MARX ON ALIENATION AND FREEDOM: A REINTERPRETATION OF THE ECONOMIC IN THE SOCIAL A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of San Diego State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in Sociology by Roberto Danipour Summer 2014
iii Copyright 2014 by Roberto Danipour All Rights Reserved
iv DEDICATION To my father.
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. Karl Marx v
vi ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS Marx on Alienation and Freedom: A Reinterpretation of the Economic in the Social by Roberto Danipour Master of Arts in Sociology San Diego State University, 2014 My primary aim is to reconstruct Marx s economic categories in terms of his social theory of alienation and vice versa. In other words, I reinterpret the social in the economic and the economic in the social by doing a close reading on Marx s early and later writings. My task is two-fold: first, to reveal within Marx s economic categories as they are expressed in Capital and his later writings his social theory of alienation. And second, to extend his theory of alienation as it is forcefully expressed in his early writings through talk of the inner-workings of capital, that is to say, by infusing the structure of alienation with the language of economics. I argue that Marx s social theory of alienation underlies his labor theory of value, along with all the corresponding economic categories that unfold from it. I reconstruct Marx s conception of human nature to show how it informs his theory of alienation, and how the latter ultimately anchors his socio-economic-historical analysis of capitalist society and his conception of freedom. I conclude by sketching Marx s vision of the new society, that is, his conception of a non-alienating mode of production based on my reinterpretation.
vii TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ABSTRACT... vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS... ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION...1 Method...4 Outline and Structure...4 2 MARX ON HUMAN NATURE...7 The Relationality of Human Nature...7 The Universality of Human-Species...11 Human Nature Versus Human Form...14 Egoism & The Total Man...15 3 MARX ON ALIENATION...23 Subjective Versus Objective Alienation...23 Labor Theory of Value and Commodity Fetishism...32 Product Alienation...43 Production-Process Alienation...46 Community Alienation...51 Species-Alienation...53 Private Property and Division of Labor (and of Self)...54 The Money-Form as the Universal Alienable Commodity...66 The Capitalist State as an Alienating Force...74 Religious Alienation...76 Humanity s Alienated Relation to Nature...80 4 MARX ON FREEDOM...84 Beyond the Realm of Crude Communism...84 The Positive Suppression of Private Property...87 Freedom and Necessity...88
viii Material and Temporal Wealth...93 Individual Growth Through Zero-Growth...97 5 CONCLUSION...99 REFERENCES...102
ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my committee members for all their guidance and support. Professors Roberts and Choi are true educators in the most important sense of the word, whose passion and inspiration moved me. I am truly appreciative for all their guidance they have given me throughout my experience in graduate school. I would also like to sincerely thank Professor Weston for all his insightful and detailed feedback. I am also very appreciative of Professor Semm, my unofficial committee member, for graciously agreeing to review my manuscript last minute and the feedback I received. Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank my wonderful and loving partner, Carolina, for all her input, and for putting up with me everyday as I endured through this entire process. I am happy to report that she is happy to finally have me back in her arms.
1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Marx was arguably a philosopher, historian, and a political economist in his own right. 1 Indeed, he was all three humanist philosopher, dialectical historian, and political economist at all times. That said, in its more explicit form, we see Marx the humanist philosopher and dialectical materialist historian more so in his early writings than his later ones, and the political economist and labor historian more so in his later writings than his early ones. Marx s later writings, in particular, Capital, certainly emphasized his economic mode of analysis in approaching the study of capitalist society. It is the ultimate aim of this work, Marx (1990) declared in the preface of the first volume of Capital, to reveal the economic law of motion of modern society (p. 92). Even though in an important sense Capital is an economic-historical treatise, one of the aims of this thesis is to demonstrate that underlying all of Marx s economic categories is his social theory of alienation, as outlined in his early humanist writings, in particular, the 1844 Manuscripts (and the German Ideology). That is to say, I do not see a fundamental break between the young Marx and the old Marx. In examining the capitalist mode of production, as Marx does in Capital, we see that his labor theory of value is the very foundation in which all his economic analysis rests. Hunt (1988) puts it best when he describes how all intellectual roads to Marx s thinking depart from and return to the same source: It is the labor theory of value that connects all aspects of Marx s various writings and unites them into a single, coherently interconnected theoretical whole a theoretical whole that remains to this day by far the richest available source of insights into the nature, structure and functioning of capitalism. (p.477) 1 In designating Marx a political economist, I mean to say that in the very act and process by which Marx critiqued classical political economy which he did so in a very rigorous, comprehensive, and intimate manner his own positive account emerged from his negative analysis that included new economic categories like value, surplus-value, labor-power, and so on.
