I have already given notice in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucherof the critique of jurisprudence and political science in the form ofa critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right. In the course ofelaboration for publication, the intermingling of criticism directedonly against speculation with criticism of the various subjectsthemselves proved utterly unsuitable, hampering the development ofthe argument and rendering comprehension difficult. Moreover thewealth and diversity of the subjects to be treated, could have beencompressed into one work only in a purely aphoristic style;whilst an aphoristic presentation of this kind, for its part, wouldhave given the impression of arbitrary systematizing. I shalltherefore issue the critique of law, ethics, politics, etc., in aseries of distinct, independent pamphlets, and at the end try in aspecial work to present them again as a connected whole showing theinterrelationship of the separate parts, and finally, shall make acritique of the speculative elaboration of that material. For thisreason it will be found that the interconnection between politicaleconomy and the state, law, ethics, civil life, etc., is touched onin the present work only to the extent to which political economyitself ex professo [1] touches on these subjects.
It is hardly necessary to assure the reader conversant withpolitical economy that my results have been won by means of a whollyempirical analysis based on a conscientious critical study ofpolitical economy.
[Whereas the uninformed reviewer who tries to hide his completeignorance and intellectual poverty by hurling the "utopianphrase" at the positive critic's head, or again such phrases as"pure, resolute, utterly critical criticism," the "not merely legalbut Social--utterly social--society," the "compact, massy mass," the"oratorical orators of the masse mass," [2] this reviewer has yet tofurnish the first proof that besides his theological family-affairshe has anything to contribute to a discussion of worldlymatters.] [3]
It goes without saving that besides the French and EnglishSocialists I have made use of German socialist works as well. Theonly original German works of substance in this science, however--other than Weitling's writings--are the essays by Hess published inEinundzwanzig Bogen, [4] and Engels' Umrisse zu einerKritik der Nationalokonomie [5] in the Deutsch-FranzosischeJahrbucher where, likewise, I indicated in a very general way thebasic elements of this work.
[Besides being indebted to these authors who have given criticalattention to political economy, positive criticism as a whole--andtherefore also German positive criticism of political economy-- owesits true foundation to the discoveries of Feuerbach, againstwhose Philosophie der Zukunft [6] and Thesen zur Reform derPhilosophie [7] in the Anecdotis, [8] despite the tacituse that is made of them, the petty envy of some and the veritablewrath of others seem to have instigated a regular conspiracy ofsilence.]
It is only with Feuerbach that positive, humanisticand naturalistic criticism begins. The less noise they make, the morecertain, profound, widespread and enduring is the effect ofFeuerbach's writings, the only writings since Hegel'sPhanomenologie and Logik to contain a real theoreticalrevolution.
In contrast to the critical theologians [9] of our day, Ihave deemed the concluding chapter of the present work--the settlingof accounts with Hegelian dialectic and Hegelian philosophy asa whole--to be absolutely necessary, a task not yet performed. Thislack of thoroughness is not accidental, since even the criticaltheologian remains a theologian. Hence, either he had tostart from certain presuppositions of philosophy accepted asauthoritative; or if in the process of criticism and as a result ofother people's discoveries doubts about these philosophicalpresuppositions have arisen in him, he abandons them withoutvindication and in a cowardly fashion, abstracts from themshowing his servile dependence on these presuppositions and hisresentment at this dependence merely in a negative, unconscious andsophistical manner.
