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    Lawrence Wilde (1998)

    Source:Ethical Marxism and its Radical Critics, MacMillan Press, 1998;

    Introduction, Chapter 1 and half of Chapter 2 reproduced here.

    Least of all must a philosophy be accepted as a philosophy by virtue of an

    authority or of good faith, be the authority even that of a people and the faith

    that of centuries. The proof can be provided only by expounding its essence

    (Karl Marx,Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy, 1841).

    Marx disdained ethical discourse and consistently opposed moralistic

    interventions in the social and political issues of his day, once proclaiming that

    communists do not preachmorality at all.[The German Ideology, MECW 5,

    p247] He showed no interest in abstract discussions about how and why

    individuals ought to act towards each other in a morally defensible way, and he

    argued that capitalism had either destroyed morality or turned it into a palpable

    lie. [The German Ideology, MECW 5, p73] Attempts to build support for socialist

    ideas on moral precepts were viewed as distractions from the priority of

    confronting the underlying causes of social misery in the processes of material

    production.[Communist Manifesto, Chapter 3] For the most part the followers of

    Marx refused to take the question of ethics seriously, and even when Kari

    Kautsky wrote a book on the subject he concluded that progress flowed from

    historical necessity rather than moral ideals such as freedom, equality, fraternity,justice and humanity. [Kautsky,Ethics and the Materialist Conception of

    History] In the early part of the twentieth century the German theorists of the

    Marburg School and the Austrians Max Adler and Otto Bauer attempted to

    supplement Marxs work with neo-Kantian moral theory, but such a move stands

    in flat contradiction to Marxs stated position. It has been claimed that the legacy

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    of Marxian and Marxist incoherence on morality has encouraged a crude

    consequentialism which may justify any means of action by reference to their

    necessity for the achievement of an end which is only vaguely stated. The horrors

    perpetrated by regimes claiming allegiance to Marxism, such as those of Stalin

    and Pol Pot, demand that we take this criticism seriously.

    How, then, is it possible to talk about the connection between Marxs thought

    and ethics? Let us assume that ethics and morality are interchangeable terms

    referring to the consideration of human values, of how we ought to behave

    towards one another, and of how we ought to live. The emphasis in moral

    philosophy since Kant has been on duty, of how and why autonomous individuals

    ought to conduct themselves, but prior to that the question of how we ought to

    live involved consideration of social and political life. Inhis Ethics Aristotle

    considered that securing the good of the community was something finer and

    more sublime than securing what is good for the individual. Hegel, reaching

    back to Ancient Greek philosophy, emphasised the irreducible sociality of

    freedom and the ideal of the ethical community. Marx showed no interest in

    discussing individual moral duty, but I would argue that a commitment to some

    form of ethical community is immanent in his analysis of the laws of capitalist

    production, which is replete with indignant condemnations of the suffering it

    inflicted on the working class. As Richard Norman has argued, Marxs

    philosophy challenges the conventional ethical focus on the responsible actions ofindividuals. The question then arises as to whether Marxs analysis of capitalism

    implies that its definitive social practices are morally flawed, or unjust, and this

    will be discussed in Chapter 3.

    The totality of the harrowing descriptions of working-class life contained in the

    text and footnotes ofCapital may provide the arsenal for a moral attack on

    capitalism, but Marx did not make such an attack, at least not directly. However, I

    will argue that his political economy, and indeed his entire social theory, is

    imbued with an ethic developed in the period from his espousal of communism in

    1843 to the first formulation of his theory of historical development in 1846.

    Marx operated from a conception of human essence as creative social activity,

    analysed the way in which it was alienated in the capitalist mode of production,

    and strove for the realisation of this essence in communist society. Much of the

    evidence to support this interpretation was not available to students of Marx for

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    the half-century following his death in 1883. The Comments onJames Mill and

    theEconomic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in which the alienation

    thesis is central, were first published in 1932; English translations were not

    published until 1967 and 1959 respectively. The German Ideology (1845-6) was

    published for the first time in 1932 and in English translation in 1964.

    The Grundrisse was published in a limited edition in German in the Soviet Union

    in 1939-41 and in available form in East Germany in 1953; the first complete

    English edition was published only in 1973. Even published works such as On the

    Jewish Question and The Holy Family were not readily available, so that the

    Marxist movement developed with no knowledge of Marxs significant

    philosophical texts. The body of thought known as Marxism was largely

    disseminated through the glosses of Engels, who outlived him by 13 years, and

    Kautsky, leading theoretician of the Second International, neither of whom sharedMarxs philosophical subtlety.

    Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the philosophy of human

    essence and its alienation, with its ethical connotations, remained hidden. It is to

    Lenins credit that he began to understand the philosophical significance of the

    passages on commodity fetishism in Capital by studying

    HegelsLogic. [LeninsPhilosophical Notebooks, p. 180] Georgy Lukcs,

    inHistory and Class Consciousness (1923), delivered a superb Hegelian reading

    of Marxs thought, drawing out the centrality of the alienation thesis, withoutseeing the unpublished early writings. In the same year Karl Korsch

    publishedMarxism and Philosophy, which also highlighted the Hegelian

    influence on Marxs work, and, like Lukcss book, opened up the argument that

    Engels had failed to grasp Marxs dialectical method. These works caused quite a

    stir, and the reaction of the Soviet leadership provided an early taste of how

    ideological heresy was to be quelled in the world communist movement.

    Zinoviev, President of the Communist International, warned delegates to the 1924

    World Congress that if we get a few more of these professors spinning out their

    theories, we shall be lost, concluding with chilling finality that we cannot

    tolerate such theoretical revisionism of this kind in our Communist

    International. It was the Papacy against Galileo 300 years on. Lukcs was

    forced to retract his position and submit to party discipline, and Korsch was

    expelled from the German Communist Party in 1926.

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    The insights of Lukcs and Korsch were developed by the writers of the

    Frankfurt School, initially by Herbert Marcuse, who, in 1930, defended History

    and Class Consciousness for its essential and inestimable meaning for the

    development of Marxism and also praised its polemic with Engels. As we shall

    see later, Marcuse was one of the first to recognise the significance of Marxs

    early writings when they became available, and from this period it is possible to

    discern a tradition within Marxism which is variously known as humanist

    Marxism or Marxist humanism. Perry Anderson and J. G. Merquior have

    subsumed this humanist strain under the broader term Western Marxism, but

    this taxonomy is unsatisfactory, encompassing as it does both the structuralism of

    Louis Althusser and the humanism he set out to combat. Marxist humanism

    maintains the centrality of the alienation thesis in Marxs social theory, and its

    overriding concern is to develop an understanding of the changing nature ofideological domination and the prospects for its contestation. This is still a very

    broad category, including theorists who resolutely avoided party political

    affiliation, such as the Frankfurt School and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as those

    who managed to work with great difficulties within communist parties, such as

    Antonio Gramsci, Ernst Bloch and Henri Lefebvre. The process of de-

    Stalinisation triggered by Khrushchev in 1956 provided an opening in some of the

    East European communist states for the development of humanist Marxism.

    These included notable contributions from Adam Schaff and Leszek Kolakowski

    in Poland, Karel Kosik in Czechoslovakia, and the students of Lukcs in Hungary

    collectively known as the Budapest School. In Yugoslavia, independent of

    Soviet domination, the theorists of the Praxis Group developed ideas concerning

    the overcoming of alienation and statism, and their annual conference on the

    island of Korcula (1963-75) provided an international focus for humanist

    Marxism. In 1965 Erich Fromm brought together 35 contributions from all over

    the world, both Marxist and non-Marxist, in Socialist Humanism, which reflected

    the strength of the appeal of the humanist interpretation of Marx.

    In the 1960s a flood of commentaries stressing the continuity of the alienation

    thesis in Marxs work made a significant impact on social science in Western

    universities. However, there was a reaction against this interpretation in the

    following decade, led in the West by Althusser and his followers, who recast

    Marx as a positive scientist and relegated the humanist and Hegelian elements in

    his work to the inferior status of ideology. In the East the shock of the

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    Czechoslovak attempt to establish socialism with a human face in 1968

    reverberated through the Soviet system. The authorities clamped down on the

    humanist theorists, expelling them from universities and banning their works;

    socialists advocating democracy could not be tolerated in actually existing

    socialism. In Yugoslavia, the relative tolerance extended towards the Praxis

    Group was curtailed as their advocacy of wider democracy was seen as a threat

    by the League of Communists.

