TAPE 2012 Topic 5(1)

Topic 5a. Marx: Civil Society, Rights and Individualism The relation of civil society and politics in On the Jewish Question The central differences between pre-capitalist, capitalist and communist societies as they are outlined in the Grundrisse The relation of Marx and Hegel Marx: Civil Society, Rights and Individualism Early influences Classical political economy – Smith, Ricardo, James Mill Hegel: Marx - began as a left-Hegelian. His early political theory partly develops through criticisms of Hegel's political philosophy. Today focus on On the Jewish Question (1843) and contrast of Marx's view of civil society and politics with that of Hegel. More generally then more generally Marx's attempts to reconcile modern individualism and community in early and later writings (Grundrisse). Contrast with Hegel and Smith. On the Jewish Question: Context of the Essay Criticism of essay on Jewish question by the left Hegelian, Bruno Bauer. Bruno Bauer: discussion of demand by Jews for religious freedom. Bruno Bauer: this demand was too narrow - they should demand political emancipation for everyone - i.e. roughly liberal democratic states, universal suffrage, political rights of organisation, no restriction on political office on the basis of birth, occupation, religion, property etc. Marx: does to Bruno Bauer what Bruno Bauer had done for Jewish demand for religious emancipation - political emancipation is also too partial and too narrow. What is required is human emancipation. What is involved in human emancipation? Answer: 'Overcoming the separation of civil society and state' Crucial arguments in Marx's On the Jewish Question are not about the Jewish question but about politics and civil society. Civil Society I. Concept of civil society in Hegel What is meant by civil society? Marx’s discussion owes much to Hegel. Hegel’s to the political economy of the Scottish Enlightenment. In Hegel it forms one of the three spheres of modern social life a. Family: voluntary, sphere of 'love', not just in sense of feeling, but also shared activities and commitments which involves overcoming individual identity. b. Civil society: economic sphere of contractual relations and abstract rights. Individual are recognised as ‘self-subsistent persons' (Philosophy of Right 238) c. State: sphere of citizenship, involves not just state in narrow sense of political institutions (although these are central), but a shared sense of culture, customs and identity - 'nation'. Three realms of civil society: 1. System of needs: realm of economic activity governed by market relations in which individuals enter into contractual relations with each other in the pursuit of their own ends. It is the object of classical political economy: Political economy is the science which starts from this view of needs and labour but then has the task of explaining mass-relationships and mass-movements in their complexity and their qualitative and quantitative character. This is one of the sciences which have arisen out of the conditions of the modern world. Its development affords the interesting spectacle (as in Smith, Say, and Ricardo) of thought working upon the endless mass of details which confront it at the outset and extracting therefrom the simple principles of the thing, the Understanding effective in the thing and directing it. (Philosophy of Right 189R) For Hegel while individuals act from egoistic reasons, the sphere is 'implicitly universal' - via exchange the needs of others are satisfied. Egoism is overcome in part through corporations in part through overarching membership of the political community. Classes in civil society: defined by the nature of work and activities and the form of consciousness associated with these. Agricultural class (peasants and landlords) : involvement with nature means a passive and unreflective attitudes. Business class (craftsmen, manufacturers, traders): reflective and acquisitive Universal class (civil service): reflective and representative of the interests of the whole society (as against the pursuit of particular interests in civil society.) 2. The administration of justice: required to protect property rights. A sphere of civil, social and human rights. 'A man counts as ‘a man in virtue of his manhood alone, not because he is a Jew, Catholic, Protestant, German, Italian, &c.' (209R) The system of justice is educative - recognition of mutual interdependence of individuals as rights holders. 3. The police and corporations. a. Police - means public authorities pursuit of common interests - water, drainage etc. fairness between producers and consumers programmes of education deal with problems of poverty - see below b. Corporations - cross between medieval guilds and modern professional associations. '[A] Corporation has the right, under the surveillance of the public authority, (a) to look after its own interests within its own sphere, (b) to co-opt members, qualified objectively by the requisite skill and rectitude, to a number fixed by the general structure of society, (c) to protect its members against particular contingencies, (d) to provide the education requisite to fit others to become members. In short, its right is to come on the scene like a second family for its members.' (252) It provides an identity and community within civil society that cuts across the contractual. atomistic and instrumental relations. It involves a commitment to a common good - the good of a particular trade - say carpentry - as such. 'As the family was the first, so the Corporation is the second ethical root of the state, the one planted in civil society.' (255) 'The sanctity of marriage and the dignity of Corporation membership are the two fixed points round which the unorganised atoms of civil society revolve.' (255R) In their absence civil society becomes 'unorganised atoms' (see next week on the State.) II. Concept of civil society in Marx 1. Marx's account of civil society is narrower than that of Hegel. Civil society is the realm of economic activity governed by a market system of exchange relations. Hegel's corporations are absent - Marx takes them to have been a feature of feudal society that modern political revolutions destroyed: 'Political emancipation is, at the same time, the dissolution of the old society on which the state alienated from the people, the sovereign power, is based. What was the character of the old society? It can be described in one word – feudalism. The character of the old civil society was directly political – that is to say, the elements of civil life, for example, property, or the family, or the mode of labour, were raised to the level of elements of political life in the form of seigniory, estates, and corporations... The political