Abstract
This chapter is dedicated to [Die entfremdete Arbeit], a fragment which has high standing in studies of the Manuscripts on account of its elaboration of the contentious theory of the alienation of labor theory (entfremdete Arbeit). While previous discussions of this theory have tended to focus on the question of whether or not it can be confined within Feuerbach’s humanism, this study takes another perspective, focusing instead on the inherent fallacy of this theory, namely the deficiencies in Marx’s conceptual framework of alienation concept as well as logical inconsistencies among the four aspects of alienated labor. The aim of this analysis, however, is not to deny the significance of early Marx’s thought, but to lay bare the necessity of his shift from isolated individual to society.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Hegel, Hegel and the Human Spirit, trans. by L. Rauch, Wayne State University Press, 1983, p. 103.
- 2.
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by A. V. Miller, Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 297.
- 3.
Ibid., p. 479.
- 4.
In Phänomenologie, there three chapters that mainly concerns alienation: IV. The Truth of Self-certainty, V. B. The actualization of rational self-consciousness through its own activity, V. C. Individuality which takes itself to be real in and for itself and VI. B. Self-alienated Spirit. Culture.
- 5.
Ibid., p. 294.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
Hegel remarks: “[F]or the self that has an absolute significance in its immediate existence, i.e. without having alienated itself from itself, is without substance, and is the plaything of those raging elements. Its substance, therefore, is its externalization, and the externalization is the substance, i.e. the spiritual powers ordering themselves” (ibid., p. 295).
- 8.
Ibid. Georg Lukács, The Young Hegel. Studies in the Relations between Dialectics and Economics, trans. by R. Livingstone, London, 1975, p. 469.
- 9.
Considering the Paris Manuscripts, Marx had mainly the last two works in scope, as he explicitly refers to them in the deleted part of the preface to the Manuscript: “[A]gainst whose Philosophie der Zukunft and Thesen zur Reform der Philosophie in the Anekdota, despite the tacit use that is made of them, the petty envy of some and the veritable wrath of others seem to have instigated a regular conspiracy of silence” (Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 3: Marx and Engels: 1843–1844, Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 232).
- 10.
Marx, To Ludwig Feuerbach. August 11, 1844, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 3: Marx and Engels: 1843–1844, Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 354.
- 11.
Ludwig Feuerbach, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, trans. by M. H. Vogel, Indianapolis/Cambridge, 1986, p. 71.
- 12.
Ibid., p. 72.
- 13.
Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 3: Marx and Engels: 1843–1844, Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 327.
- 14.
Yasishi Yamanouchi, The Gaze of the Sufferers: The Renaissance of Early Marx, trans. by Xi Peng & Liying Wang, Beijing Normal University Publishing Group, 2011, p. 290 (translated into English by K.H.). Also noteworthy are Chapter II. 3A. Feuerbach’s Empiricism and Naturalism and Chapter III. 3. Supplement: On the Current Critique of Feuerbach.
- 15.
Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 5: Marx and Engels: 1845–1847, Progress Publishers, 1976, p. 4.
- 16.
Noboru Shirozuka, Young Marx’s Thought: The Establishment of Socialist Thought, trans. by Jingjing Shang et al., Qiushi Publishing House, 1988, p. 166 (translated into English by K.H.).
- 17.
Marx, On Proudhon, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 20: Marx and Engels: 1864–1868, Progress Publishers, 1985, p. 26.
- 18.
Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 3: Marx and Engels: 1843–1844, Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 271 f.
- 19.
Ibid., p. 272.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
Ibid., p. 273.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Ibid., p. 276.
- 25.
Ibid., p. 273
- 26.
Ibid.
- 27.
Ibid.
- 28.
Ibid., p. 274.
- 29.
Ibid., p. 275.
- 30.
Ibid., 274.
- 31.
Ibid., 275.
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
Ibid., 274.
- 34.
Seiji Mochizuki, A Study of Marx’s Historical Theory, trans. by Lixin Han, Beijing Normal University Publishing Group, 2009, p. 58 (translated into English by K.H.).
- 35.
Ibid., p. 60.
- 36.
Ibid., p. 69
- 37.
Ibid., p. 76.
- 38.
Ibid., p. 79.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
Ibid., p. 88.
- 41.
Ibid., p. 99.
- 42.