No doubt Marx s labor theory of value is a central component to his economic writings. But I would again argue that his social theory of alienation is a more all-encompassing idea than his labor theory of value, for the former not only informs but gives life to all his writings. Marx s theory of alienation in some sense is the heart that brings life and meaning into his more cerebral economic and philosophical critique of the capitalist mode of production. A heart without a brain cannot direct its fundamental passions and needs, just as a brain without a heart leaves something to be desired. This metaphor can only go so far. I do not want to suggest that Capital lacks a powerful critique and exposition of alienated man in capitalist society, far from it; all I want to say is that Marx s 1844 Manuscripts grounds itself in a unique humanist conception of man within the capitalist mode of production that is not as explicit in its style or expression compared to Marx s later writings. Indeed, Marx s social theory of alienation gives us a unique glimpse into the perspective of the individual grappling with life in modern society. As Ollman (1971) writes, Though Marx generally organizes his findings around such non-human factors as the mode of production, class and value, his theory of alienation places the acting and acted upon individual in the center of this account. In this theory, man himself is offered as the vantage point from which to view his own relations, actual and potential, to society and nature; his conditions become an extension of who he is and what he does, rather than the reverse. To expound the analysis of capitalism made from this vantage point, an analysis that remains little known despite the current preoccupation [e.g. by mainstream, subjectivist sociologists] with the term alienation. (p. ix) Far from being a mutually exclusive set of ideas, Marx s social theory of alienation and labor theory of value inform and disclose each other in much greater depth and meaning than if Marx had simply conceived of one without the other. Now it should be said that although Marx s labor theory of value ostensibly is about revealing the economic law of motion, it is not just about understanding the value of things, per say, as it is fundamentally about revealing the social relations namely, the capital-labor relation that underlie the relations between things. In this sense, when reading Marx, whether it is his early or later writings, one can always read the social in the economic. I want to show that just as one can always read the social in the economic in Marx, one can also read his theory of alienation in the social. Thus the chief focus of this thesis is to light up the two-way bridge that connects the economic on the one hand, with the social theory of alienation on the other. How successful I am able to accomplish this will not be based on any 2
set of principles or conclusions that can be deduced from the analysis, but rather will reside in the actual interpretative process itself in reconstructing his economic categories into his social theory of alienation and vice versa, that is, by converging Marx the philosopher, historian, and political economist as one. For Marx, alienation was a symptom of a deep spiritual problem of modern man, a problem however that could be overcome through proletariat revolution. Unlike Hegel who viewed alienation as something fixed and immutable, Marx focused his energy in describing how the capitalist system worked in its domination over man so as to overcome it. Gouldner (1980) writes: Much of what Marx did was to historicize and relativize Hegel s theory of alienation. Alienation is now no longer man s eternal condition but the product of an historical, special division of labor that had a beginning and which, it is predicted, will also have an end when capitalism is supplanted by socialism. Marx thereby removes the problem of alienation from the tragic discourse in which it was still located in Hegel s formulation, and in which it was insoluble. He now places alienation in the framework of the historically newer discourse of ideology, transforming it into a politics, in which it has a solution. It is this that makes Marx s reconceptualization of the problem of alienation more powerful, if not deeper and truer. (p.181) Thus alienation is not something grounded in some trans-historical notion of human nature, but rather is conditioned by its specific historical form within a particular mode of production. Under Marx s humanist conception of man, the abolishment of alienated labor was not to be replaced by another social dominating form, but rather in actualizing the individuality of man. In the place of the alienation of labor, Dunayevskaya (1965) contends, Marx placed, not a new property form, but the full and free development of the individual (The Ideal and the Real are Never Far Apart section, para. 2). Fromm (2004) draws the same conclusion in stating the real issue of the matter as far as Marx was concerned, namely that: his criticism of capitalist society is directed not at its method of distribution of income, but its mode of production, its destruction of individuality and its enslavement of man, not by the capitalist, but the enslavement of man worker and capitalist by things and circumstances of their own making. (p.40) Indeed, this is the crude communist position, and one that we will examine more closely in order do demonstrate its shortcoming while distinguishing it from Marx s conception of real communism. 3
4 METHOD In reinterpreting Marx s categories, I will employ a hermeneutic approach for the entire analysis, with one minor exception. In chapter 3, under the heading subjective versus objective alienation, I will explore the literature on alienation within mainstream sociology and conclude that the concept has been used to de-politicize and distort the true underlying meaning of the term as a critique of bourgeois political economy, philosophy, and even psychology. In attempting to operationalize the concept alienation into empirical terms, many mainstream sociologists have favored subjectivist notions of alienation over objectivist ones, and thus are ready to conclude that if one does not subjectively feel alienated then one simply is not. To operationalize the term in this manner is to essentially gut Marx s critique of alienated labor within capitalist relations and replace it with an entirely foreign meaning. Marx as we shall see, argues that one may not feel alienated, while still being objectively alienated. Our analysis will flow from this objectivist premise. OUTLINE AND STRUCTURE The overall structure of the thesis is as follows. In chapter 2 we will undergo a close reading of Marx s humanist conception of human nature. This will provide us with the necessary reference point so that we can better contextualize our examination of Marx s theory of alienation when we continue onto the following chapter on alienation. The bulk of the work, our main task, will be done in chapter 3, where we will undertake once again a very close reading of Marx s early and later writings so that we may reinterpret his economic categories within his social theory of alienation and vice versa. In chapter 4, we will examine Marx s conception of freedom within the new society in lieu of our analysis, while also incorporating new elements into our account from Marx s more explicit statements on the subject. Lastly, we will conclude with chapter 5 with a brief sketch and summary as to what a non-alienating mode of production would entail. The sequential order of the chapters is designed to flow starting with the basic concept of human nature, followed by an analysis of alienation in relation to human nature, then Marx s conception of freedom, as the negation of alienation, and finally with a summary point breakdown of Marx s vision of the new society.
