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Karl MarxEconomic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1843A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Alienation
Alienation is one of the main themes of modern European, especially German, philosophy. It refers to the condition where a person feels that they have lost their connection, or become “alien,” to the world around them. The rise of alienation as a philosophic concept was closely tied to the rise of modern, industrial society. For premodern peoples, especially for the vast majority living in the countryside, life was generally predictable, and social roles were strictly prescribed. They were mostly bound to a small area and knew the same people their whole lives, and the community was organized through institutions like the church and local nobility. Industry turned that social order upside down. Seeking more steady salaries, people crammed into cities and found themselves confronted with a mass of strangers so that they felt lonely even when encountering thousands of people every day. The integration of so many different kinds of people accelerated the spread of new ideas like liberalism, anarchism, and socialism, posing a direct challenge to traditional sources of authority. One could find a job and just as easily lose it or become rich one day and lose everything the next. Under such circumstances, it was easy to feel dislocated, as though one had no fixed place in the world.
This widespread phenomenon of alienation prompted several philosophic responses. The modern concept of “identity” took shape to give people a bundle of ethnic, religious, social, and other labels that they could fall back on to relieve their confusion. Hegel called for a higher form of self-consciousness by moving past the particularities of one’s existence in pursuit of more universal, absolute truth. Marx, who addressed the problem of alienation most profoundly in the Paris Manuscripts, centers the problem on the issue of labor under capitalism. For Marx, the primary form of alienation is between the worker and the product of their efforts. As he writes, “The worker is related to the product of his labor as to an alien object” (108). Ideally, a creature should have a profound connection with their creation because it is a physical or intellectual representation of their personality. Just as a book bears the imprint of its author, a piece of work helps the craftsman express themselves to the rest of the human race. Although everyone must of course attend to material needs, the best products are made freely and cater to the more noble, spiritual dimensions of human nature.
According to Marx, modern capitalism utterly obliterates this organic connection between creator and creation. The division of labor required for modern production isolates the worker and restricts them to the endless repetition of a mechanical task, which only contributes to a fraction of the final product. The worker consequently sees little if anything of themselves in the work, while the work itself is at best dull and at worst exhausting and dangerous. In the meantime, the value of the labor accrues to the owners of capital, even though they have done nothing to earn it. For Marx, the only way to restore the connection between the worker and the world is to abolish capitalism and restore the worker’s right to produce and trade as they see fit. This restores the social nature of political economy, and in the rediscovery of genuine labor, human beings restore their connection with one another.
Labor Versus Capital
Marx begins his analysis with the core insight, relatively recent in economic thinking, that labor is the central unit of analysis. Before then, wealth was seen mainly in concrete terms, particularly precious metals that derived values from their scarcity and convertibility. There was only so much gold, and everyone recognized its value. In the classic formulation, “whoever has the most gold, rules.” Liberal economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo found this far too confining a definition of prosperity, especially as the Spanish Empire’s accumulation of gold from its American colonies simply decreased its value due to inflation. They identified labor as the real source of economic value, as even gold taken from a mine was useless until it was exchanged for a product or service that derived from labor. A theory of labor permitted a much more expansive view of wealth, now understood as capital, or any asset that reflects an accumulation of labor. This leads to what is now called the “labor theory of value” where the worth of an asset is determined by the amount of labor that went into its production. Up until this point, Marx is entirely in agreement with Smith. The fundamental break between them occurs over the precise definition of “value” and the consequent distinction between labor and capital.
For Smith, value was a subjective quality. The willingness of the buyer to pay was no less important than the labor involved in making the product. Marx instead located value squarely within the act of production, which is why the term “labor theory of value” has become associated with Marxism even though Smith accepted it as well. The worker was entitled to the value of what they produced, but modern capitalism was making this more and more impracticable, as a sophisticated division of labor increased the distance between the worker and the finished product. The product now belonged to the owner of capital, the machinery required to make the product. Since the owners were in control of exchange and sale, they were able to reap the value despite having done none of the work and restrict wages to the minimum required for continued production. Capital might in theory be the mere accumulation of labor, but modern industry has split them apart and placed them in a condition of absolute antagonism.
Humanism
Marx is part of the philosophic tradition of humanism, although he is rarely given that designation in contemporary discourse. This is partly because his focus on economics, which grew more intense over the years, appears to reduce all human activity to economic functions, precluding other activities that are integral to a full understanding of human beings. The political circumstances of the 20th century have also played a part, as Marxist regimes in many instances engaged in the brutal suppression of dissent and the imposition of conformity. Perhaps most importantly, the humanist tradition in Europe centered around the sanctity of the individual. Reason endows the individual with the natural right to be masters of their fate until they enter “social contracts” whereby they voluntarily restricted their freedoms to live in a community of mutual benefit. This “liberal” view of the origins of society paralleled modern economics, positing the individual as a rational actor whose sole purpose is to “maximize utility,” or get what they want at the lowest cost. For Marx, these ideas opened the way for industrial capitalism to reduce the vast majority of humanity to the level of a commodity since the wealthy could maximize their utility by extracting as much work for the lowest possible wages. Humanism in its traditional individualist understanding collapsed on itself when the individual was left alone against an entire social system that regards them as a mere commodity.
Marx seeks to redefine humanism as collectivist and universal so that the human person gains fulfillment in society with others and in consciousness of the entire human species and its historical progression. The starting point is not the individual taken alone but in their engagement with nature as the source of their physical sustenance and the provider of the materials through which they improve their lives. Society certainly includes the trading of goods and services, but whereas an individualist philosophy regards all such interactions as a calculation of self-interest, Marx insists on the joy that humans can find in one another as friends, lovers, family relations, and community members. Capitalism is evil not only because it makes people poor while others are rich, but because it tears away at the social fabric, breeding cynicism, vice, and competition and subordinating every kind of pleasure to profit. The main purpose of abolishing private property is to destroy the individualist philosophy behind it and unlock a much richer conception of human life where both work and leisure express a new level of consciousness.
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