[In this connection the critical theologian is either foreverrepeating assurances about the purity of his own criticism, ortries to make it seem as though all that was left for criticism todeal with now was some other immature form of criticism outsideitself--say eighteenth-century criticism--and the backwardness of themasses, in order to divert the observer's attention as well ashis own from the necessary task of settling accounts betweencriticism and its point of origin--Hegelian dialectic andGerman philosophy as a whole--from this necessary raising of moderncriticism above its own limitation and crudity. Eventually, however,whenever discoveries (such as Feuerbach's) are made about thenature of his own philosophic presuppositions, the criticaltheologian partly makes it appear as if he were the one who hadaccomplished this, producing that appearance by taking the results ofthese discoveries and, without being able to develop them, hurlingthem in the form of catch-phrases at writers still caught inthe confines of philosophy; partly he even manages to acquire a senseof his own superiority to such discoveries by covertly asserting in aveiled, malicious and sceptical fashion elements of the Hegeliandialectic which he still finds lacking in the criticism ofthat dialectic (which have not yet been critically served up to himfor his use) against such criticism--not having tried to bring suchelements into their proper relation or having been capable of doingso, asserting, say, the category of mediating proof against thecategory of positive, self-originating truth, etc., in a waypeculiar to Hegelian dialectic. For to the theological criticit seems quite natural that everything has to be done byphilosophy, so that he can chatter away about purity,resoluteness, and utterly critical criticism; and he fancies himselfthe true conqueror of philosophy whenever he happens tofeel some "moment" in Hegel [10] to be lacking inFeuerbach--for however much he practises the spiritual idolatry of"self-consciousness" and "mind" the theological criticdoes not get beyond feeling to consciousness.] [11]
On close inspection theological criticism--genuinelyprogressive though it was at the inception of the movement--is seenin the final analysis to be nothing but the culmination andconsequence of the old philosophical, and especially theHegelian, transcendentalism, twisted into a theologicalcaricature. This interesting example of the justice in history,which now assigns to theology, ever philosophy's spot of infection,the further role of portraying in itself the negative dissolution ofphilosophy--i.e., the process of its decay--this historical nemesis Ishall demonstrate on another occasion.
[How far, on the other hand, Feuerbach's discoveries aboutthe nature of philosophy required still, for their proof at least, acritical settling of accounts with philosophical dialectic will beseen from my exposition itself.]
We have proceeded from the premises of political economy. We haveaccepted its language and its laws. We presupposed private property,the separation of labour, capital and land, and of wages, profit ofcapital and rent of land--likewise division of labour, competition,the concept of exchange-value, etc. On the basis of political economyitself, in its own words, we have shown that the worker sinks to thelevel of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched ofcommodities; that the wretchedness of the worker is in inverseproportion to the power and magnitude of his production; that thenecessary result of competition is the accumulation of capital in afew hands, and thus the restoration of monopoly in a more terribleform; that finally the distinction between capitalist andland-rentier, like that between the tiller of the soil and thefactory-worker, disappears and that the whole of society must fallapart into the two classes--the property-owners and thepropertyless workers.
Political economy proceeds from the fact of private property, butit does not explain it to us. It expresses in general, abstractformulae the material process through which private propertyactually passes, and these formulae it then takes for laws. Itdoes not comprehend these laws-- i.e., it does not demonstratehow they arise from the very nature of private property. Politicaleconomy does not disclose the source of the division between labourand capital, and between capital and land. When, for example, itdefines the relationship of wages to profit, it takes the interest ofthe capitalists to be the ultimate cause; i.e., it takes for grantedwhat it is supposed to evolve. Similarly, competition comes ineverywhere. It is explained from external circumstances. As to howfar these external and apparently fortuitous circumstances are butthe expression of a necessary course of development, politicaleconomy teaches us nothing. We have seen how, to it, exchange itselfappears to be a fortuitous fact. The only wheels which politicaleconomy sets in motion are avarice and the war amongst theavaricious-- competition.
Precisely because political economy does not grasp the connectionswithin the movement, it was possible to counterpose, for instance,the doctrine of competition to the doctrine of monopoly, the doctrineof craft-liberty to the doctrine of the corporation, the doctrine ofthe division of landed property to the doctrine of the bigestate--for competition, craft-liberty and the division of landedproperty were explained and comprehended only as fortuitous,premeditated and violent consequences of monopoly, the corporation,and feudal property, not as their necessary, inevitable and naturalconsequences .
Now., therefore, we have to grasp the essential connection betweenprivate property, avarice, and the separation of labour, capital andlanded property; between exchange and competition, value and thedevaluation of men, monopoly and competition, etc.; the connectionbetween this whole estrangement and the money-system.
Do not let us go back to a fictitious primordial condition as thepolitical economist does, when he tries to explain. Such a primordialcondition explains nothing. He merely pushes the question away into agrey nebulous distance. He assumes in the form of fact, of an event,what he is supposed to deduce--namely, the necessary relationshipbetween two things--between, for example, division of labour andexchange. Theology in the same way explains the origin of evil by thefall of man: that is, it assumes as a fact, in historical form, whathas to be explained.
We proceed from an actual economic fact.
The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, themore his production increases in power and range. The worker becomesan ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. With theincreasing value of the world of things proceeds in directproportion the devaluation of the world of men. Labourproduces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as acommodity--and does so in the proportion in which it producescommodities generally.