    A renewal of academic interest in the specifically ethical dimension of Marxs

    thought came about in the 1980s, inspired in many cases by a concern to rescue

    Marx from the Althusserian interpretation. Writers such as George Brenkert,

    Allen Buchantin, Norman Geras, Steven Lukes, Kai Nielsen, Rodney Peffer and

    Philip Kain began to probe the normative elements of his work. A feature of this

    literature has been the consideration of Marxs philosophical conception of what

    it is to be human, and its implications for how we ought to live. It had been

    widely accepted in orthodox Marxism that human nature altered as material

    conditions changed, but now it was argued that Marx, as well as appreciating the

    historical modification of human nature, also conceived of human nature in

    general, i.e. that which made us essentially human. Geras comments that even

    those writers who had been anxious to endorse the enduring importance of the

    alienation thesis in Marxs social theory were reluctant to grasp the nettle and

    acknowledge that Marx had a conception of human nature in general (or humanessence) from which we were alienated. It is this idea of human essence which I

    take to be central to what I term ethical Marxism. There are strong links here

    with Aristotles philosophy, in which essenceoughtto be fully realised in

    existence. For Aristotle, man is essentially rational, and happiness,

    oreudaemonia, is the goal of rational individuals acting virtuously. It is the duty

    of the statesman to create the conditions in which eudaemonia can be realised.

    For Marx, our essence is our capacity for social creativity, and this can be realised

    only by overcoming the alienation inherent in private property, replacing it with a

    communist society in which all are free and equal. The emancipation of humanity

    was to be brought about through the agency of the revolutionary working class.

    Ethical Marxism, then, sees capitalism as the final obstacle to human freedom,

    draws out those normative elements in Marxs thought which he left implicit, and

    extends them to widen our understanding of exploitation and oppression in late

    capitalism. As a tradition it counts only a few fully paid-up membersI would

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    specify Ernst Bloch, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Henri Lefebvre, and

    Mihailo Markovic but I will argue that it holds a rich potential for the

    development of emancipatory theory in the coming century.

    In his Introduction toNegative Dialectics Theodor Adorno comments thatdespite Marxs judgement that the philosophers had merely interpreted the world,

    philosophy lives on because the moment to realise it was missed. Similarly the

    question of ethics lives on because the class struggle has not produced the good

    society. The revolutionary class consciousness which Marx anticipated failed to

    emerge with the further development of capitalism. Exploitation and oppression

    persist, but few can see an available resolution. Under these circumstances,

    Marxs objections to criticising capitalist society in moral terms and his reticence

    on the conditions in which true human freedom could flourish may be called into

    question.

    What sort of ethics is implied by ethical Marxism? As mentioned above, ethics

    in this context has more to do with the Ancient Greek conception of justice as the

    virtue of society as a whole than the liberal focus on the actions of autonomous

    individuals without reference to the structures within which they operate. It

    directs us to look beyond the approaches to moral philosophy personified by

    Hume and Kant which MacIntyre has criticised as the failed Enlightenment

    project of justifying morality. Ethical Marxism takes seriously the question ofhow alienation can be overcome so that the human essence of creative social

    activity can be enjoyed by all citizens. Only when the immense majority gain

    control over social processes which hitherto confronted them as irresistible and

    inevitable powers will the prehistory of human society give way to truly human

    history. Brenkert argues that Marxs work has an ethic of freedom and Lukes

    concludes that he adopts a morality of emancipation, and while I am sympathetic

    to these broad characterisations it is as well to keep in mind Marxs warning not

    to be deluded by the abstract word Freedom. [Speech on the Question of Free

    Trade] There is a need to examine carefully why Marx considered that human

    freedom could not be achieved under capitalism, and how he conceived that it

    could be realised in communist society.

    However, at this early stage a preliminary comment on the implications of

    Marxs view of human freedom needs to be made. His vision is meaningful only

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    if we assume an advanced form of radical democracy capable of respecting

    differences and producing agreements through transparent and popular

    procedures. Radical democratic practices are the conditio sine qua non for human

    emancipation as envisaged by Marx. As such, ethical Marxism necessarily

    involves an unambiguous rejection of the anti-democratic practices carried out by

    the world communist movement since the Russian Revolution. There is, of

    course, nothing new in absolving Marx from responsibility for the practices of

    Soviet Marxism, but as some commentators regard this as a dubious tactic I feel it

    necessary to insist that democracy was not some sort of added extra for Marx.

    In theManifesto of the Communist Party Marx and Engels envisaged a socialist

    revolution conducted by the immense majority in the interest of the immense

    majority, and they enjoined the working class to win the battle for democracy.

    Marxist movements everywhere were at the forefront of struggles to win fullpolitical democracy before the Russian Revolution, and the most popular title of

    their parties, Social Democracy, gave a clear indication that they aspired to

    extend democracy to the economic and social spheres. It was on this

    understanding that Kautsky castigated Lenin after the Revolution, and in view of

    the extirpation of democracy in the communist world it is essential to reiterate the

    magnitude of Bolshevisms departure from the Marxian principle of the necessity

    of the self-emancipation of the working people. Consider two statements about

    Marxs endeavour from two non-Marxist scholars, Eugene Kamenka and Steven

    Lukes. Kamenka concludes that Marxs belief in the rational, free and

    completely cooperative society of the human spirit ... was the foundation and

    driving force of his intellectual and political development. Lukes argues that

    what is clear is that the ideal society to which Marx expectantly looked forward

    would be one in which, under conditions of abundance, human beings can

    achieve self-realisation in a new, transparent form of social unity, in which

    nature, both physical and social, comes under their control. If these conclusions

    are correct, as I take them to be, then Marxs project has to be considered on its

    merits rather than as the necessary source of the totalitarianism practised in hisname.

    The next three chapters deal with the Ethical Marxism referred to in the title.

    The focus of Chapter 2 is Marxs conception of human essence and its alienation

    in the capitalist mode of production. The argument as to whether his humanist

    philosophy was discarded by 1846 or remained an implicit part of his theory of

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    history and later his theory of exploitation is by now a very old one. However, it

    is worth revisiting with a sharper focus on the question of whether Marxs early

    conception of human essence was retained, at least implicitly, in his later work.

    Chapter 3 examines the issues raised by Marxs disdain for moral argument, and

    in particular his refusal to countenance a socialist conception of justice. I will

    argue that the key to understanding Marxs ethical position is to be found in his

    persistent attachment to the philosophy and culture of Ancient Greece, and that

    this helps to throw light on his ideas of justice and freedom and his vision of

    communist society.

    Chapter 4 concentrates on the contributions of Marcuse and Fromm, whose

    work was derided by orthodox Marxist-Leninists on the grounds that they

    disregarded the idea of class struggle. I will argue that they extended Marxian

    concepts in an original and searching way and helped to provide theoretical

    support for new forms of appositional consciousness. Although their

    contributions to political theory may be regarded as either tentative or utopian,

    they have the merit of reaching out to emerging emancipatory movements while

    retaining the Marxian commitment to a classless society free from alienation.

    The second part of the book deals mainly with the Radical Critics aspect of

    the title, covering some recent criticisms which, while acknowledging that Marx

    was committed to a normative conception of human essence, deem it deficient asa basis for contemporary emancipatory politics. Chapter 5 deals with two recent

    philosophical criticisms of Marxs production-oriented view of human nature,

    from Jurgen Habermas and Andr Gorz. For Habermas, Marxs concentration on

    the paradigm of production blinds him to the importance of other factors which

    contribute to the development of human rationality, factors which can be analysed

    properly only within a discrete paradigm of communication. Habermas recognises

    the ethical thrust of Mar-xs humanism, but considers it inadequate for explaining

    how and why the cause of human freedom can be advanced. Gorz also recognises

    that Marxs work is infused with a normative conception of human nature, but for

    him it carries authoritarian implications. Both Habermas and Gorz consider that

    the system or megamachine of contemporary capitalist society is an

    anonymous power which is beyond the sort of control which Marx envisaged in

    his ethic of reappropriating the human essence. I will argue that their

    abandonment of the Marxian dialectic is done on very shaky grounds, and

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    although their political conclusions are quite different, in neither case do we find

    a more insightful understanding of the potential for emancipation than that

    available in the ethical Marxist perspective.