revolution which overthrew this sovereign power and raised state affairs to become affairs of the people, which constituted the political state as a matter of general concern, that is, as a real state, necessarily smashed all estates, corporations, guilds, and privileges, since they were all manifestations of the separation of the people from the community. The political revolution thereby abolished the political character of civil society. It broke up civil society into its simple component parts; on the one hand, the individuals; on the other hand, the material and spiritual elements constituting the content of the life and social position of these individuals.' (OJQ) Civil society: private individuals operate through market exchange motivated by self-interest. They relate to each other in an instrumental fashion, treating each other as means to their own ends. Individuals are in competition with each other. It is the 'the sphere of egoism, of bellum omnium contra omnes'. Political realm liberal political state in modern offers an idealised community. Individuals engage in collective action for public ends, co-operating with each other. Individuals treat each other as individuals. The freedom of others is seen as a condition of one's won freedom. Humans behave as communal beings. However, the communal life of political life is an illusory community. A person's real life is lived in the egoistic domain of civil society. ‘The perfect political state is, by its nature, man’s species-life, as opposed to his material life. All the preconditions of this egoistic life continue to exist in civil society outside the sphere of the state, but as qualities of civil society. Where the political state has attained its true development, man – not only in thought, in consciousness, but in reality, in life – leads a twofold life, a heavenly and an earthly life: life in the political community, in which he considers himself a communal being, and life in civil society, in which he acts as a private individual, regards other men as a means, degrades himself into a means, and becomes the plaything of alien powers. The relation of the political state to civil society is just as spiritual as the relations of heaven to earth. The political state stands in the same opposition to civil society, and it prevails over the latter in the same way as religion prevails over the narrowness of the secular world – i.e., by likewise having always to acknowledge it, to restore it, and allow itself to be dominated by it. In his most immediate reality, in civil society, man is a secular being. Here, where he regards himself as a real individual, and is so regarded by others, he is a fictitious phenomenon. In the state, on the other hand, where man is regarded as a species-being, he is the imaginary member of an illusory sovereignty, is deprived of his real individual life and endowed with an unreal universality.’ (OJQ) C. Human emancipation Human emancipation involves transforming the nature of civil society itself, so that 'heaven' of political society is brought down to earth - individuals in their economic relations stand in communal relations with each other. 'Political emancipation is the reduction of man, on the one hand, to a member of civil society, to an egoistic, independent individual, and, on the other hand, to a citizen, a juridical person. Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen, and as an individual human being has become a species-being in his everyday life, in his particular work, and in his particular situation, only when man has recognized and organized his "own powers" as -social powers, and, consequently, no longer separates social power from himself in the shape of political power, only then will human emancipation have been accomplished.' (OJQ) As long as one stay at the 'political' level the community is 'abstract' and empty. Real community requires the transformation of civil society. Political emancipation projects a model of community and human freedom in which the person is not alienated from their 'species-life'. Human emancipation requires community and freedom in economic life, not just in political realm. What is involved in that? Read Notebook Comments on James Mill. Marx on human rights In criticising separation of civil society and state Marx also criticises human rights. Why? Distinction (from French Revolution), 'rights of citizen' and 'rights of man' 1. Citizen rights - correspond to rights of persons in the political realm - ' political rights, rights which can only be exercised in community with others. Their content is participation in the community, and specifically in the political community, in the life of the state.' (OJQ) Rights to participate in political life, to associate with others, to demand an account from public officials etc. - democratic rights. Here we have an abstract image of persons as communal beings, who live in a community with others. Human emancipation will involve a generalisation of these communal relations into the economic domain - the democratic control of production. 2. Rights of man - correspond to the rights of persons as members of civil society - humans as egoistic beings, in instrumental relations with others, indifferent to each other. ' Above all, we note the fact that the so-called rights of man, the droits de l'homme as distinct from the droits du citoyen, are nothing but the rights of a member of civil society -- i.e., the rights of egoistic man, of man separated from other men and from the community.' Rights of man involve rights to liberty, equality, security and property. Right to liberty: 'Article 6. "Liberty is the power which man has to do everything that does not harm the rights of others", or, according to the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1791: "Liberty consists in being able to do everything which does not harm others." Liberty, therefore, is the right to do everything that harms no one else. The limits within which anyone can act without harming someone else are defined by law, just as the boundary between two fields is determined by a boundary post. It is a question of the liberty of man as an isolated monad, withdrawn into himself. But, the right of man to liberty is based not on the association of man with man, but on the separation of man from man. It is the right of this separation, the right of the restricted individual, withdrawn into himself… The practical application of man's right to liberty is man's right to private property. What constitutes man's right to private property? Article 16. (Constitution of 1793): "The right of property is that which every citizen has of enjoying and of disposing at his discretion of his goods and income, of the fruits of his labour and industry." The right of man to private property is, therefore, the right to enjoy one's property and to dispose of it at one's discretion (a son gre), without regard to other men, independently of society, the right of self-interest. This individual liberty and its application form the basis of civil society. It makes every man see in other men not the realization of his own freedom, but the barrier to it. But, above all, it proclaims the right of man "of enjoying and of disposing at his discretion of his goods and income, of the fruits of his labour and industry."