If, following Marx, we understand life for our ‘species-being’ as freedom expressed within our productive relationship with nature, then we begin to understand the profound alienation of Singaporean society. Most Singaporeans are alienated both from the product of their labour and from nature itself. In the first sense, workers are estranged from the product of their own labour as wage-labourers with minimal control over their (oh so long) working lives. Far from a positive life-affirming experience, work is a negative, mere life-sustaining compulsion. Such ‘estranged labour’, particularly in the large, faceless corporations that dominate here, is a ‘labour of…mortification’. This is made concrete in estrangement from one another. I witness all this daily when confronted by the weary monotony of the labour of the shopping mall; by the soulless anonymity of its commodity exchange; by the gated ‘communities’ without community; by the ancient army of cleaners whose Sisyphean endeavours sustain Singaporeans. In the second sense, nature, our own ‘inorganic self’, is reduced to mere ‘tools and subsistence’. Nature is rendered invisible or repressed here: waste is disposed of via a chute in one’s apartment; myriad global commodities ‘appear’ in supermarkets; planned, pristine parks express a modernist dominance over the natural world. There is minimal connection to our Earth. Finally, this alienation compels us to look for meaning and self-worth beyond our work lives. This, coupled with the economic necessity for ever-increasing consumption, lures us ever lower into the spiritual mire of the commodity fetish. Again, reflecting this, Singapore has been ‘developed’ into the ultimate shopping paradise (hell!) on Earth! Singapore, as über-developed city state, constitutes perhaps the most mature process of capitalist alienation: from each other, from nature, and from ourselves. Marx argued that ‘the devaluation of the human world grows in direct proportion to the increase in value of the world of things.’ Under the near total dominance of globalised bourgeois politics, economics, and culture, life for too many here is a living death; a deadening life. Singapore and Singaporeans have achieved so much, but now the fruits of people’s excessively hard work are increasingly enjoyed by the few. In recent years, there have been some stirrings among the island’s population: the ruling People’s Action Party has lost its total electoral dominance; there have been protests over workers’ pay and rights (and, worryingly, over immigration); and prominent public figures have criticised the government. These are (largely) encouraging signs. It will require the participation of all Singaporeans to develop the island toward a more sustainable and democratic future.
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 03:37:04 +0000
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