    Chapter 6 examines important feminist criticisms of Marxs humanism. AlisonJaguar and Elizabeth Mise have both identified the importance of production for

    Marx in his normative conception of human essence, but they argue that this

    systematically downgrades women, whose own production of human beings is

    implicitly consigned to the sphere of the natural rather than the distinctively

    human. In failing to look at the reproduction of people while analysing the

    reproduction of capital, Marx overlooks the specific place of women in the

    capitalist mode of production and inadvertently smuggles in a male-centred view

    of human emancipation. I will argue that it is possible to answer these criticisms

    without disowning Marxs theoretical framework, provided that the idea of

    human emancipation is elucidated in such a way as to recognise the importance of

    difference. Chapter 7 explores objections from political ecology to Marxs

    alleged anthropocentric treatment of non-human nature in general and other

    animals in particular. Particular attention will be paid to the arguments of British

    philosopher Teed Renton, who has sought to transcend the apparently

    unbridgeable divide between the anthropocentricism imputed to Marx and the

    ecocentrist standpoint of political ecology. I am sympathetic towards Bentons

    conclusions, but I think that his attempt to reconstruct Marxs humanism to makeit more sensitive to the concerns of political ecology accepts too readily the

    ecological criticisms of Marxs work. In particular I will defend Marxs view of

    the human-animal distinction and argue that the Dialectic of Enlightenment

    thesis at the heart of political ecology was present in nuce in Marxs work.

    The conclusion will attempt three things. First, to summarise the ethical

    content of Marxs thought, to question the reasons for his own rejection of,

    ethical discourse, and to consider how and why his ethic has been developed in

    ethical Marxism. Second, to locate ethical Marxism in the history of ethical

    theory; here I will use Alasdair MacIntyresAfter Virtue as a point of reference.

    Finally, in keeping with the spirit of Marxs project, I will proceed to link theory

    with practice. What implications does the ethical Marxist standpoint carry for

    emancipatory politics? In an era of capitalist triumphalism, does it make any

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    sense to keep alive the vision of a global society free from exploitation and

    oppression?

    Walking upright, this distinguishes men from animals, and it cannot yet be

    done. It exists only as a wish, the wish to live without exploitation and masters

    (Ernst Bloch).

    Alienation was the dominant motif of Marxs first foray into the political

    economy of capitalism in 1844, and he specifies three aspects. Workers are

    alienated from the product of their labour, from the process of production, from

    their species being or essential nature, and, as a consequence of these three

    aspects, humans are alienated from one another. Alienation from species beingcarries ethical connotations, for it assumes some notion of human essence, asserts

    a rupture from it, and suggests that we oughtto be at one with our essence. What

    flows from this is a rhetoric denouncing the dehumanisation of the worker, and a

    commitment to communism as the struggle for the reconciliation of existence

    with essence. I take this to be the ethical foundation for his entire social theory.

    Despite the fact that he eschewed moral argument, his work is infused with a

    normative strain, and his goal of communist society envisions the realisation of

    human freedom as the flowering of human cooperative potential. This chapter

    will examine the origins and early development of this conception of human

    essence and will attempt to show how it became embedded in his theories of

    historical development and exploitation.

    THE YOUNG MARX AND HUMAN ESSENCE

    Filling in confessional questionnaires about personal likes and dislikes was a

    popular pastime in middle-class Victorian England, and Marxs answers give us

    an amusing insight into his character. For instance, he cites as his favourite

    maxim Nihil humani a me alienumputo(I believe that nothing human is alien to

    me), as his favourite motto De omnibus dubitandum(doubt everything), as his

    favourite poets Aeschylus, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe, and as his favourite

    prose writers Diderot, Lessing, Hegel and Balzac. He rated ,servility his most

    hated vice. These responses present almost an ideal-type of a nineteenth-century

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    classically-educated humanist, and in this section I will look at how this

    humanism was developed in his writings in the period 1843-45.

    Marx gave a succinct account of his intellectual development in the famous

    1859 Preface toA Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in which headmits that his university studies in philosophy and history left him at a

    disadvantage when it came to tackling social issues in his first paid employment

    as editor of theRheinischeZeitung in 1842-43. Using the collapse of the

    newspaper as an opportunity to try to remedy the deficiencies in his knowledge,

    he returned to the study of Hegel, whose philosophy he had first got to grips with

    some six years earlier.[Letter to his Father, 1937] This time he was concerned

    with the justification of the Prussian political system which had been causing him

    so many problems. He wroteA Contribution to theCritique of Hegels

    Philosophy of Right, of which only the Introduction was published in his lifetime.

    This critical re-examination caused him to conclude that legal relations or

    political forms could be properly understood neither within their own terms nor in

    terms of the general development of ideas. The origins of law and politics had to

    be sought in civil society, the totality of the material conditions of life, and the

    anatomy of this civil society was to be uncovered by political economy.[A

    Contribution o the Critique of Political Economy, Part 1] This signalled the

    beginning of his lifetime study of capitalism, the first fruits of which were the

    unpublished Paris manuscripts of 1844, including the Comments onJamesMill and theEconomic and Philosophic Manuscripts. Within two years, with the

    help of Engels, Marx had arrived at the overall theory of historical development

    which later became known as historical materialism. The two friends wrote up

    their attempt to settle accounts with our former philosophic conscience during

    1845-46, but the manuscript ofThe German Ideology was rejected by a publisher

    and they were obliged to settle for the rewards of its chief purpose, self-

    clarification.[ibid.]

    It is evident from Marxs own account that profound changes in his outlook

    occurred around 1845, and arguments have raged as to whether the Marx of 1846

    retained or rejected some or all of the humanist positions adopted in the preceding

    years. This issue will be addressed later in the chapter, but for now let us examine

    how Marx developed his philosophical conception of human essence and its

    alienation in the early works. By the end of, 1843 he had expressed his

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    commitment to communism and even nominated the social class which would

    lead the way to human emancipation. In the Introduction to his critique of

    HegelsPhilosophy of Right he identified the proletariat as the class with the

    unique capacity to liberate the whole of society through the act of liberating itself.

    In modern society it represented the complete loss of man, and it could liberate

    itself only through the complete re-winning of man.[ibid.]What was this man

    who had been lost and needed to be re-won? At this moment, Marxs humanism

    was heavily in the debt of Ludwig Feuerbach, who had gained renown on the

    strength of his critique of religion and Hegels idealism and whose work had such

    an impact in radical circles in Germany in the early 1840s that Engels later

    commented that we were all Feuerbachians for a moment.[Ludwig Feuerbach

    & the End of Classical German Philosophy]We have on record Marxs own

    appreciation of Feuerbach in two letters, written in October 1843 and August1844. The 1844 letter is effusive in its praise, but it also reveals that Marx, in

    describing Feuerbachs work as a philosophical basis for socialism, was running

    far ahead of the hero of the hour. it took Feuerbach a further 27 years before he

    declared for socialism.

    Feuerbach argued that the subject-object relationship in Hegels idealism

    needed to be inverted; real human beings were the authors of the world, not, as

    Hegel argued, the self-movement of Reason. In The Essence of

    Christianity Feuerbach presented the personality of God as the projectedpersonality of man, an ideological construction by humanity which arose from a

    deep sense of what we yearned to be. This was an inversion of Hegelian

    speculative philosophy in which human beings were portrayed as acting out the

    historical progress of Spirit. The appeal to take responsibility for human

    authorship of the social world met with Marxs enthusiastic approval, and he

    shared the fashion for focusing on religion as the prime example of alienated

    existence. Marx wrote that religion was the fantastic realisation of the human

    essence because the human essence has no true reality, and as long as freedom

    was denied, religion would persist as the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart

    of a heartless world . . . the opium of the people. [Introduction to Critique of

    Hegels Philosophy of Right] Marx wanted to discover the material basis on

    which human emancipation could be achieved. Feuerbachs humanism appeared

    to offer an exciting breakthrough, and indeed Marxs favourite maxim seems to

    have been lifted from FeuerbachsPrinciples of the Philosophy of the Future

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    Homo sum, humani nihil ame alienum puto.Feuerbachs humanism was social,

    at least rhetorically, for he argued that the essence of man is contained only in

    the community and unity of man with man.[ibid.] Marx agreed that human

    nature was the true community of men, but he commented that workers lived in

    disastrous isolation from this essential nature.[Marginal Notes on th article by

    a Prussian]Marxs enthusiasm for Feuerbach waned when he realised that the

    latter was unwilling to advance beyond the abstract restoration of humanity to its

    status as subject. Feuerbach left it to time to mediate the contradictions of a

    deeply alienated world, rather than tackling the practical question ofhow the

    world could be changed so that humanity could express its essential freedom. The

    end of Marxs Feuerbachian phase is signalled in 1845 by the Theses on

    Feuerbach, in which he parodies the closing aphorisms of the Philosophy of

    theFuture.