…' (OJQ) Likewise other rights of man to equality and security are similarly rights of individuals considered in isolation or separation from each other, in competition, seeing in others 'not the realization of his own freedom, but the barrier to it'. Marx summarises his discussion as follows: ' None of the so-called rights of man, therefore, go beyond egoistic man, beyond man as a member of civil society -- that is, an individual withdrawn into himself, into the confines of his private interests and private caprice, and separated from the community. In the rights of man, he is far from being conceived as a species-being; on the contrary, species-like itself, society, appears as a framework external to the individuals, as a restriction of their original independence. The sole bound holding them together it natural necessity, need and private interest, the preservation of their property and their egoistic selves… The political emancipators go so far as to reduce citizenship, and the political community, to a mere means for maintaining these so-called rights of man, that, therefore, the citizen is declared to be the servant of egotistic man, that the sphere in which man acts as a communal being is degraded to a level below the sphere in which he acts as a partial being, and that, finally, it is not man as citizen, but man as private individual [ bourgeois ] who is considered to be the essential and true man.' (OJQ) So communal life is seen simply as a means for individuals to pursue their self-interested behaviour which is seen as what humans really are. Marx wants to reverse that - humans are essentially communal beings. Human emancipation involves realising that communal nature in economic life. Questions: How convincing are Marx's criticisms of the rights of man in On the Jewish Question? What implications do they have for modern discussions of human rights? Is Marx a radical anti-individualist? Is the picture of humans as essentially communal a romantic form of anti-individualism in which the conflicts between individuals have disappeared? Is he like the conservative critics of the French Revolution and industrialisation calling upon a romantic image of pre-capitalist communities against the individualism of modern market society? Note many of these conservatives were also critical of 'the rights of man'. Is Marx a conservative in disguise? Answer is I think no - but takes us to more general claims Marx, especially in the later writings about the relation of society and individuals. Marx on different forms of society and individuality Marx's celebration of capitalism. Marx praises the development of capitalism: it is a revolutionary mode of production that increases in productive forces, laying the basis for the abolition of scarcity which for Marx is the prerequisite of socialism. Communist Manifesto: 'The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his, real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. ' Also in this passage - revolutionises social relations in ways that also create the preconditions for socialism: breaks up local and parochial relations and creates a new global society - capitalism is a globalising force breaks up ties to particular occupations that persons are born into breaks relations of dependence of pre-capitalist societies where individuals are tied to a particular position and social role in society - serf, journeyman, lord etc; in its place in market based society individuals confront each other as formal equals Marx's account of the development of forms of sociality and individuality In a number of Marx's writings but especially in Grundrisse we have three stage model of development of human history that parallels that central to Hegel. 1. Hegel's three stage model of history (Phenomenology of Spirit). Stage 1: 'Undifferentiated unity' ( 'immediate being') Ancient Greek city states: 'immediate ethical substance': the person has an 'undifferentiated existence' and 'naive confidence' with respect to the customs and roles and laws of his society. Members accept them in an uncritical, unreflective and unquestioning way. One identifies entirely with them and has no sense of his own independent individuality. 'the individual, as he immediately finds his existence in the actual objective social order, in the life of his nation, has a solid imperturbable confidence; the universal mind has not for him resolved itself into its abstract moments, and thus, too, he does not think of himself as existing in singleness and independence.' (PS 359) However this breaks down. The sophists and Socrates represent the change in demanding rational justification of customs (Philosophy of History). Trade and the discovery of other customs and laws of different society - customs seen as 'conventional'. Isolated by himself he is himself now the central essential reality — no longer universal mind. The element of this singleness of self-consciousness is no doubt in universal mind itself, but merely as a vanishing quantity, which, as it appears with an existence of its own, is straightway resolved within the universal, and only becomes consciously felt in the form of that confidence. When the individual gets fixity in the form of singleness (and every moment, being a moment of the essential reality, must manage to reveal itself as essential), the individual has thereby set himself over against the laws and customs. These latter are looked on as merely a thought without absolutely essential significance, an abstract theory without reality; while he qua this particular ego is in his own view the living truth. (PS 359) Stage 2 Differentiated disunity ( 'mediated being') A period of individualism in which the individual sees himself as the source of morality. Customs are seen as external and even antagonistic. VI B he describes this as 'self-estranged spirit'. This is represented by a variety of forms of individualistic moralities: hedonism, utilitarianism, the Enlightenment (subjecting social norms to the scrutiny of abstract individual reason) - it culminates in the Terror of the French revolution. Kant's moral philosophy represents the most complete form of this stage of individualism. Stage 3 