chimx
12th February 2008, 06:37
in 1844 in his essay on estrange labor, Marx wrote:
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.
When a worker sells his labor power, he objectifies himself by producing himself a commodity, and in doing so becomes alien to himself. Man alienated from himself becomes alienated from his species-being because his "human nature" has been mutated to serve his needs as a commodity within capitalism. But also, the purpose of man's species being becomes man's life as a estranged commodity.
Marx's species-being always remained kind of an ideological abstraction. It towered over production in a vague nebulous form.
This began to change a year later when Marx criticized Feuerbach in those 11 famous theses. In particular he said:
Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man [menschliche Wesen = ‘human nature’]. But the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations. Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence is hence obliged:
1. To abstract from the historical process and to define the religious sentiment regarded by itself, and to presuppose an abstract — isolated - human individual.
2. The essence therefore can by him only be regarded as ‘species’, as an inner ‘dumb’ generality which unites many individuals only in a natural way.
He continues on with this line in the German Ideology I believe, moving away from species being as an abstraction, but instead simply saying that production relationships determine our immediate nature.
My question is did Marx completely abandon the idea of man's species-being in the abstraction, or just simply put it aside as something of as being inconsequential? Could someone clarify Marx's exact points of human alienation both before the Theses on Feuerbach, and how or if they changed after, say, the German Ideology? Lastly, was there something at all significant about 1844/45 that caused Marx to shift from talking about man's species-being as an abstraction to criticizing Feuerbach it? (or is this just explain as Estranged Labor being an underdeveloped theory in 1844?)
Answers to this from the perspective of Marx would be much appreciated!
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.
When a worker sells his labor power, he objectifies himself by producing himself a commodity, and in doing so becomes alien to himself. Man alienated from himself becomes alienated from his species-being because his "human nature" has been mutated to serve his needs as a commodity within capitalism. But also, the purpose of man's species being becomes man's life as a estranged commodity.
Marx's species-being always remained kind of an ideological abstraction. It towered over production in a vague nebulous form.
This began to change a year later when Marx criticized Feuerbach in those 11 famous theses. In particular he said:
Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man [menschliche Wesen = ‘human nature’]. But the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations. Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence is hence obliged:
1. To abstract from the historical process and to define the religious sentiment regarded by itself, and to presuppose an abstract — isolated - human individual.
2. The essence therefore can by him only be regarded as ‘species’, as an inner ‘dumb’ generality which unites many individuals only in a natural way.
He continues on with this line in the German Ideology I believe, moving away from species being as an abstraction, but instead simply saying that production relationships determine our immediate nature.
My question is did Marx completely abandon the idea of man's species-being in the abstraction, or just simply put it aside as something of as being inconsequential? Could someone clarify Marx's exact points of human alienation both before the Theses on Feuerbach, and how or if they changed after, say, the German Ideology? Lastly, was there something at all significant about 1844/45 that caused Marx to shift from talking about man's species-being as an abstraction to criticizing Feuerbach it? (or is this just explain as Estranged Labor being an underdeveloped theory in 1844?)
Answers to this from the perspective of Marx would be much appreciated!