    Feuerbachs final aphorism complains that attempts to reformphilosophy have changed its form but not its substance, and he calls for a new

    philosophy to serve the needs of mankind which is different in essence. Marx

    famously complains that the philosophers have only interpreted the world in

    various ways, and calls for us to change it. [Theses on Feuerbach]

    At this point we need to clarify what Marx meant by the discourse of alienation

    which permeates his texts of the 1843-45 period. The terms alienation

    (Entusserung) and estrangement(Entfremdung) may be used interchangeably

    as both have descriptive and normative meanings. That is to say they involvedescription of a process of objectification or separation and also carry the

    implication that the loss of control experienced by workers wrongly deprives

    them of something. In its most emotive expression, used sparingly, Marx refers to

    the dehumanisation of the worker, with the implication that this system of

    production denies them something which is their due as human beings. Although

    the boldness of Feuerbachs criticism of Hegel excited Marx, the richer

    philosophy of Hegel played a more significant role in the development of his own

    theory of alienation. In theEconomic and PhilosophicManuscripts he is full of

    appreciation for Hegels achievement inthe Phenomenology of grasping the self-

    creation of man as a process, involving alienation and its transcendence through

    labour, with labour being the essence of man. However, Marx objects that the

    only labour which Hegel knew was abstractly mental labour leading to a purely

    philosophical self-confirmation. For Marx, the result was a resolution of

    alienation in thought only, so that its supersession was, in reality, a confirmation

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    of the alienation. Marxs criticism turns on the formal and abstract manner of

    Hegels philosophy, but if it is possible to set that to one side what we have is a

    ringing endorsement of the old master. He enthused that in its depiction of

    alienation the Hegelian dialectic contained, albeit in a concealed and mystifying

    way, all the elements of criticism, already prepared and elaborated in a manner

    rising far above the Hegelian standpoint.

    The task Marx now set himself was to demonstrate the origins of the

    antagonistic nature of modern society in the alienation inherent in the process of

    production. He had little first-hand experience of the life of workers, although we

    know that he attended meetings of French and German workers during his stay in

    Paris in 1844. It is at this juncture that Engels enters the picture. Although he had

    first met Marx in 1842, their friendship did not begin until their second meeting

    in Paris in the summer of 1844. Marx coedited the Deutsch-Franzsische

    jahrbcher, a journal which appeared only once, in February 1844, and he was

    strongly impressed by two contributions of Engels, Outlines of a Critique of

    Political Economy and a review ofCarlyles Past and Present. The work on

    political economy comprised a critique of the concepts used by the leading

    bourgeois theorists of the day in order to expose the extremes of wealth and

    poverty and the instability endemic in a system of production which he

    condemned as inhuman and immoral. The review of Carlyle was significant

    because it revealed some of the appalling social conditions which accompaniedthe development of factory production in Britain. Engels extended this empirical

    work in his masterpiece, The Condition of the Working-Class inEngland, written

    in 1844-45, which introduced Marx to many of the official sources that he used

    later inCapital. Engels gave Marx a glimpse of the grim reality of the emerging

    system, and Marx theorised its destructive consequences for the working class.

    Marx had already rejected Hegels vindication of the Prussian state as a model

    for an ethical community. He agreed that human freedom could be realised only

    in a harmonious society, but he ruled out the idea that a society which preserved

    distinctions of social class could be made compatible with the pursuit of human

    freedom. In order to argue this point, and highlight the special role of the working

    class as the ultimate oppressed class, Marx used the concepts and forms of

    argument familiar to him and to the German intellectual milieu of which he was a

    part. In Chapter 3 I shall argue that Marx was heavily influenced by the culture of

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    Greek antiquity, but for now let us note its significance for German humanism as

    a whole, as Horst Mewes has done:

    in the uniquely German humanist conception of the universal education of

    mankind, Greek antiquity serves as more than an inspiration for serenity. The

    Greeks particularly the Athenians were instead the discoverers of the

    universal human essence, without having the practical means to realise that

    essence on a truly universal basis.

    Two important aspects of this Greek heritage were the idea of the ethical

    community and the definition of what it was that distinguished us from other

    animals and therefore constituted our essence.

    The Greeks held that humans were essentially social beings, and that only in

    the process of living together in harmony could their human essence beexpressed. Marx expresses this at length in theEconomic and Philosophical

    Manuscripts, reiterating it in the Grundrisse and the first volume ofCapital by

    reference to Aristotles idea of man as azoon politikon (political or social

    animal). The commitment to the creation of a harmonious community was an

    ethical one because only through this could the human essence be fulfilled, and

    this was the only way in which people could achieve goodness. In Greek

    thought, this idea of goodness carried both functional and ethical meanings,

    involving practical accomplishment as well as a good disposition.

    The second aspect of Greek thought which was accepted by both Feuerbach

    and Marx was establishing the human essence by asking what it was that

    distinguished us from other animals. Aristotle did -this, asserting that it was

    peculiar to man to be able to perceive good and evil, and although perfected man

    was the best of animals, when isolated from law and justice he is the worst of

    all. Feuerbach suggested that the difference lay not simply in man being a

    thinker, but rather that he is not a particular being, like the animals, but a

    universal being, not limited and restricted but unlimited and free. The sensesof animals are often more developed, he argued, but the senses of humans are not

    in bondage to needs, and indeed humans even possessed the ability to make the

    senses the subject of scientific inquiry. In theManuscripts Marx agrees with

    Feuerbach that we are universal beings in comparison with other animals, but he

    goes further in focusing on production, the ability which people have to create

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    products for each other in a consciously planned way, not necessarily dictated by

    immediate physical need:

    In creating a world of objects by his practical activity, in his work upon

    inorganic nature, man proves himself a conscious species being ... animals also

    produce ... but an animal only produces what it immediately needs for itself or

    its young. It produces one-sidedly, whilst man produces universally. [Estranged

    Labour]

    Truly human production involves creating with others and for others, in the

    process demonstrating our volition. Indeed, according to Marx we produce freely

    only when the production is not demanded by our survival needs, as when

    creating objects in accordance with the laws of beauty.[Estranged Labour] For

    Marx, then, we would be truly free only if we undertook social production which

    was not necessitated by physical want brought on by hunger, cold, fear and such

    like. Other animals do not have this capacity and their needs are therefore

    different, but humans, if denied their quintessential capacity by the system of

    production, are deprived of their freedom.

    We shall return to the problems raised by Marxs distinction between humans

    and other animals in Chapter 7, but for now let us simply note what he is

    attempting to say about what makes us specifically human. Conscious- social life

    activity is what defines our species, but alienated labour transforms our human

    essence into a mere means to our existence. Work is experienced as deadening

    compulsion, with the worker feeling free only in functions such as eating,

    drinking and making love, which, taken abstractly, are animal

    functions. [Estranged Labour] The fact that these functions are shared with

    animals does not mean that they are not also human needs which are being met,

    but Marx is appalled by the fact that our quintessential capacity of social

    creativity offers no sense of freedom to the worker. Marx talks about the workers

    losing their freedom in the service of greed and of being depressed spiritually

    and physically to the condition of a machine.[Wages of Labour] He uses thesimile of mans reduction to a machine three times in as many pages in

    theManuscripts, and it recurs in theManifesto of the Communist Party and the

    first volume ofCapital. [p. 799] This perversion of human potential is achieved

    through the medium of money, which, raised to omnipotence, accomplishes the

    confounding and confusing of all natural human qualities and turns the world

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    upside-down. It is not simply the workers who are alienated in the despotism of

    the money economy, it is the entire society.