Differentiated unity ('mediated immediacy': Final stage in which an individual retains a sense of their own identity (differentiated) of the second stage, but now rationally sees that identity as being constituted by their membership of a social order (unity). We have a newly constructed Sittlichkeit. This is what Hegel aims to describe in the Philosophy of Right. Brief discussion in Phenomenology of Mind. This shift from undifferentiated unity, through differentiated disunity to differentiated unity we will see is also central to Marx. (The terms are from G.A. Cohen's account of Marx.) The pattern runs throughout Hegel's discussion of modern society - family, civil society and the state: family: undifferentiated unity' Civil society: differentiated disunity State: differentiated unity 2. The three stage model of history in Marx Pre-capitalist Capitalist Communist Stage 1: 'Undifferentiated unity' ( 'immediate being'): non-individualist community; non-individualist sociality Stage 2 Differentiated disunity ( 'mediated being'): individualist non-community; non-social individuality Stage 3 Differentiated unity ('mediated immediacy'): individualist community; social individuality ' (1) Relations of personal dependence (entirely spontaneous at the outset) are the first social forms, in which human productive capacity develops only to a slight extent and at isolated points. (2) Personal independence founded on objective [sachlicher] dependence is the second great form, in which a system of general social metabolism, of universal relations, of all-round needs and universal capacities is formed for the first time. (3) Free individuality, based on the universal development of individuals and on their subordination of their communal, social productivity as their social wealth, is the third stage. The second stage creates the conditions for the third. Patriarchal as well as ancient conditions (feudal, also) thus disintegrate with the development of commerce, of luxury, of money, of exchange value, while modern society arises and grows in the same measure.' (Grundrisse p. 158) In pre-capitalist societies, where market relations are not fully developed, individuals are defined in terms of certain social roles which make some personally dependent on others: ' When we look at social relations which create an undeveloped system of exchange, of exchange values and of money or which correspond to an undeveloped degree of these, then it is clear from the outset that the individuals in such a society, although their relations appear to be more personal, enter into connection with one another only as individuals imprisoned within a certain definition, as feudal lord and vassal, landlord and serf, etc., or as members of a caste etc. or as members of an estate etc.' (Grundrisse p. 165) In capitalist societies, where market relations are fully developed, those roles are destroyed. Individuals enter into contractual relations with each other as separate and formally equal individuals who are not personally dependent on each other and not tied to a particular social role. However individuals are 'indifferent' to each other and personal dependence is replaced by 'objective' dependence - individuals find their relations determined by the impersonal workings of the market: ' In the money relation, in the developed system of exchange (and this semblance seduces the democrats), the ties of personal dependence, of distinctions of blood, education, etc, are in fact exploded, ripped up (at least, personal ties all appear as personal relations); and individuals seem independent (this is an independence which is at bottom merely an illusion and it is more correctly called indifference), free to collide with one another and to engage in exchange within this freedom; but they appear thus only for someone who abstracts from the conditions, the conditions of existence within which these individuals enter into contact (and these conditions, in turn, are independent of the individuals and, although created by society, appear as if they were natural conditions, not controllable by individuals). The definedness of individuals, which in the former case appears as a personal restriction of the individual by another, appears in the latter case as developed into an objective restriction of the individual by relations independent of him and sufficient unto themselves. (Grundrisse p. 165) Communist society: the individuality of the second phase is kept - ' The second stage creates the conditions for the third'. But now the individuality is a condition for a new community. Individuals no longer see each other as in conflict. The social relations of markets no longer impersonally determine the life of each - individuals bring those social relations under collective control. 'Universally developed individuals, whose social relations, as their own communal relations, are hence also subordinated to their own communal control, are no product of nature, but of history. The degree and the universality of the development of wealth where this individuality becomes possible supposes production on the basis of exchange values as a prior condition, whose universality produces not only the alienation of the individual from himself and from others, but also the universality and the comprehensiveness of his relations and capacities. In earlier stages of development the single individual seems to be developed more fully, because he has not yet worked out his relationships in their fullness, or erected them as independent social powers and relations opposite himself. It is as ridiculous to yearn for a return to that original fullness as it is to believe that with this complete emptiness history has come to a standstill. The bourgeois viewpoint has never advanced beyond this antithesis between itself and this romantic viewpoint, and therefore the latter will accompany it as legitimate antithesis up to its blessed end.' (Grundrisse p. 164) Note here in the last passage Marx rejecting the romantic anti-individualism of conservative models of community. Similar themes run through Marx's work. D. Some questions Questions: Is this reworking of Hegel just wishful thinking - is it possible to have a third stage of the kind Marx defends and would a communist society deliver it? Or is it the case that you need a sphere of civil society in which individuals retain a sense of their identity? 1. Comparison with Hegel One way to approach those questions is through a comparison with Hegel's account. Two differences. 1. Radical democracy: Is a radical democracy in which individuals bring communal relations under collective control possible or desirable in modern societies? For Hegel, direct democracy is undesirable - one needs intermediate associations, corporations, that stand between the individual and the political realm. 