The basic idea in this article is that Marx's account of alienated labour is still useful in analysis and critique of late-capitalist societies. Although "alienation" is an outmoded concept for many postmodern theorists, I am trying to show that some problems Marx identifies in the early stages of capitalist industrialization have not changed fundamentally in capitalism as it exists today. After describing Marx's conceptualisation of economic alienation, I try to explicate the way some contemporary social structural conditions (lack of ownership, low level of job autonomy, forms of workplace control, the difficulty of self-expression in work) may still give rise to certain forms of contemporary alienation. Although labour in the manufacturing and service sectors diverge in important ways, I try to show that emotional labour in many service sector jobs today seems clearly alienated in the Marx's terms. The article concludes with finding that commodifying workers' emotions leads - under certain aspects of the work - to the situation in which workers again become alienated from their own activity, from their emotions - from their human life and from other people.
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