5 It is not easy to deduce from Marx s writings a clear and holistic conception of human nature given his scattered and relatively short writings on the topic. That said, there are certain passages in his early writings, in particular, the 1844 Manuscripts and the German Ideology, where he makes more explicit statements about human nature, although they are never fully developed. One gets the sense that Marx was not very much interested in delving into the topic explicitly in the way a typical philosopher or psychologist would, and for particular reasons that we will soon see. Nonetheless, in the backdrop of his early and later writings there is an ongoing dialogue in which a theory of human nature emerges that can be extrapolated from his writings. To gain a better appreciation of his theory on human nature both in its historically universal form and its particular form as expressed within capitalist social relations we will have to reconstruct a theory of human nature based on his earlier philosophical writings and his later, more technical writings. In chapter 2, we primarily focus on the explicit statements Marx makes regarding human nature. In chapter 3, we will fill in some gaps Marx s explicit account leaves open, and bring to light his concept of human nature that underlies the structure of his theory of alienation vis-à-vis his critique of political economy. As a preamble to chapter 4 (Marx on Freedom), we should mention that much like Marx s conception of human nature, his conception of freedom was not given any systematic treatment. Marx never provided any kind of blueprint for what a truly free society would look like, not because it was impossible to theoretically conceive of one, but rather because it was a practical question which only history could provide an answer to. If one were to somehow locate and ask the best minds during feudalism to layout a blueprint of a future society, no one could have possibly provided the blueprint for a capitalist society, certainly not as we know it today, nor centuries ago; likewise we cannot expect the scientists, philosophers, and poets of the capitalist epoch to provide the blueprint for a post-capitalist society. But this need not stop us from sketching what a egalitarian society could consist in based on an analysis of the current mode of production and by unearthing the seeds of the future in the present one as we will attempt to do so in chapters 4 and 5. This is essentially what Marx attempts to do. Also it should be said that Marx s conception of freedom, much like his conception of human nature, is not a static, but a dynamic one, rooted in all the particularities of the material and social conditions people happen to find themselves in a
6 given moment in history. There is no specific end goal that Marx had in mind in positing a realm of freedom, but rather in understanding the dynamic relationship between freedom and necessity, he understood the evolutionary process by which historical beings create their own social realities. That said, we can still say something meaningful about Marx s vision of social freedom by analyzing certain passages where he talks about freedom. But just the same, we can also derive a general understanding of a non-alienating mode of production by examining Marx s actual analysis of the capitalist mode of production, which is to say, the prevailing alienating mode of production (as examined in chapter 3) and the particular and universal modes of human-species being (as examined in chapter 2, and to some extent, chapter 3).
