The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century

by Michael N Forster

  8.3.1 The Concept of Labour and Action

  The analysis of the objectification model as a theory of action has to form the centre of any interpretation of Marx. The model is developed most explicitly in a passage from the Manuscripts which the editors entitled ‘Estranged Labour’ (Manuscripts, 270–82):

  [T]‌he object which labour produces—confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labour is labour which has been embodied in an object, which has become material: it is the objectification of labour. Labour’s realisation is its objectification. (272)

  Intentionality marks the specific difference between human and animal activity, which is why in Marx the objectification model is first and foremost a theory of intentional action. ‘Labour’ here takes on a threefold meaning: (i) as the end of the activity, (ii) as the process of being active, and (iii) as the result of the activity. One could also refer to the content sense, the process sense, and the result sense of ‘labour’. Schematically, the Marxian conception can be rendered as follows:

  (a)I intend to bring about the state of affairs p (through my doing a). (Content sense)

  (b)By doing a I bring about the state of affairs p. (Process sense)

  (c)The realization of this process of bringing about is the independent fact p, in which my activity has fulfilled itself. (Result sense)

  Assuming that the state of affairs and the fact p are identical, this makes for a plausible reconstruction of our pre-philosophical understanding of actions: (c) says that a fact p is independent of me. Act a is—as clause (b) has it—a causally necessary condition for p becoming an independent fact.

  8.3.2 The Conception of Estrangement

  Marx explained this conception in detail only in the Manuscripts, and without explicitly defining the concept of estrangement (cf. MEW E I, 510–22). First, this omission is an expression of his self-assessment that he had moved on from the tasks of philosophy. Secondly, he borrows his central concept from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, which he regarded as the ultimate and unsurpassable state of philosophy. And thirdly, there was, in Marx’ time, a widely established, but not specifically philosophical use of the term ‘estrangement’. So Marx could rely on the fact that the discourse about estrangement was accessible to his partners in the discussion.

  In his analysis, Marx proceeds from the social fact that the pauperization of workers was a systematic necessity under the national economic conditions of his time. The more social wealth they produce, the poorer they get. And the greater the potentials for power and knowledge, created by industry, technology, and science become for the human species, the more deprived do the proletarians become. For Marx the causes of this estrangement are the social institutions of private property in means of production and in wage labour. This claim is justified with reference to the objectification model, which is why Marx locates the origin of estrangement there. Under capitalist conditions, the worker does not possess the products of his work; they are the property of the capitalist. The worker has to purchase them with his wages; he has to succeed in selling his labour power in order for it to be activated in a production process: Without money, the products of his work recede into an unattainable distance. Since the means of production are private property, the worker cannot deploy his labour power autonomously in order to produce the things that are necessary for his existence because the means of production belong to others. The same holds for the products of his labour. According to Marx, capitalism stands for the total estrangement of the human being because the proletarians have completely estranged their human form of existence and sold their essence as species subject to the capital creating it as an ‘automatic subject’ (Capital, 255) thereby.

  The first dimension covered by the Marxian conception of estrangement concerns the relationship between the worker and the product of his work. According to the objectification model, the product is an object that is independent of human action, so that a social institution can enter between the activity and its product. Within capitalism it is the legal institution of private property. Marx locates the second dimension in the relationship between the worker and his activity. The objectification model implies the transfer of features of the act of producing to features of the product, so that this is revealed as a more original dimension of estrangement. Being estranged from one’s own activity consists, on Marx’ account, in two aspects: first, the worker experiences himself as heteronomous in his activity, and secondly, he feels miserable. The production process determines the goal of his activity, but the products of his work do not belong to him; the reason for his being active is the need to survive. Work is not a realisation of his essence, but only a means of survival. It is not the aim of his existence, but only a means of prolonging his physical deterioration. Marx identifies the estrangement of the human being from his species being as a third dimension; it is another core element of his philosophy (see section 8.1.3). In this context, he connects species being and labour by the premise that ‘the productive life is the life of the species’ (Manuscripts, 276).

  Capitalist society alienates the human being from his species being in two ways. As the realization of his species being confronts the individual as an inscrutable and dominating market, the single human being cannot identify with this objectification of the species. Due to the inhumane rule of the game, the worker only acquiesces in this social dimension of his existence to ensure his own survival. For him, work is not an exertion of his species being, but only a means to securing his individual livelihood. This third dimension of estrangement is the first means-end-inversion within the relationship between the individual and his species being. But the species being of the human being manifests itself not only in the relation between the individual and the overall social context or the production sector, but also in the relationships among individuals.