This fact expresses merely that the object which labourproduces--labour's product--confronts it as something alien,as a power independent of the producer. The product of labouris labour which has been congealed in an object, which has becomematerial: it is the objectification of labour. Labour'srealization is its objectification. In the conditions dealt with bypolitical economy this realization of labour appears as loss ofreality for the workers; objectification as loss of theobject and object-bondage; appropriation asestrangement, as alienation. [13]
So much does labour's realization appear as loss of reality thatthe worker loses reality to the point of starving to death. So muchdoes objectification appear as loss of the object that the worker isrobbed of the objects most necessary not only for his life but forhis work. Indeed, labour itself becomes an object which he can gethold of only with the greatest effort and with the most irregularinterruptions. So much does the appropriation of the object appear asestrangement that the more objects the worker produces the fewer canhe possess and the more he falls under the dominion of his product,capital.
All these consequences are contained in the definition that theworker is related to the product of his labour as to an alienobject. For on this premise it is clear that the more the workerspends himself, the more powerful the alien objective world becomeswhich he creates over-against himself, the poorer he himself--hisinner world--becomes, the less belongs to him as his own. It is thesame in religion. The more man puts into God, the less he retains inhimself. The worker puts his life into the object; but now his lifeno longer belongs to him but to the object. Hence, the greater thisactivity the greater is the worker's lack of objects. Whatever theproduct of his labour is, he is not. Therefore the greater thisproduct, the less is he himself. The alienation of the workerin his product means not only that his labour becomes an object, anexternal existence, but that it exists outside him,independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a powerof its own confronting him; it means that the life which he hasconferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien.
Let us now look more closely at the objectification, at theproduction of the worker; and therein at the estrangement, theloss of the object, his product.
The worker can create nothing without nature, without thesensuous external world. It is the material on which his laboris manifested, in which it is active, from which and by means ofwhich it produces.
But just as nature provides labor with the means of life inthe sense that labour cannot live without objects on which tooperate, on the other hand, it also provides the means of lifein the more restricted sense--i.e., the means for the physicalsubsistence of the worker himself.
Thus the more the worker by his labour appropriates theexternal world, sensuous nature, the more he deprives himself ofmeans of life in the double respect: first, that the sensuousexternal world more and more ceases to be an object belonging to hislabour--to be his labour's means of life; and secondly, thatit more and more ceases to be means of life in the immediatesense, means for the physical subsistence of the worker.
Thus in this double respect the worker becomes a slave of hisobject, first, in that he receives an object of labour, i.e.,in that he receives work; and secondly, in that he receivesmeans of subsistence. Therefore, it enables him to exist,first, as a worker; and, second, as a physical subject. Theextremity of this bondage is that it is only as a worker that hecontinues to maintain himself as a physical subject, and thatit is only as a physical subject that he is a worker.
(The laws of political economy express the estrangement of theworker in his object thus: the more the worker produces, the less hehas to consume; the more values he creates, the more valueless, themore unworthy he becomes; the better formed his product, the moredeformed becomes the worker; the more civilized his object, the morebarbarous becomes the worker; the mightier labour becomes, the morepowerless becomes the worker; the more ingenious labour becomes, theduller becomes the worker and the more he becomes nature's bondsman.)
Political economy conceals the estrangement inherent in thenature of labour by not considering the direct relationship betweenthe worker (labour) and production. It is true that labourproduces for the rich wonderful things--but for the worker itproduces privation. It produces palaces--but for the worker, hovels.It produces beauty--but for the worker, deformity. It replaces labourby machines--but some of the workers it throws back to a barbaroustype of labour, and the other workers it turns into machines. Itproduces intelligence--but for the worker idiocy, cretinism.
The direct relationship of labour to its produce is therelationship of the worker to the objects of his production. Therelationship of the man of means to the objects of production and toproduction itself is only a consequence of this firstrelationship--and confirms it. We shall consider this other aspectlater.
When we ask, then, what is the essential relationship of labour weare asking about the relationship of the worker to production.
Till now we have been considering the estrangement, the alienationof the worker only in one of its aspects, i.e., the worker'srelationship to the products of his labour. But theestrangement is manifested not only in the result but in the actof production-- within the producing activity itself. Howwould the worker come to face the product of his activity as astranger, were it not that in the very act of production he wasestranging himself from himself? The product is after all but thesummary of the activity of production. If then the product of labouris alienation, production itself must be active alienation, thealienation of activity, the activity of alienation. In theestrangement of the object of labour is merely summarized theestrangement, the alienation, in the activity of labour itself.