7 CHAPTER 2 MARX ON HUMAN NATURE THE RELATIONALITY OF HUMAN NATURE To begin, Marx s conception of human nature is a relational one. To say something about what human nature (Marx uses human nature and human essence interchangeably) consists in, he contrasts humans with animals. The dichotomy between humans and animals is a major theme that grounds his ideas about human nature. He compares human activity with animal activity in two ways: first, the differences that exist between human and animal species qua species, and second, the animalistic powers and needs that can be said to exist within a human being. Given that humans and animals are both natural beings, humans share certain powers, needs, and drives similar to that of animals, such as hunger, procreation, and the drive to stay alive; however, beyond such basic needs and drives, those that are associated with a person wholly transcend that of the animal. Marx makes a distinction between natural man and species-man to capture this delineation the former consists of those basic powers and needs humans share with the animal kingdom, and the latter those higher powers and needs that belong strictly to the human species. Marx (1992) defines the natural powers of a person and contrasts it with that of an animal. In the following passage from the 1844 Manuscripts, we are introduced to several important concepts that will carry our line of inquiry regarding human nature: Man is directly a natural being. As a natural being and as a living natural being he is on the one hand equipped with natural powers, with vital powers, he is an active natural being; these powers exist in him as dispositions and capacities, as drives. On the other hand, as a natural, corporeal, sensuous, objective being he is a suffering, conditioned and limited being, like animals and plants. That is to say, the objects of his drives exist outside him as objects independent of him; but these objects are objects of his need, essential objects, indispensable to the exercise and confirmation of his essential powers. (p. 389-390) Marx seems to use the term powers interchangeably with the terms dispositions, capacities, and drives. It is interesting to note that he uses the concept powers in a nontraditional sense in that he combines capacities which we might normally understand
8 as the means, mental or physical capacities, by which certain goals can be met with the terms dispositions and drives, which one would think has more to do with the intrinsic attributes of a person. For Marx, a person s natural powers, capacities, and drives are directed toward something external to the person, and this orientation toward an object is experienced as a need. He uses the example of hunger as a natural need of the body that is directed toward an object outside of the body. Moreover, the satisfaction of this vital and natural need, like all other natural needs, is indispensable to its integration and to the expression of its essential nature (Marx, 1992, p. 390). A need is an experiential manifestation of certain underlying natural powers, capacities, and drives whose satisfaction is a necessary condition for the full expression of the essential nature of the being. As a corollary, we might say that the full expression of a being s essential nature is proportional to the degree of satisfaction of its essential needs. Marx however does not provide a comprehensive list of natural powers and needs that belong to either human or animal. Furthermore, when discussing natural needs Marx confines himself to essential needs like hunger and sex; in other words, those needs that are experienced as desires to survive and reproduce. An important distinction should be drawn in how we contextualize basic needs when comparing human vital functions to animals. It is true, Marx (1992) writes, that eating, drinking, and procreating, etc., are also genuine human functions. However, when abstracted from other aspects of human activity and turned into final and exclusive ends, they are animal (p. 327). Such is the case with the worker under capitalist relations, who is turned into an un-free beast when he is at work, and only when he returns home can he experience any basic kinds of freedom as limiting as they may be like eating, drinking, and having sex. That is, humans may share similar essential functions and needs with animals, however, insofar as the pursuit of these basic needs come to predominantly define a person s mode of life, as they do with the alienated worker, the person s basic functions come to take the form of being more animal-like than human. In examining needs and powers, we find at least four important types of relations in the 1844 Manuscripts (1992) that highlight the ways in which natural beings are embedded within the world: (1) the relation between the being and its object; (2) the relation between the being and the natural world; (3) the relation between natural beings; and lastly, (4) the
relation between the being and itself, often expressed as self-consciousness. The first three relations are concerned with humans and animals, whereas the last one is reserved only to humans. We already briefly looked into the first relation, that is, the relation between the natural being s hunger, experienced as a need, that is directed toward a particular object external to it, i.e. food. The second type of relation, the relation between beings and the natural world, is concerned with those beings that are embedded within the natural world as opposed to being external to it. Marx (1992) asserts that a being which does not have its nature outside itself is not a natural being and plays no part in the system of nature (p. 390). In other words, for a real relationship to exist between the natural being and the natural world, the very nature of the natural being must be such that it is not wholly contained within itself but rather that its nature is also embedded externally within the system of nature. A natural being that is external to nature is a non-objective being, which is to say, a non-being (Marx, 1992, p. 390). When Marx defines human nature (or the nature of any natural being) he speaks of it in terms of the nature being outside itself, which is not the accustomed way one normally talks about human nature. There exists a metabolic relationship between nature and humanity whereby a person s physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature (Marx, 1992, p. 328). Thus, for Marx, there is no fundamental division that exists between the unalienated human being and nature, but rather the nature of a human being is dialectically embedded within the system of nature just as the natural world is embedded within the nature of the human being. Marx (1992) describes the third type of relation, the relation between beings, as follows: I am not alone, I am another, a reality other than the object outside me. For this third object I am therefore a reality other than it, i.e. its object (p. 390). In other words, as a social being I am the object of another s subject and the other is my object. By object Marx employs a double meaning depending on the context it is used an object can either refer to a subject as sentient being or an object as a thing. Marx (1992) elaborates on what it means to be a sensuous object, To be sensuous, i.e. to be real, is to be an object of sense, a sensuous object, and thus to have sensuous objects outside oneself, objects of one s sense perception. To be sensuous is to suffer (to be subjected to the actions of another). Man as an objective sensuous being is therefore a suffering being, and because he feels his 9