  That is why the fourth dimension of estrangement is to be found there. As a species being capable of conscious activity, the single human being knows not only about his own needs, but also about those of other human individuals. In the context of the capitalist market, this constellation is inverted into a means-end-relation. A produces commodity x to sell it to B. The aim of this sale is to obtain money in order to satisfy one’s own needs. A knows about B’s needs, for otherwise he could not try to satisfy his own needs by producing and selling commodity x. B’s needs are, however, not the purpose for which A produces x and offers it to B; they are only the means A employs in order to be able to satisfy his own needs. Within A’s calculus, B’s neediness is just an indispensable bridge to the satisfaction of his own needs. As the single human being does not produce directly for the satisfaction of the needs of others, according to Marx he does not acknowledge the needs of the species being and thus he cannot realize his own species being: private property of means of production, the market, and wage labour do not permit the establishment of an interpersonal relationship within the production sector that can be considered as a realization of the human species being.

  The attempt to determine the relation between the third and the fourth dimensions of estrangement points to the problem of how Marx conceives the connection between the relationship between individual human being and species being, on the one hand, and the relationship among human individuals, on the other. For the third dimension is realized in and through the mutual relationship between individual human beings.

  The exact construction of the objectification model therewith becomes relevant: do not all aspects that can be found in the relation between a human being and his species being (e.g. as attributes of the species being) have to be conceivable as features of the individual actions by this particular human being? Or may some features of his species character be objectified through the actions of an individual, given that they are not part of his individual intention? Does it make a difference for the features of the product of an action whether the agent is described qua individual or qua species being? In the first case, all
aspects of societal interactions must at once be aspects of the interaction between single individuals. If we require less strict dependence relations in this respect instead, we can fill the remaining margin with social institutions that create mediation between both spheres. Marx understood all instances of indirect reconciliation by means of representative institutions (be they the market, law, morality, or the state) as expressions of estrangement. His talk of immediacy is meant in the sense of the first option and designates the relationship between individual and species that is ontologically adequate for the human being.

  The question that is also crucial to Marx’s philosophy of history, that is, the question: ‘how is this estrangement rooted in the nature of human development [?]‌’ (Manuscripts, 281), emphasizes that Marx is looking for an answer that enables estrangement to be regarded as a necessary stage in the development of the essence of the human being. For the human being is understood as an objectual species being that objectifies its essence in productive activity, which includes conscious activity in the sense of conscious appropriation of objectified characteristics of its species.

  The roots of this Marxian figure of thought lie in idealist philosophy (Moggach 2014). It was the aim of Fichte’s and Hegel’s philosophical systems to explicate how self-consciousness can come to know and bring about itself or its own essence. Marx replaces self-consciousness with the sensual-physical human being, and idealistically conceived conscious acts with the objectification model of action. The human being can only realize its species being by developing a consciousness thereof, which requires familiarity with the characteristics of his species as manifested in an object. For this to be true knowledge of the particular being’s own species being, the object must be an objectification of the human being’s species characteristics. For Marx this is the societal production complex. Herein lies the objectification and estrangement of the species powers: capitalism is the endpoint of this estranged objectification. Once all species characteristics are carved out in this way, the human being can begin to put his species powers into practice through social revolutions. The initial state of the human being is by no means un-estranged, but pre-estranged and undifferentiated. In this state, the human being has not yet realized his species being, for he is not conscious of it. The estrangement that takes place in the process of objectification is the necessary intermediate step to allow for a conscious appropriation of the species being in a second step. In almost Hegelian terms: not the immediate initial state, but only the sublation of estrangement resulting from diremption is the realization of the human species being. For Hegel and Marx this is not regression to the initial state of undifferentiated immediacy. In contrast to formal logic, they treat the negation of negation as a productive process of development, learning, and formation: in the sublation of estrangement, the experience thereof must not be forgotten. The quality of sublated estrangement lies precisely in gaining knowledge of estrangement and its causes.

  8.3.3 The Objectual Species Being

  The concept of estrangement factually depends not only on the objectification model of action and the idealist theory of self-consciousness; it also cannot be explicated without reference to the concept of species being, as this connects the first and the last two dimensions of estrangement (Archibald 1989). What does Marx mean by the claim that the human being is an objectual species being?

  Marx combines Feuerbach’s anthropology, Moses Hess’s vision of social unity, and Hegel’s objectification model of action. Together with Hegel, he adheres to the epistemological subject-object-model in conceiving of the necessity of estrangement. With Feuerbach, he accepts the individual anthropological and the theoretical dimension of the species being as a subordinate aspect of the primarily social species being. And with Hess, he criticizes private property in means of production, wage labour, and the existence of a constitutional state as expressions of estrangement that have to be superseded by consciously planned and rationally comprehended cooperation. Furthermore, Marx’s thought is radically historical in the sense of focusing on a necessary process of the unfolding of an essence, which occurs through crises and the emergence of antagonisms. This historical and social understanding of the species being is accompanied by the idea of the unity of matter and mind, which goes back to Hess. Marx views the human being as a part of nature that lives in and on it. At the same time, in the course of the self-realization of the species nature converges on the inorganic body of species being, transformed and appropriated by human agency; Marx regards society as ‘the complete unity of man with nature’ (Manuscripts, 298).

