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ALIENATION: CRITIQUE AND ALTERNATIVE FUTURES 11

psychology when they noted how alienation cultural elites – was all powerful. Hegemony
prompted ‘an escape from freedom’ espe- was an on-going process located within a
cially among ‘authoritarian character types’ larger social reality ever subject to change,
with attenuated social ties and difficulties in and therefore the nature of hegemony con-
fathoming the deeper significance of their stantly needed to be revised. His analysis
actions (Adorno et al., 1950; Fromm, 1965). revealed that openings for contestation and
Following World War II, they explored challenge were especially likely at moments
insights into the effects of the ‘culture of crisis. While one such opening was seen in
industries,’the frameworks in which both high attempts to organize and unite the Southern
and popular art were, to their minds, mass Italian peasants and Northern workers, the
produced for the sake of both profits and Church subverted these efforts by demoniz-
ideologies of deception that sustained ‘one ing communists and warning that those
dimensional’ consumer society. While con- who joined unions would perish in hell.
cerns with alienation were rooted in the Moreover, as the appeal of religion waned,
nature of wage labor in a class society, in consumerism emerged as the dominant hege-
more recent conceptualizations, thinking monic justification. Nevertheless, Gramsci
about alienation led to a migration of its remained convinced that workers would be
locus from production to the nature of able to escape the impasse of alienation. As
modern consumption and contemporary he put it, society at best sustains only a few
forms of self-expression. For example, ‘formal’ intellectuals, but the fact is that all
Adorno (2000) explored the pervasiveness of people are intellectuals. Dialectically, he
alienation in the arts and in personality, and could show that the ‘organic intellectuals’
concluded that the alienation that was grow- among workers would eventually be able to
ing out of conflict was an indicator of the forge counter-hegemonic understandings and
inevitable deterioration of humanity. articulate a culture that would both reflect
Ironically, Gramsci (1991), who spent ten their true position and be able to envision
years in fascist prisons until his death in 1937 alternatives.
at the age of 46, found ways to describe the In sum, successive re-conceptualizations
dialectical possibility of overcoming alien- of alienation have provided seminal perspec-
ation. In his view, capitalism was deeply tives on the failure to realize the emancipa-
entrenched in the twentieth century not only tory promise of the Enlightenment. As we
because the historic bloc (ruling classes) con- will show, however, in the spirit of Gramsci,
trolled the institutions of force and violence, alienation has become a tool of analysis that
i.e., the police, the courts, and the army, but offers not only a political critique but also
also because it ruled indirectly by means of a images of alternative futures that could envi-
hegemonic ideology that engineered ‘willing sion the overcoming of alienation. Thus
consent.’ By hegemony, Gramsci meant that: while alienation was first theorized in terms
the entire system of values, attitudes, beliefs, and of powerlessness, social fragmentation, and
morality which permeated society had the effect of the warping of selfhood in industry. Marx
supporting the status quo in power relations. … would later extend his analysis to the political
To the extent that this prevailing consciousness is alienation of the French peasants. Further, his
internalized by the population, it becomes part of
what is generally called ‘common sense’ so that analysis of Hegel and the German ideology as
the philosophy, culture, and morality of the ruling alienated consciousness moved the analysis
elite comes to appear as the natural order of things to the cultural/ideological levels. Finally, his
(Boggs, 1976: 39). notion of commodity fetishism, as a reifica-
Nevertheless, Gramsci did not believe that tion, when a class relationship appeared as a
the hegemonic culture imposed by the tradi- thing, completed the move of alienation to
tional intellectuals allied to the historic bloc – the cultural realms – though it would need to
the coalition of economic, political, and await Lukacs for a comprehensive analysis of