suffering, he is a passionate being. Passion is man s essential power vigorously striving to attain its objects. (p.390) A sensuous object is a subject whose senses allow it to feel the world and to be a part of it. Given that a person is an objective sensuous being, a person by definition must be a suffering being. Marx seems to be using the term suffering in a broad sense to embody anything from a minor annoying pain to something like the feeling of starvation. When the subject, whether person or animal, falls short of satisfying its real, sensuous and essential needs, the subject necessarily suffers. A person s natural needs are never satisfied since the process of always striving toward its object is experienced as suffering itself, and even if needs are satisfied to some degree, it is temporary and fleeting. The passion a person experiences is the felt expression of an unfilled essential need that one is striving toward. That is to say, the striving itself is suffering. Moreover, needs always reassert themselves and thus the subject is a suffering and limited being in fulfilling them. 2 It is interesting to see in Marx s parenthetical note (quoted above) how he relates suffering with the suffering that is inflicted upon a person by the actions of another. It is quite a strong statement to declare, as Marx does, that to be a sensuous person by definition is to suffer under the hands of another. Insofar as human needs are not being fully realized, a person is a suffering agent, whether obstructed by natural or social forces. When it comes to person-to-person interaction, if a need is blocked or frustrated by another this would of course constitute a form of suffering. Marx however does not specify the level of analysis in interpreting his definition of suffering. It is quite possible to read class into the definition so that to suffer under the subjection of another could also mean to be subjected to class domination. If we are to read class into the definition of suffering, then it seems that the class component of suffering is not a universal definition but a particular one since presumably such suffering would dissolve in a post-capitalist, classless society. The personto-person component of suffering as a universal definition though is what Marx was probably trying to get at. 10 2 Incidentally, Marx s conception of natural needs and suffering crudely resembles that of Freud s pleasure principle minus the libidinal drive; Marx does posit certain natural drives that give rise to certain needs but the drives themselves are not as elaborately characterized as they are with Freud.
11 The fourth type of relation is the relation between the natural person and their own being. Marx (1992) states, but man is not only a natural being; i.e. he is a being for himself and hence a species-being, as which he must confirm and realize himself both in his being and in his knowing (p. 391). By species-being Marx means an individual human being or the human species, a term he borrowed from Feuerbach. Insofar as a person is a conscious being and aware of itself as such, he or she has the power and capacity to direct their own life activity whereas an animal is immediately one with its life activity. It is not distinct from that activity; it is that activity Conscious life activity directly distinguishes man from animal life activity (Marx, 1992, p. 328). It is the combination of a person s will and consciousness that endows them with the capacity to direct their own life, which is to say, to have the capacity to be self-conscious, and therefore separate, from its life activity the way a captain as a self-conscious being is separate from his or her bodily ship while actively directing its path. In the case of animals, the means to satisfy certain needs, stemming from certain drives, is severely restricted relative to a person s imaginative powers that allows one to pursue ends (i.e. needs) by almost any means. THE UNIVERSALITY OF HUMAN-SPECIES The creative and flexible capacity humanity has in producing and reproducing its social and physical world to fulfill its essential needs is perhaps the most important characteristic of human nature and its definite mode of producing. The uniqueness of human consciousness is its power to produce its means of subsistence in this definite way; animal consciousness lacks this very power. Whereas the animal mode of production consists simply in reproducing itself at the physiological level, the human mode of production goes beyond a mere physical existence. Rather, Marx (1998) writes in the German Ideology, it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are (p. 37). A human mode of production gives rise to a distinct human mode of life whereby the former shapes and defines the latter both with what they produce and with how they produce (Marx, 1998, p. 37; emphasis added). The possibilities embedded within a particular set of human social relations depend on its definite material basis of production. That is, the what and how behind a particular mode of production and its corresponding reproduction of
everyday life defines both how humanity expresses its nature and the conditions of possibility by which humanity can express its nature, to the point of reconstituting its human form. In The Grundrisse, Marx (2010c) argues, In the act of reproduction itself are changed not only the objective conditions e.g. village becomes city, the wilderness becomes cultivated clearings, etc. but also the producers, who transform themselves in that they evolve new qualities from within themselves, develop through production new powers and new ideas, new modes of intercourse, new needs, and new speech. (p. 418) As the objective material conditions on the ground evolve, so too do the producers mode of being. In the German Ideology, Marx (1998) makes a similar point using the language of desire and satisfaction as being themselves historical acts, he writes, the satisfaction of the first need, the action of satisfying and the instrument of satisfaction which has been acquired, leads to new needs; and this creation of new needs is the first historical act (p. 48). The satisfaction of the first historical