2. Abolition of civil society and the market: Is there abolition possible or desirable. For Hegel it is important that there is a sphere of market relations in which individuals can realise 'abstract freedom' or 'negative freedom' to pursue their own interests. Talmon The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy argues that the kind of radical egalitarian and radical democratic politics of which Rousseau and Marx of major examples leads not to democracy bot totalitarianism: 'All the emphasis came to be placed on the destruction of inequality...on sweeping away all the intermediate centres of power and allegiance, whether social classes, regional communities, professional groups or corporations. Nothing was left to stand between man and state. The power of the state, unchecked by intermediate agencies, became unlimited' (For web extracts of this work see: http://www.coloradocollege.edu/Dept/PS/Finley/PS425/reading/Talmon.html) If this view is right then Hegel at level of political principles, offers the better approach to modern politics - and the call for the 'reinvention of civil society' in the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe is a vindication of this approach. If one does not accept this criticism of Marx, one might still accept that Hegel is asking the right kind of questions. What forms of institution can Marx offer to realise the ideal of a 'social individuality'? 2. Comparison with Adam Smith 'Nothing tends so much to corrupt and enervate and debase the mind as dependency, and nothing gives such noble and generous notions of probity as freedom and independency. Commerce is one great preventative of this custom.' (Lectures on Jurisprudence vi.6) Commercial society realises the Stoic virtues of independence and self-sufficiency: 'Every man, as the Stoics used to say, is first and principally recommended to his own care; and every man is certainly, in every respect, fitter and abler to take care of himself than of any other person.' (The Theory of Moral Sentiments VI.ii.1.1) In commercial society, through exchange and the division of labour, the labourer is no longer personally dependent on the wealthy. Markets free us from the forms of dependency that the gift in pre-commercial economies involves. Pre-commercial society: the 'rustic hospitality' of the large property owner serves as a means by which the wealthy exercised power and the poor were rendered dependent: '[The great proprietor] is at all times...surrounded with a multitude of retainers and dependants, who, having no equivalent to give in return for their maintenance, but being fed entirely by his bounty, must obey him... Before the extension of commerce and manufacture in Europe, the hospitality of the rich, and the great, from the sovereign down to the smallest baron, exceeded everything which in the present times we can easily form a notion of.' (Wealth of Nations III.IV.5-6) Commercial society: The interdependence of individuals is disassociated from personal dependence. Since the income of each worker is not tied to that of any particular individual, the ties that the rich previously exercised over their workers is broken. ‘Though [the wealthy person] contributes, therefore, to the maintenance of them all, they are all more or less independent of him, because generally they can all be maintained without him.’ (Wealth of Nations III.IV.11) Possible liberal response to Marx: While market exchange is instrumental, it does not follow that it is simply a matter of treating others as means and not ends. Rather, through market relations we recognise others as independent agents of standing, towards whom we act neither as benefactor nor as dependent. Agents are recommended to their own care and we mutually recognise each other as individuals who are best able to care for themselves. Marx's claim that each in commercial society individuals care primarily for their own needs and not those of others is not a failing of markets, but a virtue. In market society there is a recognition of mutual independence. Topic 5b: Marx's Theory of Alienation: The concept of alienation as it is developed in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts Central term in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts A. Key terms Alienation: also ‘estrangement’ and ‘externalisation’. Translations of two German terms ‘Entäusserung’ and ‘entfremdung’ The term is part of Marx’s Hegelian heritage. Useful starting point is the use of the concept of alienation in English law: ‘To alienate property’ – to transfer property to someone else. Alienation carries the idea of separation from something. Stronger sense – term alien – the thing separated appears ‘alien’, ‘hostile’ or ‘indifferent’ Alan Wood: Alienation involves ‘the separation of things that properly belong together, the establishment of a relation of hostility or indifference’. Is alienation subjective or objective? In sociology from 1950s onwards it is often used to describe a subjective state – ‘feelings of alienation’. The same sense is often discernible in every day usage. In Marx in its basic sense it describes an objective relation, not a subjective state. Alienation describes an objective relation of persons to each other, to their own powers and capacities and to the objects they create. The subjective feeling of alienation is a consequence. Consider for example the following passage: From The Holy Family ‘The propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-estrangement. But the former class feels at ease and strengthened in this self-estrangement, it recognises estrangement as its own power and has in it the semblance of a human existence. The class of the proletariat feels annihilated in estrangement; it sees in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existence. It is, to use an expression of Hegel, in its abasement the indignation at that abasement, an indignation to which it is necessarily driven by the contradiction between its human nature and its condition of life, which is the outright, resolute and comprehensive negation of that nature. Within this antithesis the private property-owner is therefore the conservative side, the proletarian the destructive side. From the former arises the action of preserving the antithesis, from the latter the action of annihilating it. Indeed private property drives itself in its economic movement towards its own dissolution, but only through a development which does not depend on it, which is unconscious and which takes place against the will of private property by the very nature of things, only inasmuch as it produces the proletariat as proletariat, poverty which is conscious of its spiritual and physical poverty, dehumanisation which is conscious of its dehumanisation, and therefore self-abolishing. The proletariat executes the sentence that private property pronounces on itself by producing the proletariat, just as it executes the sentence that wage-labour pronounces on itself by producing wealth for others and poverty for itself.’ Objectification Also taken from Hegel. Part of its sense in Marx is basic sense - 'to make an object'. Labour is a process of objectification. BUT crucial point is that in labour persons objectify themselves - that is that in the objects they produce they give public expression to their human skills and powers in a material form. They can see themselves in the objects they have created. 'The object of labour is, therefore, the objectification of the species-life of man: for man produces himself not only intellectually, in his consciousness, but actively and actually, and he can therefore contemplate himself in a world he himself has created.' (EPM first manuscript) 'It can be seen how the history of industry and the objective existence of industry as it has developed is the open book of the essential powers of man, man's psychology present in tangible form.' (EPM third manuscript) [Compare Hegel on labour in his discussion of the Master-slave relation. Marx acknowledges his debt to Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind in the final section of the EPM but it is to the philosophy as a whole rather than that section.] For Marx all labour is objectification - but in modern capitalist societies objectification takes place in an alienated form. In EPM this is developed in terms of an analysis of capitalism Capitalism: A society in which one class owns the means of production (capitalism class) and the other owns and sells their labour power (wage worker). All goods, including labour power are bought and sold on the market. In the EPM Marx by and large starts from the views of the classical political economists - Smith, Ricardo, James Mill, Say etc. He doesn't as does in his later works criticise their views, but rather their normative assumptions. Species being: Translation of Gattungswesen - means species-essence or nature of species. The essence of a thing is what makes it that kind of thing. Every species has an essence or a nature - features that are characteristic of that species and define what it is - species character. Humans have properties that are particular to and distinctively human properties - features that distinguish humans from other animals. Common Aristotelian move in social and political theory - Aristotle's view: humans are 'political' animals; humans are 'rational' animals. What for Marx are the distinctive human capacities? 1. EPM: the capacity for 'free conscious activity' - for activity that is an end in itself. That capacity for free conscious activity is exhibited in labour. 'The whole character of a species, its species-character, resides in the nature of its life activity, and free conscious activity constitutes the species-character of man...The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It is not distinct from that activity; it is that activity. Man makes his life activity itself an object of his will and consciousness. He has conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he directly merges. Conscious life activity directly distinguishes man from animal life activity. Only because of that is he a species-being. Or, rather, he is a conscious being -- i.e., his own life is an object for him, only because he is a species-being. Only because of that is his activity free activity...The practical creation of an objective world, the fashioning of inorganic nature, is proof that man is a conscious species-being -- i.e., a being which treats the species as its own essential being or itself as a species-being. It is true that animals also produce. They build nests and dwelling, like the bee, the beaver, the ant, etc. But they produce only their own immediate needs or those of their young; they produce only when immediate physical need compels them to do so, while man produces even when he is free from physical need and truly produces only in freedom from such need; they produce only themselves, while man reproduces the whole of nature; their 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.' (EPM first manuscript) A distinctive feature of humans, their species-character lies in the fact that they distance themselves from their own activities, and adapt it to new ends and purposes free of immediate need. They make their activity their own. Compare Marx’s later discussion in Capital: ' A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will.' (Capital volume 1, ch.7, section 1) 2. Humans are also communal beings - the term 'species being' in on OJQ is mainly used to describe the communal nature of humans. The same theme is found in EPM : Humans are aware of themselves as a species: 'Man is a species-being, not only because he practically and theoretically makes the species -- both his own and those of other things -- his object, but also -- and this is simply another way of saying the same thing -- because he looks upon himself as the present, living species, because he looks upon himself as a universal and therefore free being.' (EPM first manuscript) B. The forms of alienation In capitalist society the workers are alienated. Alienation is a relational term: A is alienated from B. What is the worker alienated from? 1. Alienation from the product of labour. Basic point: worker alienates the product in a literal sense - it comes to belong to another. The worker produces the object, the capitalist owns the object. Two additional claims: a. The immiseration thesis: 'The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and extent. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he produces. The devaluation of the human world grows in direct proportion to the increase in value of the world of things.' (EPM first manuscript) Issue of interpretation: does this mean absolutely poorer or relatively poorer? Is the thesis defensible in either form? b. The idea that the workers products and social relations appear to take on a life of their own - they dominate the worker: ' the object that labour produces, it product, stands opposed to it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer.' This thought remains central to later writings: ‘The law of capitalistic accumulation, metamorphosed by economists into pretended law of Nature, in reality merely states that the very nature of accumulation excludes every diminution in the degree of exploitation of labour, and every rise in the price of labour, which could seriously imperil the continual reproduction, on an ever-enlarging scale, of the capitalistic relation. It cannot be otherwise in a mode of production in which the labourer exists to satisfy the needs of self-expansion of existing values, instead of, on the contrary, material wealth existing to satisfy the needs of development on the part of the labourer. As, in religion, man is governed by the products of his own brain, so in capitalistic production, he is governed by the products of his own hand.’ Capital Volume 1, ch. 25, section 1. (my emphasis) See also Capital Volume 1, ch.1 section 4 where a similar thought is developed in terms of the idea of commodity fetishism: ' A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour' In the EPM the thought is developed in the section on Money in the third manuscript. The powers of a person become a matter not of their real characteristics, but what they can buy: 'That which exists for me through the medium of money, that which I can pay for, i.e., that which money can buy, that am I, the possessor of money. The stronger the power of my money, the stronger am I. The properties of money are my, the possessor's, properties and essential powers. Therefore, what I am and what I can do is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy the most beautiful woman. Which means to say that I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness, its repelling power, is destroyed by money. As an individual, I am lame, but money procures me 24 legs. Consequently, I am not lame. I am a wicked, dishonest, unscrupulous and stupid individual, but money is respected, and so also is its owner. Money is the highest good, and consequently its owner is also good…. If we assume man to be man, and his relation to the world to be a human one, then love can be exchanged only for love, trust for trust, and so on. If you wish to enjoy art, you must be an artistically educated person; if you wish to exercise influence on other men, you must be the sort of person who has a truly stimulating and encouraging effect on others. Each one of your relations to man -- and to nature -- must be a particular expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love unrequitedly -- i.e., if your love as love does not call forth love in return, if, through the vital expression of yourself as a loving person, you fail to become a loved person -- then your love is impotent, it is a misfortune.' (EPM first manuscript) 2. Alienation from the activity of labouring: '[L]abour is external to the worker -- i.e., does not belong to his essential being; that he, therefore, does not confirm himself in his work, but denies himself, feels miserable and not happy, does not develop free mental and physical energy, but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind. Hence, the worker feels himself only when he is not working; when he is working, he does not feel himself. He is at home when he is not working, and not at home when he is working. His labour is, therefore, not voluntary but forced, it is forced labour. It is, therefore, not the satisfaction of a need but a mere means to satisfy needs outside itself. Its alien character is clearly demonstrated by the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, it is shunned like the plague. External labour, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of self-sacrifice, of mortification.' Ideal of labour is where labour expresses the worker's species being - where labour is creative and self-expressive activity entered for its own sake, for its intrinsic worth and not just as a means to an end - leisure. For the ideal read the following: From Notebook Comments On James Mill 'Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings. Each of us would have in two ways affirmed himself and the other person. 1) In my production I would have objectified my individuality, its specific character, and therefore enjoyed not only an individual manifestation of my life during the activity, but also when looking at the object I would have the individual pleasure of knowing my personality to be objective, visible to the senses and hence a power beyond all doubt. 2) In your enjoyment or use of my product I would have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied a human need by my work, that is, of having objectified man's essential nature, and of having thus created an object corresponding to the need of another man's essential nature. 3) I would have been for you the mediator between you and the species, and therefore would become recognised and felt by you yourself as a completion of your own essential nature and as a necessary part of yourself, and consequently would know myself to be confirmed both in your thought and your love. 4) In the individual expression of my life I would have directly created your expression of your life, and therefore in my individual activity I would have directly confirmed and realised my true nature, my human nature, my communal nature. Our products would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature. This relationship would moreover be reciprocal; what occurs on my side has also to occur on yours. Let us review the various factors as seen in our supposition: My work would be a free manifestation of life, hence an enjoyment of life. Presupposing private property, my work is an alienation of life, for I work in order to live, in order to obtain for myself the means of life. My work is not my life. Secondly, the specific nature of my individuality, therefore, would be affirmed in my labour, since the latter would be an affirmation of my individual life. Labour therefore would be true, active property. Presupposing private property, my individuality is alienated to such a degree that this activity is instead hateful to me, a torment, and rather the semblance of an activity. Hence, too, it is only a forced activity and one imposed on me only through an external fortuitous need, not through an inner, essential one. My labour can appear in my object only as what it is. It cannot appear as something which by its nature it is not. Hence it appears only as the expression of my loss of self and of my powerlessness that is objective, sensuously perceptible, obvious and therefore put beyond all doubt.' 