What, then, constitutes the alienation of labour?
First, the fact that labour is external to the worker,i.e., it does not belong to his essential being; that in his work,therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does notfeel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical andmental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The workertherefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feelsoutside himself. He is at home when he is not working, and when he isworking he is not at home. His labour is therefore not voluntary, butcoerced; it is forced labour. It is therefore not thesatisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needsexternal to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact thatas soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labour is shunnedlike the plague. External labour, labour in which man alienateshimself, is a labour of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, theexternal character of labour for the worker appears in the fact thatit is not his own, but someone else's, that it does not belong tohim, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another. Just asin religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of thehuman brain and the human heart, operates independently of theindividual--that is, operates on him as an alien, divine ordiabolical activity--in the same way the worker's activity is not hisspontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of hisself.
As a result, therefore, man (the worker) no longer feels himselfto be freely active in any but his animal functions--eating,drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up,etc.; and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to beanything but an animal. What is animal becomes human and what ishuman becomes animal.
Certainly eating, drinking, procreating, etc., are also genuinelyhuman functions. But in the abstraction which separates them from thesphere of all other human activity and turns them into sole andultimate ends, they are animal.
We have considered the act of estranging practical human activity,labour, in two of its aspects. (1) The relation of the worker to theproduct of labour as an alien object exercising power overhim. This relation is at the same time the relation to the sensuousexternal world, to the objects of nature as an alien worldantagonistically opposed to him. (2) The relation of labour to theact of production within the labour process. Thisrelation is the relation of the worker to his own activity asan alien activity not belonging to him; it is activity as suffering,strength as weakness, begetting as emasculating, the worker's ownphysical and mental energy, his personal life or what is life otherthan activity--as an activity which is turned against him, neitherdepends on nor belongs to him. Here we have self-estrangement,as we had previously the estrangement of the thing.
We have yet a third aspect of estranged labour to deducefrom the two already considered.
Man is a species being, not only because in practice and in theoryhe adopts the species as his object (his own as well as those ofother things), but--and this is only another way of expressingit--but also because he treats himself as the actual, living species;because he treats himself as a universal and therefore a freebeing.
The life of the species, both in man and in animals, consistsphysically in the fact that man (like the animal) lives on inorganicnature; and the more universal man is compared with an animal, themore universal is the sphere of inorganic nature on which he lives.Just as plants, animals, stones, the air, light, etc., constitute apart of human consciousness in the realm of theory, partly as objectsof natural science, partly as objects of art--his spiritual inorganicnature, spiritual nourishment which he must first prepare to make itpalatable and digestible--so too in the realm of practice theyconstitute a part of human life and human activity. Physically manlives only on these products of nature, whether they appear in theform of food, heating, clothes, a dwelling, or whatever it may be.The universality of man is in practice manifested precisely in theuniversality which makes all nature his inorganic body--bothinasmuch as nature is (1) his direct means of life, and (2) thematerial, the object, and the instrument of his life-activity. Natureis man's inorganic body--nature, that is, in so far as it isnot itself the human body. Man lives on nature--means thatnature is his body, with which he must remain in continuousintercourse if he is not to die. That man's physical and spirituallife is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked toitself, for man is a part of nature.
In estranging from man (1) nature, and (2) himself, his own activefunctions, his life-activity, estranged labour estranges thespecies from man. It turns for him the life of thespecies into a means of individual life. First it estranges thelife of the species and individual life, and secondly it makesindividual life in its abstract form the purpose of the life of thespecies, likewise in its abstract and estranged form.
For in the first place labour, life-activity, productivelife itself, appears to man merely as a means ofsatisfying a need--the need to maintain the physical existence. Yetthe productive life is the life of the species. It islife-engendering life. The whole character of a species--its speciescharacter--is contained in the character of its life-activity; andfree, conscious activity is man's species character. Life itselfappears only as a means to life.
The animal is immediately identical with its life-activity. Itdoes not distinguish itself from it. It is its life-activity.Man makes his life-activity itself the object of his will and of hisconsciousness. He has conscious life-activity. It is not adetermination with which he directly merges. Conscious life-activitydirectly distinguishes man from animal life-activity. It is justbecause of this that he is a species being. Or it is only because heis a species being that he is a Conscious Being, i.e., that his ownlife is an object for him. Only because of that is his activity freeactivity. Estranged labour reverses this relationship, so that it isjust because man is a conscious being that he makes hislife-activity, his essential being, a mere means to hisexistence.