needs is the natural needs of a person eating, drinking, housing, clothing and the satisfaction of these needs is the first historical act in that they constitute the reproduction of the species; history can only be created by living persons. The satisfaction of the first need leads to the satisfaction and realization of not only new needs, but higher needs, 3 as each new need is historically embodied in the older one. Both the creation of new needs and the mode of their satisfaction are descriptive of a particular mode of production, that is to say, a particular mode of production (the instruments of satisfaction) and consumption (the modes of satisfaction). The human mode of production is a universal mode of production in that the human species has the unique power to actively create a world in its own image. The universality of the human species can be contrasted with the limiting nature of animals in that humans possess the universal means and desire to create their own world while animals do not. Even though human and non-human species are able to appropriate nature in order to produce dwellings for themselves, animals can only do so one-sidedly while humans can do so universally, which is to say limitlessly. Marx (1992) writes, 12 3 Higher needs are those needs that most closely express the creative capacity of the individual as usually found in the arts, humanities, and sciences, although they certainly need not be confined to these spaces. In an alienated society where wealth and culture are generally concentrated to the enjoyment of a few, a nonalienating mode of production would universalize the development and satisfaction of such needs; and it would do so in a non-commodified form.
The universality of man manifests itself in practice in that universality which makes the whole nature his inorganic body, (1) as a direct means of life, and (2) as the matter, the object and the tool of his life activity. Nature is man s inorganic body, that is to say nature in so far as it is not the human body. (p. 328) The organic body is man and the inorganic body is that part of nature that has been created through human labor thus giving rise to the human-built world. Human-species have the universal means to appropriate nature in their own image to realize their own needs by perpetually transforming nature into both instruments and means of production, which can then be used to produce higher-order instruments and means of production. The very object of human labor is, as Marx (1992) puts it, the objectification of the species-life of man: for man reproduces himself not only intellectually, in his consciousness, but actively and actually, and he can therefore contemplate himself in a world he himself has created (p. 329). Objectifying nature to serve the purpose of men and women is therefore not only a historical act, but a contemplative one. The metabolic relationship between nature and humanity is a dialectical one, for every contemplative act produces a historical one and every historical act a contemplative one. That is to say, just as humanity produces a new world in reproducing itself, the new material world transforms the human world. 4 The universality of the human-species consists in the power and capacity to potentially transform the material world in all directions with each revolutionary transformation. Man is more universal than animals, Marx (1992) writes, so too is the area of inorganic nature from which he lives more universal (p. 328). With every revolutionary metabolic transformation, the new possibilities that are embedded within the landscape of inorganic nature multiply and extend universally. In other words, the universal quality in persons extends to the universality of possibilities in further transforming the natural world, the way that the particularity, or onesidedness, quality of animals limits the very possibilities of transforming the world. Relative to human nature, this particularity, or limiting factor, is inherent in animal nature. Animals produce only when immediate physiological needs necessitate, whereas humans produce even when their basic physiological needs are met. In fact, Marx (1992) 13 4 This point will be further elaborated in the next chapter under the section Humanity s alienated relationship to nature.
argues that humans truly produce only when they are free from immediate physiological needs. He further contrasts human-species from animals: [Animals] produce only themselves, while man reproduces the whole of nature; their [animal s] products belong immediately to their physical bodies, while man freely confronts his own product. Animals produce only according to the standards and needs of the species to which they belong, while man is capable of producing according to the standards of every species and of applying to each object its inherent standard; hence man also produces in accordance with the laws of beauty. (p. 329) We see that the human mode of production consists of several aspects: (1) humans can produce a world to their heart s content once free from physiological constraints; (2) in transcending their natural basic needs, persons express their essence as a conscious and creative, self-directed species; (3) the primary object of human labor is nature and the capacity of labor-power is universal; (4) the universality of human-species as a universal toolmaker is akin to a Platonic, artistic demigod in applying to each object its inherent standard according to the laws of beauty. 14 HUMAN NATURE VERSUS HUMAN FORM A crucial question that lurks in the background is whether by human nature Marx has in mind some fixed essence whose higher qualities can only be realized under certain objective material conditions, or whether by human nature Marx conceives that it is in the very essence of a person that is transformed as higher objective conditions are realized. In other words, should we interpret Marx s conception of human nature as being rooted to some Archimedean fixed point whose essence remains the same while its form and direction changes as objective conditions change, or is it possible for the essence of human nature, so to speak, to un-root itself and be reconstituted to the extent that the Archimedean point itself shifts? If the latter, are we then talking about a new evolved species, or more or less the same one? I believe it is the former interpretation that is the correct one, namely, that there exists a fixed, universal human essence as creative and active social beings that exists across all possible modes of production (so in this restricted sense human nature can be said to be fixed, but always grounded within human social relations). However, the form and direction in which human nature is expressed is always a particular, and hence a historical contingency, and one which is constantly changing. Thus for Marx, human nature is fixed while the human form is not.