3. Alienation from other human beings: The central features of this we have seen already in OJQ - in market societies, relationships between people become instrumental, competitive - individuals act as egoistic beings who are indifferent to each other. From Notebook Comments On James Mill 'Although in your eyes your product is an instrument, a means, for taking possession of my product and thus for satisfying your need; yet in my eyes it is the purpose of our exchange. For me, you are rather the means and instrument for producing this object that is my aim, just as conversely you stand in the same relationship to my object. But 1) each of us actually behaves in the way he is regarded by the other. You have actually made yourself the means, the instrument, the producer of your own object in order to gain possession of mine; 2) your own object is for you only the sensuously perceptible covering, the hidden shape, of my object; for its production signifies and seeks to express the acquisition of my object. In fact, therefore, you have become for yourself a means, an instrument of your object, of which your desire is the servant, and you have performed menial services in order that the object shall never again do a favour to your desire. If then our mutual thraldom to the object at the beginning of the process is now seen to be in reality the relationship between master and slave, that is merely the crude and frank expression of our essential relationship.' 4. Alienation from species being. Last two forms of alienation mean that the worker is alienated from his species-being - his essential nature: communal nature; the capacity for free conscious activity is exhibited in labour. 'Estranged labour not only (1) estranges nature from man and (2) estranges man from himself, from his own function, from his vital activity; because of this, it also estranges man from his species. It turns his species-life into a means for his individual life. Firstly, it estranges species-life and individual life, and, secondly, it turns the latter, in its abstract form, into the purpose of the former, also in its abstract and estranged form. For in the first place labour, life activity, productive life itself, appears to man only as a means for the satisfaction of a need, the need to preserve physical existence. But productive life is species-life. It is life-producing life. The whole character of a species, its species-character, resides in the nature of its life activity, and free conscious activity constitutes the species-character of man. Life appears only as a means of life.' (EPM first manuscript) The worker is 'dehumanised' - alienated from those activities and relations that render the worker full human. His life lacks its distinctively human element - free-conscious activity exhibited in labour. The worker feels at home only in his 'animal functions'. 'The result is that man (the worker) feels that he is acting freely only in his animal functions -- eating, drinking, and procreating, or at most in his dwelling and adornment -- while in his human functions, he is nothing more than animal. It is true 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.' (EPM first manuscript) Because the worker is alienated from his labour, he is also from other human-beings 'In general, the proposition that man is estranged from his species-being means that each man is estranged from the others and that all are estranged from man's essence.' (EPM first manuscript) C. Some questions 1. What is wrong with alienation? Marx's answer is I think broadly Aristotelian - that humans cannot realise their specifically human powers. In the background is an objectivist account of human well-being. It is not simply that individuals feel bad. See the passage from The Holy Family above - only the worker feels the misery of alienation: ‘The propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-estrangement. But the former class feels at ease and strengthened in this self-estrangement, it recognizes estrangement as its own power and has in it the semblance of a human existence. The class of the proletariat feels annihilated in estrangement; it sees in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existence... [T]he proletariat as proletariat, poverty...is conscious of its spiritual and physical poverty, dehumanization which is conscious of its dehumanization, and therefore self-abolishing.' 2. How adequate is Marx's conception of the human essence? a. Is the focus on labour defensible? What about other possibilities such as language or the capacity for political action (see Arendt The Human Condition chapter 3)? What about reproductive labour which Marx tends to place in the 'animal' (see feminist critics of Marx for developing a masculine model of the human essence)? b. Is determining what is distinctive to humans the right way to discern the human essence? What about the characteristics we share with animals - don't these matter to human flourishing as well? 3. What are the causes of alienation and what kind of society will allow alienation to be overcome? a. Alienation from others in OJQ is presented as a matter of market relations. b. Private property and alienation in EPM: ‘Thus, through estranged, alienated labour, the worker creates the relationship of another man, who is alien to labour and stands outside it, to that labour. The relation of the worker to labour creates the relation of the capitalist – or whatever other word one chooses for the master of labour – to that labour. Private property is therefore the product, result, and necessary consequence of alienated labour, of the external relation of the worker to nature and to himself. Private property thus derives from an analysis of the concept of alienated labour – i.e., alienated man, estranged labour, estranged life, estranged man. It is true that we took the concept of alienated labour (alienated life) from political economy as a result of the movement of private property. But it is clear from an analysis of this concept that, although private property appears as the basis and cause of alienated labour, it is in fact its consequence, just as the gods were originally not the cause but the effect of the confusion in men’s minds. Later, however, this relationship becomes reciprocal.’ (EPM) For a useful discussion of this passage see: http://chrisarthur.net/dialectics-of-labour/chapter-02.html c. German Ideology: Alienation from labour in the German Ideology is presented as a consequence of a particular kind of division of labour. Consider the following from German Ideology 'And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man's own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now. The social power, i.e., the multiplied productive force, which arises through the co-operation of different individuals as it is determined by the division of labour, appears to these individuals, since their co-operation is not voluntary but has come about naturally, not as their own united power, but as an alien force existing outside them, of the origin and goal of which they are ignorant, which they thus cannot control, which on the contrary passes through a peculiar series of phases and stages independent of the will and the action of man, nay even being the prime governor of these.'