  The metaphysical implications of Marx’s theory of species being can be assigned to three subject areas: essentialism, the social ontological relationships inherent therein, and the historico-philosophical dimension.

  8.3.3.1 Essentialism

  The Marxian conceptions of species being and estrangement cannot be formulated without devising an essentialism that allows a distinction between the essential and inessential properties of entities. With regard to an entity that changes over time, such as the human species being, one can in addition distinguish between potential and actual properties. If A does not actually exhibit an essential property at a given point of time, then it has this property potentially, as it belongs to A’s essence. It is part of the human species being to have a concept of its own essence. Estrangement in the spheres of social and material realization involves false or distorted self-interpretations, which are also forms of estrangement. The two dimensions of estrangement are mutually dependent: false self-interpretations can lead to spurious social relationships (or at least stabilize them), and spurious social conditions evoke flawed self-interpretations.

  Many interpret this anthropology as an ethical theory according to which the realization of the essence of the human being is immediately an ethically significant good. However, Marx does not explicitly commit to this Aristotelian principle. If essentialism could not be decoupled from ethical validity claims, his conception of estrangement would indeed commit him to an ethical theory. But there are two variants of essentialism that carry no ethical implication. A historico-philosophical essentialism conceives of historical processes as realizations of the essential properties of entities across time. Such a theory must be grounded in general metaphysical premises, but it does not necessarily require ethical premises. Scientistic essentialism is also free of ethical assumption if it is based on the purely ontological and methodological claim that the natural sciences can shed light on real things and their essential properties. These two forms of essentialism obviously fit in very well with some tendencies in Marx’s thought (Meikle 1985). Thus the interpretation of Marx’s conceptions of species being and estrangement in terms of an Aristotelian ethics is not without alternatives. As we will see in the following section, the Marxian conception contains other conceptual resources that render an ethical interpretation plausible.

  8.3.3.2 The social ontological model

  The reference to the human species being inevitably raises the question of the relation between species and specimen that is associated with the conception at hand. In his account of estrangement, this relation is what is at issue in the distinction between the third and fourth dimensions of estrangement, and in light of a contemporary debate, Marx had reason to turn to this problem.

  In 1844 Stirner, Feuerbach, Bauer, and Hess quarrelled about the appropriate relationship between species and individual; the German Ideology was intended as a contribution to this debate because Stirner’s two-tiered critique also applies to the conception presented in the Manuscripts. First, Stirner shows that Feuerbach’s anthropology, Bauer’s theory of self-consciousness, and the conceptions of history and the social advocated in socialism are all still idealistic, and that they thereby fall behind their own aspirations. This he assumes to be evident from the fact that, secondly, all these conceptions introduce an item that transcends the human individual: the human being qua species, self-consciousness qua universa
l, or the social community. Stirner holds that contrary to the self-understanding and the intentions of Feuerbach, Bauer, or Hess this leads to tutelage of the individual, to heteronomy and oppression. The single, unique, and autonomous human individual (Stirner’s ‘Ego’) would then be a mere instance or specimen whose norm of existence is prescribed to him.

  8.3.3.3 Philosophy of history

  In his work The Ego and His Own, Stirner rejects any philosophy of history as ethically unacceptable. He maintains that the single individual could be subsumed under the species on behalf of a philosophically justified progress that aims at the realization of the species’ essence in the distant future. One could even ignore the objectively justified critique voiced by individuals against factually given social structures by pointing to the necessity of historical progression. There are evident dangers in a philosophy of history that justifies, accepts, or even arouses present suffering and misery in anticipation of a bright future. These dangers also confront Marx with a significant problem, for history is ineliminably incorporated in his conceptions of estrangement and species being. This necessity results from the objectification model of action, which also guides Marx’s account of the acquisition of knowledge and self-knowledge. In the background is the essentialist premise according to which the human species being aims at a self-realization that due to the universal character of the human being includes the insight into its own essence (Wood 1981). But in so far as the human being can only have insight into his own essence if he actively externalizes it and thus makes it an object for itself, externalization is a necessary part of self-realization. At the same time, this necessarily opens up the possibility that this externalization will turn into estrangement if the adequate self-realization and self-knowledge through externalization is unsuccessful.