15 It seems that regardless of what interpretation we adopt, the fact that Marx, or anyone else for the matter, is unable to define the precise boundaries of human nature irrespective of the objective conditions, the possibilities for human freedom and expression is as good as anybody s guess, whether we view human essence as innately fixed but whose form can change, as Marx does, or whose very nature can be reconstituted. Nonetheless, in adopting the former interpretation of Marx s conception of human nature, we must allow for the possibility that just as objective conditions and the human form can progress, so too can human form regress as objective conditions regress. EGOISM & THE TOTAL MAN Translated into social and political terms, Marx s notion of human emancipation is communism. Critics of communism usually argue that because persons are self-interested and egoistic by nature, it follows that any idea of having communist social relations based on selflessness is utopian. In the German Ideology (1998), Marx attacks this misconception by clarifying the view communism presumes of human nature on the question of egoism: The communists do not oppose egoism to selflessness or selflessness to egoism, nor do they express this contradiction theoretically either in its sentimental or in its high flown ideological form; they rather demonstrate its material source, with which it disappears of itself. The communists do not preach morality at all They do not put to people the moral demand: love one another, do not be egoists, etc.; on the contrary, they are very well aware that egoism, just as much as selflessness, is in definite circumstances a necessary form of the self-assertion of individuals. Hence, the communists by no means want to do away with the private individual for the sake of the general, selfless man. (p. 264; original emphasis) The key idea here is that under certain social relations (i.e. anything falling outside a communist organization of labor) egoism is a necessary outcome for individuals to assert their private interests, but once the material source that causes the division between private and general interests dissolves, then the supposed contradiction between private and general interests also dissolves. The material source is ultimately private property, or the privatization of social power in the hands of a class whose interests are inherently antagonistic to the masses. For Marx (1998), the idea of squashing the private individual in the name of the general interest is a contradiction only in terms, he writes, Communist theoreticians have discovered that throughout history the general interest is created by individuals who are defined as private persons. They
know that this contradiction is only a seeming one because one side of it, what is called the general interest, is constantly being produced by the other side, private interest, and in relation to the latter it is by no means an independent force with an independent history so that this contradiction is in practice constantly destroyed and reproduced. (p.264; original emphasis) Adopting a historical materialist outlook, private interests and general interests belong to different sides of the same coin, in that individual interests, through their totality of individual wills, ultimately evolve into general interests, and these new general interests are again transformed through the development of the actions of private individuals. The question of whether persons are egoistic or selfless by nature is a subordinate question, Marx (1998) contends, and in fact such a question could only acquire any interest at all if it were raised in definite epochs of history in relation to definite individuals (p. 263). To take the capitalist mode of production as the epoch, for our example, and the representative of the avaricious bourgeois (Marx, 1998, p. 265) as the definite individual motivated by a peculiar thirst for money and power and their corresponding passions the egoistic needs and desires of such an individual would not have occur but for the conditions of existence the individual finds themselves in. We may wonder how Marx reconciles the notion that the private interests of the individual (to take our example of the bourgeois individual) are not truly in contradiction with the general interests of society, on the one hand, with the notion that capital and labor is a contradiction in fact. It is true that the private capitalist s interests are antagonistic to the worker, but it seems that Marx wants to draw a distinction between class interests and general interests. Class interests are subsumed under general interests in that the very formation and character of a particular set of class interests is the result of a definite class struggle within a definite mode of production, and the result of this ongoing class struggle is ultimately expressed as the prevailing general interests for that particular society at a particular time. The general interests of a particular society consists in the totality of heterogeneous private interests and its corresponding needs and desires. This totality is constantly transforming and being transformed by material conditions, paving the road to a new set of general interests. In this sense, the avarice of the private bourgeois individual as a private bourgeois individual is in [such] definite circumstances a necessary form of the selfassertion of individuals (Marx, 1998, p. 264; emphasis added). Thus for Marx, it is an empty moral injunction to say to the private bourgeois individual to conquer your greed or 16