In creating an objective world by his practical activity,in working-up inorganic nature, man proves himself a consciousspecies being, i.e., as a being that treats the species as its ownessential being, or that treats itself as a species being. Admittedlyanimals also produce. They build themselves nests, dwellings, likethe bees, beavers, ants, etc. But an animal only produces what itimmediately needs for itself or its young. It produces one-sidedly,whilst man produces universally. It produces only under the dominionof immediate physical need, whilst man produces even when he is freefrom physical need and only truly produces in freedom therefrom. Ananimal produces only itself, whilst man reproduces the whole ofnature. An animal's product belongs immediately to its physical body,whilst man freely confronts his product. An animal forms things inaccordance with the standard and the need of the species to which itbelongs, whilst man knows how to produce in accordance with thestandard of every species, and knows how to apply everywhere theinherent standard to the object. Man therefore also forms things inaccordance with the laws of beauty.
It is just in the working-up of the objective world, therefore,that man first really proves himself to be a species being.This production is his active species life. Through and because ofthis production, nature appears as his work and his reality.The object of labour is, therefore, the objectification of man'sspecies life: for he duplicates himself not only, as inconsciousness, intellectually but also actively, in reality, andtherefore he contemplates himself in a world that he has created. Intearing away from man the object of his production, therefore,estranged labour tears from him his species life, his realspecies objectivity, and transforms his advantage over animals intothe disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him.
Similarly, in degrading spontaneous activity, free activity, to ameans, estranged labour makes man's species life a means to hisphysical existence.
The consciousness which man has of his species is thus transformedby estrangement in such a way that the species life becomes for him ameans.
Estranged labour turns thus:
(3) Man's species being, both nature and his spiritualspecies property, into a being alien to him, into ameans to his individual existence. It estranges man'sown body from him, as it does external nature and his spiritualessence, his human being.
(4) An immediate consequence of the fact that man is estrangedfrom the product of his labour, from his life-activity, from hisspecies being is the estrangement of man from man. If a man isconfronted by himself, he is confronted by the other man. Whatapplies to a man's relation to his work, to the product of his labourand to himself, also holds of a man's relation to the other man, andto the other man's labour and object of labour.
In fact, the proposition that man's species nature is estrangedfrom him means that one man is estranged from the other, as each ofthem is from man's essential nature. [14]
The estrangement of man, and in fact every relationship in whichman stands to himself, is first realized and expressed in therelationship in which a man stands to other men.
Hence within the relationship of estranged labour each man viewsthe other in accordance with the standard and the position in whichhe finds himself as a worker.
We took our departure from a fact of political economy--theestrangement of the worker and his production. We have formulated theconcept of this fact--estranged, alienated labour. We haveanalysed this concept--hence analysing merely a fact of politicaleconomy.
Let us now see, further, how in real life the concept ofestranged, alienated labour must express and present itself.
If the product of labour is alien to me, if it confronts me as analien power, to whom, then, does it belong?
If my own activity does not belong to me, if it is an alien, acoerced activity, to whom, then, does it belong?
To a being other than me.
Who is this being?
The gods? To be sure, in the earliest times the principalproduction (for example, the building of temples, etc., in Egypt,India and Mexico) appears to be in the service of the gods, and theproduct belongs to the gods. However, the gods on their own werenever the lords of labour. No more was nature. And what acontradiction it would be if, the more man subjugated nature by hislabour and the more the miracles of the gods were renderedsuperfluous by the miracles of industry, the more man were torenounce the joy of production and the enjoyment of the produce infavour of these powers.
The alien being, to whom labour and the produce of labourbelongs, in whose service labour is done and for whose benefit theproduce of labour is provided, can only be man himself.
If the product of labour does not belong to the worker, if itconfronts him as an alien power, this can only be because it belongsto some other man than the worker. If the worker's activity isa torment to him, to another it must be delight and his life'sjoy. Not the gods, not nature, but only man himself can be this alienpower over man.
