction between alienated and nonalienated labor based on the reading alone. Marx’s examples generally pull on factory work because these were the workers and the type of work he drew on in formulating his theories (Giddens 1973). Given the density of Marx’s prose, upon reading alone students like the previously quoted one may attach to these examples while missing the finer nuances of the argument.
Another related pattern that emerged in responses from students in this first group was confusing alienation with having repetitive or boring work and nonalienated labor with interesting or enjoyable work. For instance, one student said:
Garbage man [alienated]—comes to work every day doing the SAME thing and has no real connection to the product he is responsible for. The ideal professional athlete [nonalienated]—for the most part he is supposed [sic] enjoy what he does.
Again, the images of factory workers in Marx’s writing may contribute to student confusion. Factory workers often do repetitive work whereas those in professional careers may have more discretion over their work and higher levels of satisfaction with their work. The distinction between alienation and discretion, or control over the work process, and that between alienation and work satisfaction are subtle. Students like the previously quoted one clearly find reading Marx’s theory alone inadequate to clarify this distinctions.
A third pattern that emerged among the first group of students were those who equated alienation with a loss of self or a lack of interaction or connection with others. One student whose response fit this pattern wrote:
An example of alienated labor would be a lawyer because as he works and tries to win cases he may abandon his values or forget his true self to win. An example of non-alienated labor is a waitress. The waitress interacts with people and express who they [sic] are through their work.
These students seem to have seized on Marx’s discussion of the alienation of the worker from self and from fellow workers without comprehending his discussion of the conditions that lead to these conditions.
The second group consists of 13 out of 34 students who were able to offer accurate examples of alienated and nonalienated labor but who were not able to clearly distinguish between the conditions leading to each type of labor. Though students in the second group gave accurate examples, their explanations followed similar patterns of misconception as students in the first group. Students in the second group also confused alienated versus nonalienated labor with blue-collar versus white-collar work, but their explanations tended to come closer to delineating the distinctions between alienation and nonalienation than the students in the first group. For example, one student wrote:
Alienated job: Assembly line worker at an auto manufacturing factory. Non-alienated labor: CEO of a company. The first job is alienated because the worker is rather poor and receives no credit for the product he/she creates because it is not owned by them. The second job is not alienated because they don’t do the hard labor and they are above all the other workers in the company.
This student gave accurate examples of alienated versus nonalienated jobs, but, further, was able to identify that a worker not owning the product of his or her labor is a part of alienation. When he discusses the CEO, however, the explanation grows weaker and relies on hierarchy and the type of work done. While some students in the second group gave explanations very similar to those in the first group, a number of students in the second group provided this type of partially accurate explanation.
Like those in the first group, a number of students in the second group made arguments about prestige and job satisfaction. For instance, one said:
A job that involves alienated labor would be a worker on a manufacturing assembly line, this is due to the fact that his/her labor is directly tied to production and they are treated as a commodity. A job that involves non-alienated labor would be a manager or any higher management position in a company where their labor is valued and they are respected and treated well.
This student has correctly identified jobs that are alienated and nonalienated, but his reasoning is similar to students in the previous group. He does make reference to labor and the worker becoming a commodity, but argues the characteristic of a nonalienated job is respect and good treatment.
The last group of 6 students was able to articulate clearly the conditions that differentiated the alienated from the nonalienated examples. These students not only gave correct examples, but also differentiated between those owning the products of workers’ labor and the workers who do not benefit from those products. Students in this last group gave responses like this:
I think Marx believed all work to be alienated labor unless that person was part of the small percentage receiving the benefits. So with that in mind, an alienated job would be assembling car engines on a conveyor belt at a factory. A non-alienated job would be the owner of the car factory collecting all the profits from selling the car.
This student gives appropriate examples of alienated and nonalienated labor but also clearly articulates that alienated labor involves not receiving the benefits of one’s labor, as opposed to nonalienated labor.
Post-activity Knowledge
After the activity, students answered post-activity questions and discussed their experiences with the activity. Students were asked to write responses to several questions after the activity, including the same question used in the pretest to gauge their ability to identify and explain alienation in their own words. After the activity, three groups again emerged, but the distribution across these groups was much different. Only one student remained unable to provide accurate examples or a clear explanation of alienated and nonalienated labor. This student actually failed to give specific examples of alienated and nonalienated jobs, but said:
A job that involves alienated labor is any job that is not appreciated and that is forced by an employer. A job that is unalienated is one that the employee would find high levels of intrinsic motivation and satisfaction.
This student was in the first pretest group (those who were unable to give either accurate examples or explanations of alienated and non-alienated labor) initially and his response remained consistent with those in the first and second pretest groups who equated nonalienated labor with high job satisfaction. His response to the pre-activity question also emphasized happiness or job satisfaction. One of the post-activity questions asked students whether they had enjoyed making the cups, which may have unintentionally reinforced the confusion of the concepts by a few students like this one.
In their post-activity responses, 14 out of 34 students gave accurate examples with partially correct or incorrect explanations. Seven of the 14 students in this group were previously unable to provide accurate examples or explanations of alienated and nonalienated labor. The other 7 students were previously able to provide accurate examples but remained unable to provide totally accurate explanations of alienated and nonalienated jobs. Interestingly, the responses for this second group showed qualitatively different patterns after the activity. One student still emphasized job satisfaction, but the remaining students in this group emphasized control of the work process or being “forced” to do the work as the deciding factor on whether a job was alienated. For instance, one of these students said:
Alienated labor would be someone working for the company of Polo. Non-alienated would be someone making Business cards from home and selling them. Polo factory [is] alienated because they have [sic] to follow rules. Small home business makes and sets their own rules.