Regarding Chinese scholar’s critique of Mochizuki’s interpretation, see Zongbi Liu, An Analysis of Seiji Mochizuki’s Viewpoint on the “Alienation of Nature”, in: Philosophical Trends, no. 9, 2011. Zongbi Liu’s critique is chiefly setting out from the concern that Mochizuki’s understanding will weaken Marx’s critique of the alienation under capitalism, which is identical with the standpoint of the orthodox Marxists in Japan. As the Chinese translator of A Study of Marx’s Historical Theory, the author also concurs with this critique. In this chapter, however, the author wants to launch an immanent critique of Mochizuki’s interpretation to expose the logical fallacy within his argument.
- 43.
Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 3: Marx and Engels: 1843–1844, Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 278.
- 44.
Ibid., p. 276.
- 45.
Ibid.
- 46.
Ibid., p. 336.
- 47.
Ibid., p. 337.
- 48.
Ibid., p. 336.
- 49.
Ibid., p. 337.
- 50.
Ibid., p. 275.
- 51.
Ibid., p. 276 f.
- 52.
Ibid., p. 277.
- 53.
Ibid., p. 217.
- 54.
Ibid., p. 218.
- 55.
Ibid., p. 217.
- 56.
Ibid., p. 277.
- 57.
Ibid.
- 58.
Katsuko Umemoto, Historical Materialism and Economics, Genndai no Rironsha, 1971, p. 49 (translated into English by K.H.).
- 59.
Wataru Hiromatsu, On Young Marx, Heibonsha, 1971, p. 251ff (translated into English by K.H.).
- 60.
Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 3: Marx and Engels: 1843–1844, Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 279.
- 61.
One might raise objection with regard to the following passage from the Third Manuscript: “Estrangement is manifested not only in the fact that my means of life belong to someone else, that which I desire is the inaccessible possession of another, but also in the fact that everything is itself something different from itself – that my activity is something else and that, finally (and this applies also to the capitalist), all is under [the sway] of inhuman power” (ibid., p. 314). Apparently, the alienation here presents itself in two forms: First that my means of living and labor belong to another and second that an inhuman power rules over everything. The alienation of both wage worker and capitalist can only occur in the second sense. The position where the parenthesis “and this applies also to the capitalist” is inserted also reinforces this reading.
- 62.
Ibid., p. 227.
- 63.
It goes without saying that Marx’s most classic expression of reciprocal alienation appears in Grundrisse, e.g. “Individual A satisfies individual B’s need by means of the commodity A only to the extent that and because individual B satisfies individual A’s need by means of commodity b, and vice versa. Each serves the other in order to serve himself; and makes reciprocal use of the other as his means. Each individual is now conscious that (1) each attains his end only in so far as he serves the other as means; (2) each becomes a means for the other (being for another) only as end for himself (being for himself); (3) this reciprocity whereby each is at once means and end, and moreover attains his end only in so far as he becomes means, […] that this reciprocity is a necessary FACT, presupposed as a natural condition of exchange, but that it is as such a matter of indifference for each of the two subjects of exchange, and is of interest to each of them only in so far as it satisfies his own interest as excluding that of the other, without relation to it” (Marx, Outlines of Critique of Political Economy, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 28: Marx: 1857–1861, Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 175 f.). That being said, this account of reciprocal alienation is, with respect of its content, not much different from that in Comments on James Mill, only the pronouns “your” and “my” are replaced by “A” and “B”.
- 64.
Lixin Han, The Turning Point of Marx’s Thought: The Alienation of Intercourse in Comments on James Mill, in: Modern Philosophy, no. 5, 2007 (translated into English by K.H.).
- 65.
As Zhengdong Tang sees it, the alienated labor in the First Manuscript is only seemingly founded on the structure of isolated individual in that, if Marx’s critique of political economy was indeed setting off from this structure, the following question will be unsolvable: “When even Feuerbach is capable of conceiving species-essence from the perspective of relationship and thereby construes ‘species-being’ as ‘species-relation’, is it possible that Marx, who was under Feuerbach’s sway when writing the Paris Manuscripts, would turn to the logic of isolated individual and hence fall behind Feuerbach?” (Zhengdong Tang, From Smith to Marx: A Historical Interpretation of the Economic-Philosophical Method, Jiangsu People’s Publishing, 2009, p. 281 (translated into English by K.H.)). Yet the Feuerbach’s “relationship” is not a relation built on economic basis, but merely a relation held by love and sensuousness and is therefore not the true “relationship”.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Han, L. (2020). The Fallacy in the Four Aspects of Alienated Labor. In: Studies of the Paris Manuscripts. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9618-3_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9618-3_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-32-9616-9
Online ISBN: 978-981-32-9618-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)