We must bear in mind the above-stated proposition that man'srelation to himself only becomes objective and real forhim through his relation to the other man. Thus, if the product ofhis labour, his labour objectified, is for him an alien,hostile, powerful object independent of him, then his positiontowards it is such that someone else is master of this object,someone who is alien, hostile, powerful, and independent of him. Ifhis own activity is to him an unfree activity, then he is treating itas activity performed in the service, under the dominion, thecoercion and the yoke of another man.
Every self-estrangement of man from himself and from natureappears in the relation in which he places himself and nature to menother than and differentiated from himself. For this reason religiousself-estrangement necessarily appears in the relationship of thelayman to the priest, or again to a mediator, etc., since we are heredealing with the intellectual world. In the real practical worldself-estrangement can only become manifest through the real practicalrelationship to other men. The medium through which estrangementtakes place is itself practical. Thus through estranged labourman not only engenders his relationship to the object and to the actof production as to powers that are alien and hostile to him; he alsoengenders the relationship in which other men stand to his productionand to his product, and the relationship in which he stands to theseother men. Just as he begets his own production as the loss of hisreality, as his punishment; just as he begets his own product as aloss, as a product not belonging to him; so he begets the dominion ofthe one who does not produce over production and over the product.Just as he estranges from himself his own activity, so he confers tothe stranger activity which is not his own.
Till now we have only considered this relationship from thestandpoint of the worker and later we shall be considering it alsofrom the standpoint of the non-worker.
Through estranged, alienated labour, then, the workerproduces the relationship to this labour of a man alien to labour andstanding outside it. The relationship of the worker to labourengenders the relation to it of the capitalist, or whatever onechooses to call the master of labour. Private property is thusthe product, the result, the necessary consequence, of alienatedlabour, of the external relation of the worker to nature and tohimself.
Private property thus results by analysis from the conceptof alienated labour--i.e., of alienated man, ofestranged labour, of estranged life, of estranged man.
True, it is as a result of the movement of private propertythat we have obtained the concept of alienated labour (ofalienated life) from political economy. But on analysis of thisconcept it becomes clear that though private property appears to bethe source, the cause of alienated labour, it is really itsconsequence, just as the gods in the beginning are not thecause but the effect of man's intellectual confusion. Later thisrelationship becomes reciprocal.
Only at the very culmination of the development of privateproperty does this, its secret, re-emerge, namely, that on the onehand it is the product of alienated labour, and that secondlyit is the means by which labour alienates itself, therealization of this alienation.
This exposition immediately sheds light on various hithertounsolved conflicts.
(1) Political economy starts from labour as the real soul ofproduction; yet to labour it gives nothing, and to private propertyeverything. From this contradiction Proudhon has concluded in favourof labour and against private property. We understand, however, thatthis apparent contradiction is the contradiction of estrangedlabour with itself, and that political economy has merelyformulated the laws of estranged labour.
We also understand, therefore, that wages and privateproperty are identical: where the product, the object of labourpays for labour itself, the wage is but a necessary consequence oflabour's estrangement, for after all in the wage of labour, labourdoes not appear as an end in itself but as the servant of the wage.We shall develop this point later, and meanwhile will only deducesome conclusions.
A forcing-up of wages (disregarding all other difficulties,including the fact that it would only be by force, too, that thehigher wages, being an anomaly, could be maintained) would thereforebe nothing but better payment for the slave, and would notconquer either for the worker or for labour their human status anddignity.
Indeed, even the equality of wages demanded by Proudhononly transforms the relationship of the present-day worker to hislabour into the relationship of all men to labour. Society is thenconceived as an abstract capitalist.
Wages are a direct consequence of estranged labour, and estrangedlabour is the direct cause of private property. The downfall of theone aspect must therefore mean the downfall of the other.
(2) From the relationship of estranged labour to private propertyit further follows that the emancipation of society from privateproperty, etc., from servitude, is expressed in the politicalform of the emancipation of the workers; not that theiremancipation alone was at stake but because the emancipation of theworkers contains universal human emancipation--and it contains this,because the whole of human servitude is involved in the relation ofthe worker to production, and every relation of servitude is but amodification and consequence of this relation.
Just as we have found the concept of private property fromthe concept of estranged, alienated labour by analysis,in the same way every category of political economy can beevolved with the help of these two factors; and we shall find againin each category, e.g., trade, competition, capital, money, only adefinite and developed expression of the firstfoundations.
Before considering this configuration, however, let us try tosolve two problems.
(1) To define the general nature of private property, as ithas arisen as a result of estranged labour, in its relation totruly human, social property.