This student correctly identifies factory work as alienated labor and owning a small home business as nonalienated. He also highlights the notion that those doing alienated work are often doing so in accordance with someone else’s demands; however, he does not connect this to lack of ownership of the product of one’s labor. In the pretest this student identified alienated labor as factory work and nonalienated labor as professional work. Despite not providing a totally accurate explanation for the difference between alienated and nonalienated labor, students who provided responses like this seemed to have gained some additional understanding of the concepts through completing the activity.
The final group of 19 students was able to provide both accurate examples and accurate explanations of alienated and nonalienated labor. This group included all six students who were initially able to do this after reading the selection, as well as six students who were able to provide accurate examples but not explanations, and seven students who could initially provide neither accurate examples nor explanations of alienated and nonalienated labor. These students provided responses like this one:
An example of alienated work would be an employee at a coffee shop because they produce a product and get paid for it at a set wage. An example of non-alienated work would be a floral shop owner because they can produce a product, determine its price, and even keep it if they would like to.
These are apt and useful examples of alienated and nonalienated jobs and this student clearly expresses that alienation has to do with being able to control, use, or profit from the product of one’s labor rather than simply be paid a wage for the time spent producing it. Though some students were able to express clearly this before the exercise, the majority of students in this group clearly gained insight into the concept of alienation through participating in the cup-making activity.
After students handed in their assessments, the first author discussed the activity with the students, particularly focusing on their examples and explanations of alienated and nonalienated labor. Students were asked to volunteer their examples and explanations. The instructor asked the class for feedback about whether the examples and explanations were correct, providing additional explanation where needed. This discussion seemed to complement the activity and showed longer term gains in student learning. On the exam following the activity, students had an essay question in which they were required to give an example of alienated labor and to explain what the worker became alienated from in the process of this labor. 5 Twenty-nine of the 38 students who participated in the activity answered this question correctly, giving both correct examples and clearly explaining why the labor was alienated. Of the remaining 9 students, all were able to give correct examples of alienated labor, but they struggled to explain what made these jobs alienated.
Limitations and Adaptations
Instructors may want to expand or alter this activity for different course topics or larger class sizes. As well as Sociology of Work, this activity could be used in Introduction to Sociology, Social Stratification, or Social Inequality. Though not all instructors in these classes may want to spend most of a class period on the concept of alienation, the activity could be adapted to teach about other concepts. While students in this version of the activity read and were asked questions about alienated labor, as demonstrated, the alienated groups keenly grasped their lack of discretion as compared to those in the nonalienated group. They were unable to make decisions about the work process and product. Consequently, this activity could easily be adapted to discussions of discretion or autonomy at work, for instance in connection with discussion of Kohn and Schooler’s (1978) work on these concepts.
The activity could also be used to highlight the difference between stratified and egalitarian social organizations. As Schwalbe (2007) discusses, students discussing inequality often take stratified social arrangements for granted and have trouble envisioning alternative arrangements. In addition, they often minimize the injustice of these arrangements to oppressed groups. This activity provides an opportunity for students to experience the difference between egalitarian and stratified groups firsthand.
In classes of more than 50 students, materials may become prohibitively expensive and coordinating the activity—particularly the selling/purchasing step—may become too difficult for classes without a teaching assistant. While we performed this activity in a medium-sized class (38 students), the activity could be used in both smaller and larger classes. In the context of a smaller class, the instructor may want to reduce the size of the alienated groups, assigning fewer workers to each leader. In a larger class, we suggest increasing the number of groups, but not their size. While leaders should still be given the money and the Play-Doh, the amount can vary based on group size.
Another alternative would be to replace the Play-Doh with a less expensive building material. A colleague performed the activity in her class and instructed students to create paper airplanes, rather than cups. This requires changing the subsistence imperative as the reason for students to purchase the end products from one another, but renders the required materials less expensive, more compact, and readily available.
Conclusion
Creating an experience of alienated or nonalienated labor for students increased their understanding of Marx’s theory. Based on an initial reading of Marx, students struggled with what constituted alienated labor and what it meant for individuals’ sense of self. After the activity and discussion, students had a better sense of the conditions that led to alienated labor and of its consequences—both economic and psychic.
The success of this activity is important for two reasons. First, this activity provides further confirmation that experiential activities can help make classical theory more accessible to students. Like Brown (2003), we found potentially confusing concepts more comprehensible after a practical demonstration. In addition, students were better able to identify other examples of alienated and nonalienated after a concrete demonstration of the concept, similar to Lippman and Aldrich’s (2003) students.
Second, students who develop a better understanding of alienated labor and nonalienated labor also develop a more nuanced understanding of work arrangements. The final paper students write in the Sociology of Work course describes their ideal job and assesses this job according to course concepts, including alienation. In these papers, students have displayed an often sophisticated understanding of the degree to which even white-collar work can be alienating. For example, one student wrote, “doctors work for wages and they cannot control the outcome of their labor; therefore, they are considered to be alienated from their work. Their work could be non-alienated if the doctor owns his own practice.” Statements like these display a nuanced understanding of the conditions under which labor is alienated.
The contrast between alienated and nonalienated labor also helps students move beyond a conception of wage labor as natural and inevitable to seeing it as a consequence of particular social and historical conditions. This helps students see the socially constructed nature of other work arrangements, such as the gendered division of paid and unpaid labor or the sex segregation of various types of work.
Understanding alienated labor also helps students assess the degree to which work arrangements may be exploitative or empowering for workers. This lays the groundwork for instructors to ask students to envision alternate, less inequitable modes and relations of production. In addition, students can apply this concept to contemporary social problems such as globalization, de-skilling, and the threats to unions in the United States. Ultimately, this activity can help students concretely grasp an abstract theoretical concept that they can use to better comprehend and analyze both historical and modern work and workplaces.