    The irony is that the same system of production which denies human freedom

    to all those dependent on it simultaneously exhibits the immense capacity ofhuman creativity. Marx conceives the development of industry in dialectical

    terms, as presenting both the open book of mans essential powers and the

    simultaneous perversion of that essence through alienation. The development of

    technology opens the way for human emancipation by offering the prospect of

    material abundance, but its immediate effect is the furthering of the

    dehumanisation of man. The achievements of modern production were testament

    to human creative capability and provided the material possibility for a life

    without scarcity, but for those who lived by the sale of their labour power there

    was little or no experience of creativity or freedom.

    Marx always remained cautious about specifying precisely how human

    freedom would be expressed if capitalism were replaced by communist society.

    He had written to Ruge that they had no business in constructing the future and

    settling everything for all times.[Marx to Ruge, September 1843] However, he

    gives some pointers in his early writings. In the passages concluding

    the Comments on James Mill, after lamenting that under capitalism human

    communication was conducted through the estranged language of materialvalues, he goes on to consider what it would look like if we carried out

    production as human beings, that is, if we produced things for use rather than for

    profit. The products would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our

    essential nature, a reciprocal relationship in which work would be a free

    manifestation of life. In theManuscripts he described the abolition of private

    property as the complete emancipation of all human senses and qualities. This

    somewhat romantic view of how production might be experienced may have been

    influenced by Charles Fourier and his utopian vision oftravail attractif(attractive

    work). Marx was familiar with his work and followed Fourier in deeming the

    relationship between men and women to be the supreme test of humanitys whole

    level of development. in modern society, wrote Marx, the position of women as

    the spoil and handmaid of communal lust reflected the infinite degradation of

    human existence. Only when this relationship became natural and human

    could man claim to be a social being. Marx then portrays communism as the real

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    appropriation of the human essence by and for man ... the complete return of man

    to himself as a social being.[Private Property and Communism] Later in

    theManuscripts he introduces a stages idea of emancipatory development, with

    communism being the first act the negation of the negation leading to

    socialism, the ultimate goal of human development. [Private Property and

    Communism]

    Many of the themes established in theManuscripts saw the light of day with

    the publication in 1845 ofThe Holy Family, the first product of the Marx-Engels

    collaboration. Its main purpose was to criticise the and abstractions of their

    former associates in the Young Hegelians, now denounced as the most dangerous

    enemy of real humanism in Germany.[Foreword to The Holy Family] The

    alienation theme is restated, and here it is acknowledged that the propertied class

    as well as the proletariat suffer from the same alienation. However, whereas the

    former feel strengthened and at ease with this alienation, the inhuman condition

    of the workers is presented as a contradiction between its human nature and its

    condition of life, which is the outright, resolute and comprehensive negation of

    that nature.[The Holy Family, Chapter IV] Once again the plight of the

    proletariat is described as the loss of humanity, recoverable only by revolution

    which will resolve the inhuman conditions of life of the entire society. Marx goes

    further and claims that a large part of the French and German working class has

    already developed a consciousness of its historic emancipatory task. Marx alsorestates his view that the general position of women in society was inhuman,

    this time explicitly endorsing Fouriers position.[The Holy Family, Chapter

    VIII]In The Holy Family Marx also develops his criticism of the illusory nature

    of freedom in civil society. It appears to offer the greatest freedom and

    independence to the individual, no longer curbed by common bonds, but actually

    this uncontrolled surrender to the market produced a new form of fully

    developed slavery and inhumanity.[The Holy Family, Chapter VI] This process

    of unmasking was to become central to his critique of political economy, in which

    he strove to penetrate the surface appearance of the exchange of equivalents in

    capitalism in order to expose its inexorable and socially destructive logic.

    HUMANISM IN MARXs CONCEPTION OF HISTORY

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    I will now argue that Marxs conception of human essence and its alienation

    becomes implicit in his social theory. By his social theory I refer to his theory of

    historical development (historical materialism) and his theory of exploitation (the

    theory of surplus value). Two issues are of special interest when considering the

    fate of the concept of human essence. The first is the interrelation of Marxs sixth

    thesis of the Theses on Feuerbach (1845), the statement most frequently cited by

    those who argue that Marx dropped the concept, an interpretation which has been

    meticulously rebutted by Geras inMarx and Human Nature. The second issue is

    raised by Philip Kain, who argues for a strong ethical content to Marxs work,

    one which was developed early in his work and rediscovered later. According to

    Kain, Marx specifically rejected the concept of essence and the idea of alienation

    from species-being in The GermanIdeology. This interpretation contrasts starkly

    with those of Rodney Peffer and Gary Browning, both of whom argue that thework is rich with Marxs moral views.

    The sixth of MarxsTheses on Feuerbach asserts that the essence of man is no

    abstraction inherent in each single individual, but that in its reality it is the

    ensemble of the social relations. It goes on to chide Feuerbach for abstracting his

    view of human essence from the historical process, thereby presupposing an

    abstract, isolated individual. Finally, he suggests that Feuerbachs view of

    essence reduces it to an abstract notion of species as some sort of inner, mute,

    general character which unites the many individuals in a natural way. In Marxsjudgement, Feuerbachs conception of man is ahistorical and, as a consequence

    and despite his own claims, asocial. As such Marx regarded it as inadequate to the

    task of constructing a theoretical framework for understanding the development

    of human existence and the possibility of its emancipation. in fact the sixth thesis

    supports the interpretation that Marx maintained his view of the human essence of

    creative social activity, for it ismanifested in actually existing society (the

    ensemble of social relations'), albeit in an upside-down way. The fact that this

    essence is in practice denied to the mass of individuals in modern society -

    prompts Marx to call for the establishment of human society, or associates

    humanity in the tenth thesis, and the injunction to change the world in the

    eleventh. With Feuerbach, the human essence is reduced to the ideal of a shared

    common consciousness, whereas for Marx it has to be expressed in common

    practice which can transform itself into cooperative control of the world. The idea

    of the universal being means that we alone have a knowledge of our history, and

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    although it is evident that Feuerbach wanted humans to claim control over that

    history, his theory is lacking when it comes to understanding historical

    development. The Theses constitute a protest against the limitations of

    Feuerbachs contemplative materialism, but there are no grounds to infer from

    this that Marx rejected the idea of human essenceper se.

    The Theses on Feuerbach represent a decisive move away from the

    philosophical discourse which Marx had been steeped in since his schooldays.

    The criticisms which he had levelled against Hegels idealist method were now to

    be extended to the whole practice of philosophy as an independent branch of

    knowledge. Marxs statement inThe German Ideology that philosophy and the

    study of the actual world have the same relation to one another as onanism and

    sexual love[The German Ideology, Ch. 3.6.C] typified his impatience with his

    erstwhile intellectual milieu. From now on he was to display irritation with modes

    of thought which did not confront the material causes of social reality. His tone is

    now resolutely empirical, but not empiricist the facts do not talk for

    themselves.

    Part one ofThe German Ideology sets out a theory of historical development

    which was to become the theoretical framework of Marxs studies. When setting

    out the premises for this theory he reverts to the question of what distinguishes

    humans from other animals:

    Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or

    anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from

    animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step

    which is conditioned by their physical organisation. [The German Ideology]

    Historical development is then posited as the progression of different ways of

    reproducing material life; at this stage he identified tribal, ancient-communal, and

    feudal epochs of production. In each epoch ideas of all sorts, including ideas

    about politics and morality, were conditioned by the development of theirproductive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these.[The German

    Ideology] In this view, Morality, religion, metaphysics, and all the rest of

    ideology as well as forms of consciousness corresponding to these, thus no longer

    retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but

    men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter,

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    along with this their actual world, also their thinking and the products of their

    thinking. It is not consciousness that determines life, but life that determines

    consciousness. [The German Ideology]

    Decisive historical change occurs not because men have great inspirations, butbecause the forces of production come into contradiction with the forms of

    intercourse (in the 1859 Preface this is changed to relations of production').[The

    German Ideology]

    In capitalism the particular interest is cleaved from the common interest, the

    socialisation which takes place in production is not undertaken voluntarily, and

    alienation prevails. Marx reiterates his conviction that only under communism

    can alienation be overcome, but when using the word (Entfremdung) he displays

    his recently acquired aversion to philosophical discourse by noting ironically that

    he is using a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers. Marx

    argued that labour in capitalism was devoid of all self activity, but that in

    communist society self activity coincides with material life, leading to the

    development of individuals into complete individuals and the casting-off of all

    natural limitations. The linguistic shift sees human essence relegated and self

    activity preferred, which is similar to the conscious life activity which appeared

    in theManuscripts. The idea of its appropriation is replaced by the commitment

    to communism as a practical political project. The language is altered, but thecore concepts of alienation and its supersession remain; the philosophical

    premises have been subsumed into his social theory.

