Alienation and Socialism: Part 2. Worker Satisfaction and Worker Control

Abstract

In the context of the recent varied international interest in alienation mentioned in Part I, American sociologists have of late taken up the concept of alienation. Attracted by the promise of fruitful way of looking at society (and especially men at work), they find themselves embarrassed by the diffi culty of adapting the concept of their habitual methods of research. Their attempt to mould the concept of their requirements has led them to interpret alienation in terms of specific satisfaction and dissatisfaction of workers. Thus they have been led away from the general social critique associated with the concept in Marx's work. Analyses purporting to be more precise and specific are offered; their effect is not only to rob the concept of its force, but also to suggest that in general only very piecemeal criticisms of society are possible. One tacit assumption that is operating here is that the methodoligical aim of the sociologist is to make all his questions accessible to one particular technique of investigation, namely the more formal sort of social survey. It is a technique that has been of very great value in the development of sociology; I certainly have no wish to deny that it is a very useful tool. Refined and formalized techniques for sampling, for randomization, for matching of experimental and control group for control through measure ment' can in favourable cases give a close approximation to the degree of control attainable by laboratory manipulation of variables; the quantification of responses to closed questions, when derived through highly developed methods of statistical analysis seems, again to approach the quantificational precision associated with the results of controlled experiment in the natural sciences. But so great is the prestige of the controlled experiment that the formal social survey comes to be regarded as setting the methodological standard for the sociologist. It is consistent with this line of thought to regard even the less formal techniques which lie within the purview of the survey as rough-and-ready exploratory work which opens up the way for the use of the formal survey. Examples of such informal techniques are the use of the open question and of the so-called 'case study' or intensive investigation of a few cases. A survey or alienation conducted in two stages by Gwynn Nettler illustrates the sort of attitude I am indicating here.(41) Now there is nothing objectionable about a demand for rigour nor about a desire to appeal to the facts. What is objectionable is the sort of zeal for the social survey method that leads to the assumption that questions that cannot readily be settled by means of surveys ought not to be posed. Social surveys are especially well adapted to finding out what peoples opinions are (in a general sort of way), what they have done (especially recently) and even why they think they did it. They are ill adapted to revealing motivations of which people are not aware, or to analysing pervasive features of society, which could be changed only on a whole-of society basis and for which there may be no control group. The survey will delineate limited problems and thus give an indication of what piecemeal solutions might be studied, but will provide a very weak indication of what might be expected from a fundamental change in a social system. Considera tion even of a relatively circumscribed measure like doubling income tax, which would deeply involve the economy of a whole nation and experiment