Symbolic interactionism is a micro-level theory that focuses on the relationships among individuals within a society. Communication, the exchange of meaning through language and symbols, is believed to be the way in which people make sense of their social worlds. Theorists Herman and Reynolds (1994) note that this perspective sees people as being active in shaping the social world rather than simply being acted upon. Symbolic interactionism as a social theoretical framework starts from the presupposition that our social world is constructed through the mundane acts of everyday social interaction. Through the repetitive act of interaction, individuals as actors in relation to social groups constitute symbolic and shared meanings. Importantly, symbolic interactionism does not deny the unique; it is directly concerned with how distinctive meanings are adapted and interpreted through social practice.
egral part of a capitalist society (Conly, 1978: 82). Through the enforcement of specific skills on groups of different workers, individuals become alienated from one another as they learn interests different from other sectors and so the whole community (Conly, 1978). Marx places this form of alienation above all others in saying that ‘all other forms of alienation’ are realised in the division of labour (Conly, 1978: 86). This alienation occurs similarly in the competition created in a capitalist society. Marx states that the political economy is driven by ‘greed and war among the greedy, competition’ (Marx, 1844 cited in McLellan, 1978). This occurs amongst both capitalists and labourers. For labourers, the competition for higher wages and to survive hinders chances of cooperation between workers leaving them isolated from one another (Ollman, 1977). Workers fail to realise they are competing to sell their human potential to capitalists whilst sacrificing human relationships.
in the demand created by division of labour to produce a surplus to create profit for the capitalists. Therefore, the worker competes with other workers to create surplus labour and is valued on this work, this enforces alienation with his produce and competition between men (McLellan, 1978). Marx critiques Proudhon’s solution to this problem of equal pay with the view that this would move power from the capitalist to society making society the ‘abstract capitalist’ (McLellan, 1978).
However, Marx’s argument that alienation is caused by capitalism is weakened by the beliefs of other theorists, such as Conly, that this alienation existed before the capitalist era. Looking specifically at alienation in the division of labour, during periods of tribal ownership, alienation existed between the specialisation of jobs within families (Conly,1978). Marx agrees it occured in forms of slave-labour and appears to contradict his own argument stated earlier (Marx cited in McLellan, 1978). This occurs again when he states directly that he believes alienation is seen in each production labour process before capitalism (Buchanan, 1979: 123). Similarly, as Marx believes labour freed from alienation should be attractive with ‘subjective and objective conditions’ (McLellan, 1978), Adam Smith argued against this stating that labour had always been unattractive. By this, he means that during pre-capitalist times periods of rest wer