    Let us turn to Kains claim that inThe German Ideology Marx rejected the

    concept of essence as well as the idea of species being and our alienation from it.

    Although he provides many citations in support of this position, they all come

    down to instances of Marx criticising what he considered to be the sloppy

    thinking of Feuerbach, Stirner and Karl Grun, without involving a retraction of

    the conception of human essence set down in 1844. For example, whendiscussing Feuerbach, Marx was clearly annoyed by his statement that the being

    of a thing or man is at the same time its or his essence. For Marx, this implied

    that if millions of workers are angry with their living conditions and, therefore,

    their being does not in the least correspond to their essence, then they are

    obliged to quietly accept their misfortune. In Marxs view, the workers or

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    communists think quite differently and will prove this in time, when they bring

    their being into harmony with their essence in a practical way, by means of

    revolution. The substance of Marxs point is that merely recognising that the

    social world is a human creation offered little hope for those who were forced to

    lead inhuman lives. It pointed to the deficiency of Feuerbachs view of human

    essence as universal being with its emphasis on the consciousness of humans

    rather than their practice. The phrasing and use of inverted commas in Marxs

    retort reveal his conviction that the whole language of being and essence was

    inappropriate for exposing the causes of distress and the possibility of its

    resolution.

    But it also affirms his adherence to his earlier position in which communism

    was conceived as a struggle for the appropriation of the human essence. The

    philosophical position becomes immanent to the theory of revolutionary practice,

    or praxis.

    Part three ofThe German Ideology comprises the bulk of the entire manuscript

    and is devoted to a detailed criticism of Max StirnersThe Ego and His

    Own, which was destined to have an enduring appeal to individualistic anarchists

    throughout the world. Once again Marx is scornful of the essence discourse in

    his critique of Stirner, but this is expressed in the form of detailed criticisms of

    Stirners faulty logic rather than a rejection of the philosophical categoryperse. Marx makes it clear that he prefers communism as a practical movement to

    an intellectual debate over the concept of essence, but it is Stirners

    misunderstanding of communism which is the real point at issue. Later, when

    lambasting Stirners argument that inhumanity could be overcome by the

    individual rethinking his attitude, Marx complains that by doing this the

    inhuman being is made to disappear and there is no longer any measure for

    individuals. In this way the crippling and enslavement which afflict individuals

    in modern society were rendered by Stirner as expressions of that persons

    individuality. Marx was denouncing a wholly subjective view of human essence,

    but he was also defending the view that some notion of humanity was needed to

    measure the development of human freedom.

    In the discussion of the work of the German True Socialists he returns to the

    attack against their attachment to the concept of the essence of man, on the basis

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    individual achieve the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions, and only

    within the community does authentic personal freedom become possible .76 This

    is, in effect, the promise of the ethical community. In the Manifesto of the

    Communist Party, Marx and Engels describe the goal of communists to be an

    association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free

    development of all, while in the 1859Preface the abolition of capitalism is

    conceived as marking the end of the prehistory of human society. Human

    history proper can begin only when that which defines our humanity, our social

    creativity, is brought under voluntary cooperative control.

    ETHICS AND EXPLOITATION

    Although Marx began work in political economy in 1844 he did not publish his

    first book in the field until 1859, and the fully developed theory of exploitation

    did not see the light of day until the publication of the first volume of Capital in

    1867. However, despite the years of immersion in the texts of political economy

    and mountains of official reports, there is strong evidence that the idea of

    alienation remains central to his analysis of what is going on in the exchange of

    commodities and the creation of surplus value. A key text for understanding the

    philosophical underpinnings of his analysis of exploitation is the Grundrisse, the

    notebooks containing draft material written in 1857-8. However, it is interesting

    to note a passage from Wage Labour and Capital (1849) in which the alienationthesis is re-stated in a presentation which saw Marx writing for the first time like

    a confident political economist rather than a philosopher in foreign territory.

    Labour is described as the workers own life-activity, the manifestation of his

    own life, but after selling his life-activity to the capitalist it becomes only a

    means to enable him to exist. For the worker labour has become a sacrifice of

    his life, a mere commodity, and life begins for him where this activity ceases, at

    table, in the public house, in bed.[Wage Labour and Capital, Chapter 1] If the

    characterisation of labour as the manifestation of the workers life is to be more

    than a vacuous tautology, then Marx must mean that labour in some sense is what

    defines us as human beings. As we have seen, he means conscious, social labour,

    but in capitalist production the conscious and social aspects have been alienated.

    Capitalism is presented as simultaneously unfolding the creative power of

    humanity while denying all creative control to the direct producers.

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    In the 1857 Introduction to the Grundrisse Marx reaffirmed the irreducible

    sociality of individuals, in contrast to the liberal fixation with the atomised

    individual. He dismissed the individualist premises of Smith and Ricardo as the

    unimaginative fancies of the eighteenth century, and argued that they were not

    simply attempting to offer a view of natural man but were pushing a view of the

    abstract individual as an anticipation of bourgeois society.[Grundrisse,

    Introduction] Relationships between abstract free individuals were taken to be the

    ideal form, and so were projected into the past as something ,natural. Marx

    argued that in fact it was only in the eighteenth century that society as such came

    to be regarded by individuals as a means towards private ends. He regarded the

    idea of production by isolated individuals outside society as being as

    preposterous as the idea that language could develop without individuals living

    together. In this respect he was following Aristotle, who had written inthe Politics that the man who is isolated ... is no part of thepolis, and must

    therefore be either a beast or a god. Marx was not opposed to the development of

    individuality, although this position has often been attributed to him. Rather he

    was convinced that the vast majority of people would be able to express their

    individuality only when we organise our production in a cooperative way, a view

    endorsed eloquently by Oscar Wilde later in the century.

    Marx sometimes referred to the civil society of market competition as

    the bellum omnium contra omnes, the condition of the war of each against allimputed to the state of nature by Thomas Hobbes. As we have noted, the

    perspective adopted by Marx stood firmly against this form of individualism, as it

    did for Hegel and also for Rousseau. It is important to note the significance of

    their view of the individual as a social being even at the risk of labouring the

    obvious, because the individualistic premises of classical liberal theory are deeply

    ingrained in Western science. For example, in a recent criticism of Darwinism in

    social anthropology, Tim Ingold pleads for a mode of human understanding that

    starts from the premises of our engagement with the world, rather than our

    detachment from it. He argues that social relations, far from being the mere

    resultant of the association of discrete individuals, each independently wired up

    for cooperative or altruistic behaviour, constitute the very ground from which

    human existence unfolds. Ingold describes the implications of this view for the

    structure of evolutionary theory as 1 profound, evidently unaware that the

    individualistic perspective is a relatively recent one in the history of world

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    philosophy. It was rejected by Rousseau, Hegel and Marx, and does not figure in

    non-Western conceptions of our place in the world.