desire for power, that is, to stop following your apparent egoistic private interests, in a word, to stop being yourself. 5 This talk of egoism brings us right back to Marx s conception of needs and desires. As we have seen, Marx adopts the view that certain needs and desires at the most fundamental level are fixed irrespective of worldly conditions. However, fixed as these fundamental needs and desires are, their form and direction change depending on the social relations they are expressed in. In a passage in the German Ideology, in which he curiously crosses out from his manuscripts, Marx (1998) suggests that aside from certain fixed needs and desires, there are needs and desires that are wholly based on particular social relations, meaning that they are not included in the very constitution of human nature, he writes, [Those needs and desires] originating solely in a particular society, under particular conditions of [production] and intercourse are totally deprived of their conditions of existence. Which [of the desires] will be merely changed and [which eliminated] in a communist [society] can [only be determined in a practical] way, by [changing the real], actual [ desires, and not by making comparisons with earlier historical conditions]. (p. 273; original bracketing except the first). 17 5 Regarding moral injunctions within the context of justice, Marx contends that the notion of natural justice does not exist, but rather that justice should be understood within its specific-historical form as expressed within a particular mode of production, but also in relation to other modes of production, both past and future. Thus the institution of slavery can be deemed unjust under the capitalist mode of production but not under a slave-based economy. However, the institution of wage-labor cannot be called unjust from the standpoint of capitalist exchange relations. Presumably, wage-labor can only be called unjust from the standpoint of a communist mode of production, and to the degree in which the latter is a real possibility, the force of the moral argument against wage-labor is proportionally strengthened; just as the institution of slavery during slave-based societies can be called unjust to the degree in which its existence was no longer a necessity. We find Marx s (1991) conception of justice in the third volume of Capital, where he writes: The justice of transactions between agents of production consists in the fact that these transactions arise from the relations of production as their natural consequence. The legal forms in which these economic transactions appear as voluntary actions of the participants, as the expressions of their common will and as contracts that can be enforced on the parties concerned by the power of the state, are mere forms that cannot themselves determine its content. They simply express it. The content is just so long as it corresponds to the mode of production and is adequate to it. It is unjust as soon as it contradicts it. Slavery, on the basis of the capitalist mode of production, is unjust; so is cheating on the quality of commodities (pp. 460-461; emphasis added). For Marx, alienation is unjust only if it is unnecessary. In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt (1998) draws a similar conclusion when she writes, the institution of slavery in antiquity, though not in later times, was not a device for cheap labor or an instrument of exploitation for profit but rather the attempt to exclude labor from the conditions of man s life (p. 84). Insofar as the productive forces were not fully developed to reduce the necessity of labor, one class will seek to live off the labor of another so as to realize its own freedom, as limited as it may be. Whatever moral grounds the institution of wage-labor may have had at some point, it has arguably lost it.
The question then becomes how certain fixed needs and desires will be expressed in communist social conditions, and which ones will completely disappear. However, Marx (1998) later makes it clear that communists are not interested in actively changing or eliminating the fountain of human nature in which needs and desires spring forth from: communists have no intention of abolishing the fixedness of their desires and needs they only strive to achieve an organization of production and intercourse which will make possible the normal satisfaction of all needs, i.e., a satisfaction which is limited only by the needs themselves. (p.273) The medium by which needs and desires can be normally satisfied and further developed is what matters. By normal satisfaction Marx has in mind the following. All past and present social conditions have allowed certain needs and desires to gain disproportional power over the development of a person s totality of needs and desires. This latter development depends on whether we live in circumstances that allow all-round activity and thereby the full development of all our potentialities (Marx, 1998, p. 272). Insofar as the medium of intercourse emphasizes the satisfaction of some needs and desires to the detriment of an individual s total needs and desires, such an intercourse, i.e. the social mode by which everyday existence is reproduced, can be deemed not normal. Consequently, from the historical materialist perspective, it makes little sense to objectively hold the definite individual morally responsible for their egoistic acts, or the epochal times in which he or she lives, since, as we have seen, there is no underlying contradiction between private and general interests (again, class interests is an entirely different question). Moreover, the march toward an individual s full development is dialectically linked with the march of historical development, thereby subordinating the subjective question of individual egoism to the historical-structural possibilities for individual freedom. Departing the realm of objectivity to subjectivity, the question of passing moral judgments on individuals or societies becomes an ethical one, and one that Marx generally ignores given his conception of history. Perhaps if the objective conditions for freedom are met through communist relations, then, and only then, can we speak of universal ethics. If we question the inevitability of communist relations, then it seems we can presently hold society more responsible than the individual, whenever and wherever it obstructs, distorts, or delays the full potential of individuals. 18