    Returning to the question of the continuity between the texts of 1844 and 1857,

    in a number of cases the same illustrations were used in support of identicalarguments. The first chapter of the Grundrisse deals with money, and Marx

    repeats a quotation from ShakespearesTimon of Athens used in 1844 to support

    the argument that money equates the incommensurate: Thou visible God, that

    solderst close impossibilities. The analogy with God as a human creation which

    ends up controlling the creators is found in both the Grundrisse and

    the Comments on James Mill, and money is described as an alien social power

    standing above them in both texts. This idea of the alien power confronting the

    worker is developed further in the chapter on capital, in which Marx argues that

    when the worker exchanges his labour capacity with the capitalist he surrenders

    its creative power, like Esau who gave up his birthright for a mess of pottage, a

    process through which his own creative power establishes itself as the power of

    capital, an alien power. Although there is only a single instance of Marx

    returning to the concept of species being, it is clear that he sees the development

    of exchange as both historically destructive of natural voluntary cooperation and

    obstructive of-a higher stage of cooperation. Later in the text he talks about

    labours realisation being at the same time its de-realisation, because all the

    potentialities resting in living labours own womb come to exist as realitiesoutside it and alien to it.

    Marx links alienation with the historical development of capitalism as a

    necessary stage before human freedom can be achieved. In the chapter on money

    he argues that universally developed individuals exerting communal control over

    their social relationships were not products of nature but of history. Freedom can

    be achieved only by developing the conditions produced by capitalism, only after

    going through the universality of the estrangement of individuals from

    themselves and from others. For Marx it was as ridiculous to yearn for a notion

    of a return to natural fullness as to believe that the present complete emptiness

    must persist forever. In the chapter on capital he argues that the wealth and

    knowledge of society advance only in such a way that the working individual

    alienates himself, but capitalisms universal development of the productive

    forces also created the basis for the emergence of the universal development of

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    the individuals. The barrier of alienation thrown up by the system is not a sacred

    limit because the producers can achieve comprehension of the historical

    process and the conviction that it can be controlled, but only at a stage when

    existing conditions of production are evidently dysfunctional. Perhaps our present

    concerns about environmental degradation provide the clearest indication that this

    stage has been reached, more than a century after Marxs death. He conceives real

    freedom, presupposing social control over the production process, as self-

    realisation.The Grundrisse presents a picture of Marx struggling to weave his

    philosophic conception of human development into the concepts to be used in the

    analysis of how capitalism works. So, for example, alienation is explicitly linked

    with the creation of value. Although the analysis of the process of exploitation

    and its systemic reproduction is far advanced from the writings of 1844, the

    philosophic underpinnings are intact.

    Further confirmation of the philosophic commitment to the conception of what

    constitutes our distinctive humanity is found in Theories of Surplus Value, written

    in 1862, in which Marx decries the sentimental opponents of Ricardo for

    opposing production as the objective of life, thereby forgetting that production

    for its own sake means nothing but the development of human productive forces,

    in other words the development of the richness of human nature as an end in

    itself. Marx adds immediately that under capitalism this development of the

    capacities of the human species takes place at the cost of the majority of humanindividuals and whole human classes until in the end it breaks through this

    contradiction and coincides with the development of the individual. He was

    impatient with those who moralised about Ricardos ruthlessness while failing

    to appreciate his scientific honesty. Without the latter it was impossible to

    understand the dynamics of capitalist production and identify its inner

    contradictions. For Marx, knowledge was power.

    For those who approach volume one ofCapital in order to extract a purely

    technical economic argument, the first part poses considerable problems. Even

    though some of the philosophic content was excised from the second edition,

    which is now the one almost exclusively referred to, there is still a distinctive

    humanist philosophy at work in the discussion of the commodity. It prompted

    Louis Althusser to recommend starting the book at part two (chapter four), but

    such an approach not only rides roughshod over Marxs intentions but promotes a

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    division of labour within knowledge which is, I would argue, part of the problem

    of the world which Marx wanted to change. Marxs work begins with the

    contradiction between use value and exchange value, resolved by money, but

    resolved only in such a way that the basic contradiction was carried forward in

    the logic of the system. InA Contribution to theCritique of Political

    Economy Marx had argued that a commodity was based on a complex of

    contradictory premises which centred on its dual aspects of use value and

    exchange value." InCapital he argues that the contradictions inherent in the

    exchange of commodities were not abolished by the further development of the

    system, but merely given room to move.

    The section of the first chapter on The Fetishism of the Commodity and its

    Secret argues that in commodity production social relations were reflected as

    objective characteristics of the products of labour and the definite social relation

    between men themselves assumes the fantastic form of a relation between

    things. He likens the process to religion, where the products of the human brain

    appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into

    relations both with each other and with the human race. As in the writings of

    1844, Marx describes the systematic separation of the producer from the plan,

    process and outcome of production, that is to say the transformation of the social

    process of production into an alien power. Money plays a key role in facilitating

    this alienated society, in which men are henceforth related to each other in theirsocial process of production in a purely atomistic way." In substance this is a re-

    presentation of the alienation thesis, despite Marxs reluctance to use the term,

    and later in Capital he talks about the alienation of the worker from his labour

    and his product and describes capital as an alien power that dominates and

    exploits.

    In an emotive passage in chapter 25 Marx recapitulates the alienation theme

    and expresses the fate of the worker as a dialectical negation of creativity. Under

    capitalism all methods for raising the social productivity of labour result in the

    increased insecurity of the worker, and the means for the development of

    production ,undergo a dialectical inversion so that they become means of

    domination and exploitation. The worker is distorted into a fragment of a man,

    degraded to an appendage of the machine and tormented by the content of his

    labour. All intellectual stimulation which might otherwise have been found in the

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    labour process is removed as technology is incorporated in it as a seemingly

    independent power. The worker is condemned to a lifetime of toil and misery and

    whole families are dragged beneath the wheels of the juggernaut of capital.

    Capitalism presents the extremes of wealth at one pole and the accumulation of

    misery, the torment of labour, slavery, ignorance, brutalisation and moral

    degradation at the opposite pole. From this rhetoric of fragmented or crippled

    humanity we are entitled to assume, as Fromm has argued, that Marx has a notion

    of a whole man, a self-realised being whose essence is no longer alienated.

    In a footnote in Capital criticising Benthams theory of utility Marx

    distinguishes between human nature in general and human nature as modified

    in each epoch. Marxs theory of historical development presents a framework for

    examining how human nature is modified in the course of the production and

    reproduction of material life. It helps to counter conservative conceptions such as

    those of Hobbes, for whom men were naturally self-serving power maximisers

    motivated by mistrust and fear. Marxists have been unwilling to countenance a

    conception of human nature in general, or human essence, because to do so

    might be seen to be offering an equally arbitrary view of what we are really like.

    However, Marx does have a conception of human essence, materially grounded in

    our productive achievements and illustrated through the comparison with non-

    human animals, first set down in 1844 and repeated in the first volume

    ofCapital. He introduces his discussion of the labour process by arguing thatalthough humans initially laboured instinctively at the animal level, through their

    social interaction with their environment they develop the exclusively human

    characteristic ofconscious life activity whereby they are able to plan their work.

    Distinctively human activity can be viewed as collective endeavour, or creative

    social activity. In a famous passage he argued that although spiders produced

    rather like weavers, and bees built cells with greater skill than many architects,

    what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect

    builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax. Marxs purpose in the

    chapter on the labour process was to show how money was transformed into

    capital through the extraction of surplus value in the process of exploitation. The

    controlling power in the labour process shifts from the producer to capital, which

    he depicts as an animated monster." The formally free individuals enter a

    contract which deprives the producers of the freedom to exercise the creative

    powers which define their humanity. Marx reverts to the humanist discourse

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    when he conjures the image of a cooperative, planned society, in which the

    worker strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of

    his species. Here Marx comes close to his 1844 expression of communism as the

    real appropriation of the human essence by and for humanity.

    AN ETHICAL FOUNDATION

    The ethical question which runs beneath the surface of Marxs work concerns

    how we oughtto live. Marxs work shows that capitalist society cannot produce

    an ethical community because it perverts the human essence of social creativity

    and prevents the development of human freedom. The pre-history of humanity

    has taken us to the point at which the structures which thwart human freedom can

    be challenged and replaced. However, to rely on moral argument would not, in

    his opinion, move us closer to understanding how and why successive modes of

    production have kept the mass of humanity in various forms of enslavement. Nor,

    Marx thought, would moral entreaties assist in removing the principal

    impediments to achieving human freedom: private property and the protective

    political power of the bourgeoisie. Indeed his consistent opposition to explicitly

    moral discourse indicates that he considered the moralistic approach might well

    deflect from a full understanding of the revolutionary nature of the tasks ahead.

    When Marx wrote the Provisional Rules of the First International they contained

    a demand that members be committed to truth, justice, and morality, as the basisof their conduct towards each other, and towards all men, without regard to

    colour, creed, or nationality. However, in a letter to Engels he reveals that he was

    obliged by the sub-committee to insert this sentence, as well as another referring

    to right and duty, adding that these are so placed that they can dono harm.

    His rejection of moralising should not deter us from identifying the ethical

    dimension which is immanent in his social theory. Alienation is not simply a

    descriptive term in his political economy, but a philosophical term indicating a

    rupture from our human essence. Its usage is a denunciation of the way we live.

    Its projected overcoming, in a society of free associated producers, is an ethical

    commitment to the creation of the good life. The commitment to communist

    society is an appeal to how we oughtto live. The next chapter will attempt to

    shed further light on the nature and origins of Marxs ethic, and what implications

    it holds for his conception of communist society.

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    To call cosmopolitan exploitation universal brotherhood is an idea that could

    only be engendered in the brain of the bourgeoisie (Marx).[Speech on the

    Question of Free Trade]

    The idea that there is a strong ethical foundation built into Marxs social theory

    raises a number of questions which will be confronted in this chapter. Marxs

    own determination to shun ethical discourse has obscured this dimension of his

    thought, but this should not rule out its re-examination, especially in view of the

    fact that the revolutionary class consciousness which he confidently anticipated

    has largely failed to materialise. The ethic revolves around his conception of

    human essence as creative social activity, its alienation in capitalist society, andthe commitment to its full realisation as human freedom in communist society. ...

    THE JUSTICE DEBATE

    Marx eschewed moral argument, yet there is undoubtedly moral force in his

    description of the process of exploitation. In recent years this tension has

    generated a number of debates in North America and Britain, and the major

    arguments have been discussed with great clarity by Norman Geras in the

    journalNew LeftReview. Geras argues that there is a real and deep-seatedinconsistency in Marxs work between his ethical commitment and his hostility

    to moral argument. On the one hand, Marx argues that the process through which

    surplus value is produced is just, as each mode of production has norms of justice

    appropriate to it. For example, in the third volume ofCapital he states that the

    content of capitalist contracts is just so long as it corresponds to the mode of

    production and is adequate to it,[Capital Volume III] and he makes the same

    point in the Critique of the Gotha Programme. In the first volume ofCapital he

    specifically denies that an injustice has been done to the seller of labour power

    when the capitalist makes a profit, [Capital Volume I] or that the seller has been

    defrauded. [Capital Volume I] On the other hand, Marx condemns capitalism in

    moral terms which amount, in Gerass view, to deeming it unjust. In various parts

    of the first volume ofCapital he describes the extraction of surplus value as

    robbing, stealing, ,pumping booty out of the workers, and

    embezzling,[CapitalVolume I]and elsewhere he refers to it in plain language

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    as loot and the theft of alien labour time. [Theories of Surplus

    Value,Grundrisse]

    I am sympathetic with attempts to draw out the ethical content of Marxs social

    theory, but I feel that Geras is wrong to designate the tension outlined above as apervasive contradiction. Furthermore, I think it is possible to explicate Marxs

    position without resorting to Gerass conclusion that Marx did think capitalism

    was unjust but did not think he thought so. Nor do I accept Gerass more

    substantial conclusion that Marx implicitly condemns capitalism as unjust by

    reference to a generalised moral entitlement to control over the means of

    production, which, is, in effect, a natural right.

    Geras argues that Marx makes trans-historical moral judgements while

    simultaneously holding the view that all principles of justice are specific to each

    mode of production and cannot be used to judge practices in other modes. A

    number of writers have argued that this does not necessarily involve a

    contradiction. George Brenkert, Steven Lukes, and Allen Wood have separately

    argued that Marxs condemnation of capitalism rested on values such as freedom

    and self-actualisation, but not on a conception of justice based on eternal

    principles. Joe McCarney has argued that the moral language employed by Marx

    in describing exploitation need not necessarily be treated at the same theoretical

    level as the concept of justice. He suggests that in Marxs work we can separatejustice, as relativised to a particular social order, from evaluations which have

    some element of trans-historical meaning, for, after all, it is common enough to

    regard justice as contextually bound and specifically juridical. I think that

    McCarney is fundamentally correct here, but Gerass demand to see some

    evidence to support the alleged distinction between what is just and what is

    ethical is a reasonable request.

    Geras, in his original article, outlines one way in which the alleged confusion

    on justice might be resolved. The buying and selling of labour power might beregarded as fair, but the extraction of surplus value which occurs on that basis

    renders the contract, in Marxs words, a mere semblance or mere pretence.

    Geras accuses Marx of resorting to dialectical wizardry in arguing that equal

    exchange is transformed into unequal exchange. In the Grundrisse he proposes

    that by a peculiar logic the right of property on the side of capital is dialectically

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    transformed into the right to an alien product ... the right to appropriate alien

    labour without equivalent. In the first volume ofCapital he writes that to the

    extent that commodity production, in accordance with its own immanent laws,

    undergoes a further development into capitalist production, the property laws of

    commodity production must undergo a dialectical inversion so that they become

    laws of capitalist appropriation. Geras objects that the dialectic here only

    muddies the water, as the wage relation is either an exchange of equivalents and

    therefore just, or it is not, and a thing cannot be its opposite. He concludes that

    the confusion among commentators on this point is therefore a fruit of Marxs

    own prevarication. This represents a major criticism of the coherence of Marxs

    dialectical method. It is possible to defend Marxs dialectic by referring to the

    essentialism which was discussed above. Philip Kain, in his consideration of the

    debate between Wood and Husami, focuses on the categories of essence andappearance and argues that Marxs position is that capitalism is just (Wood) at

    the level of appearance but at the level of essence it is unjust (Husami). I think it

    wiser to go along with Marxs refusal to accept that capitalism is unjust, but I am

    sure that he felt that in essence capitalism obstructed the development of full

    human freedom. What does this mean? Capitalism operates on the basis of a

    formally free contract involving the purchase and sale of labour power. Behind

    the appearance of the exchange of equivalents is the essence of exploitation. In

    unmasking the extraction of surplus value hidden behind the rhetoric of the free

    exchange of equivalents, Marx shows how power is wrested from the producers

    and re-presented to them in the forms of money or capital as alien powers

    standing above them. The worker, when exchanging his labour capacity with the

    capitalist, surrenders its creative power, like Esau who gave up his birthright for

    a mess of pottage. The loss of freedom is inscribed in capitalisms defining

    process, the extraction of surplus value arising from the purchase and sale of

    labour power. The further development of the system cannot resolve this

    contradiction but merely brings it to the point where the system itself becomes

    dysfunctional and a social revolution becomes a real historical possibility.

    Marx is quite clear that capitalism is just, in the sense that legal justice or

    right (Recht) can never be higher than the economic structure and its cultural

    development which this determines. How then, is it possible for Marx to inveigh

    against exploitation, which is clearly not, for him, a value-free term? One way in

    which he does this is effectively to expose the discrepancy between the claims

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    made by liberals that the system is fair and just and the grim reality of class

    despotism. The point of describing the labour contract as both just and theft is

    to point up the gap between appearance and essence in the system and inspire its

    concrete resolution. This form of moral realism is shown in the quotation at the

    head of this chapter, and also in remarks made in that part of the Critique of the

    Gotha Programme dealing with equal right in socialist society. Marx argues that

    capitalist distribution is the only fair distribution on the basis of the present -

    day mode of production, just as he had written in the first draft ofThe Civil War

    inFrance that every social form of property has morals of its own. In both

    instances the inverted commas imply the presence of a more adequate standard of

    fairness or morality. In the Critique Marx argues that under socialism, when

    private property has been abolished, equal right would involve distribution to

    individuals according to an equal standard, labour, but as individuals are differentin strength and ability, equal right would give unequal rewards. An important

    point here is that equal right in socialist society is considered an advance on

    bourgeois society because principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads.

    In Marxs view, under socialism equal right would cease to be a mere semblance

    and the standard by whic


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