(2) We have accepted the estrangement of labour, itsalienation as a fact, and we have analysed this fact. How, we nowask, does man come to alienate, to estrange, hislabour? How is this estrangement rooted in the nature of humandevelopment? We have already gone a long way to the solution of thisproblem by transforming the question as to the origin ofprivate property into the question as to the relation ofalienated labour to the course of humanity's development. Forwhen one speaks of private property one thinks of beingconcerned with something external to man. When one speaks of labour,one is directly concerned with man himself. This new formulation ofthe question already contains its solution .
As to (1): The general nature of private property and itsrelation to truly human property.
Alienated labour has resolved itself for us into two elementswhich mutually condition one another, or which are but differentexpressions of one and the same relationship. Appropriationappears as estrangement, as alienation; andalienation appears as appropriation, estrangement astrue enfranchisement.
We have considered the one side--alienated labour inrelation to the worker himself, i.e., the relation ofalienated labour to itself. The property-relation of thenon-worker to the worker and to labour we have found as theproduct, the necessary outcome of this relation of alienated labour.Private property, as the material, summary expression ofalienated labour, embraces both relations--the relation of theworker to work, to the product of his labour and to thenon-worker, and the relation of the non-worker to the workerand to the product of his labour.
Having seen that in relation to the worker who appropriatesnature by means of his labour, this appropriation appears asestrangement, his own spontaneous activity as activity for anotherand as activity of another, vitality as a sacrifice of life,production of the object as loss of the object to an alien power, toan alien person--we shall now consider the relation to theworker, to labour and its object of this person who is aliento labour and the worker.
First it has to be noticed, that everything which appears in theworker as an activity of alienation, of estrangement, appearsin the non-worker as a state of alienation, of estrangement.
Secondly, that the worker's real, practical attitude inproduction and to the product (as a state of mind) appears in thenon-worker confronting him as a theoretical attitude.
Thirdly, the non-worker does everything against the workerwhich the worker does against himself; but he does not do againsthimself what he does against the worker.
Let us look more closely at these three relations. [15]
ENDNOTES
1. Particularly.
2. Marx refers here to the Young Hegelian Bruno Bauer, who hadpublished in Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung two long reviewsdealing with books, articles and pamphlets on the Jewish question.Most of the quoted phrases are taken from these reviews inAllgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, vol. 1, December, 1843; vol. 4,March, 1844. The expressions "utopian phrase" and "compact mass" canbe found in Bauer's article "Was ist jetzt der Gegenstand derKritik?" published in Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, vol. 8,July, 1844.
Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (General Literary Gazette), aGerman monthly, was published by Bauer in Charlottenburg fromDecember, 1843, to October, 1844.
3. Passages enclosed in brackets were crossed out by Marx in hismanuscript.
4. The full title of this collection of articles isEinundzwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz (Twenty-One Sheets fromSwitzerland), Erster Teil, Zurich and Winterthur, 1843.
5. Engels' "Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy."
6. Ludwig Feuerbach, Grundsatze der Philosophie der Zukunft(Principles of the Philosophy of the Future), Zurich andWinterthur, 1843.
7. Ludwig Feuerbach, Vorlaufige Thesen zur Reformation derPhilosophie (Preliminary Theses on the Reformatlon of Philosophy)published in Anekdota, vol. II.
8. Marx's abbreviation for Anekdota zur neuesten deutschenPhilosophie und Publicistik (Unpublished Materials Related to ModernGerman Philosophy and Writing), a two-volume collection publishedby Arnold Ruge in Switzerland. It included Marx's Notes on theLatest Prussian Instruction to Censors and Luther--the ArbiterBetween Strauss and Feuerbach, and articles by Bruno Bauer,Ludwig Feuerbach, Friedrich Koppen, Arnold Ruge, etc.
9. Marx has in mind Bauer and his followers, who were associatedwith the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung.
10. "Moment" is a technical term in Hegelian philosophy meaning avital element of thought. The term is used to stress that thought isa process, and thus that elements in a system of thought are alsophases in a movement.
11. In Hegel, "feeling" (Empfindung) denotes a relativelylow form of mental life in which the subjective and the objective arestill confused together.
" Consciousness" (Bewusstein)--the name given by Hegel tothe first major section of his Phenomenology of Mind--denotesthose forms of mental activity where a subject first seeks tocomprehend an object. "Self-consciousness" and "mind" denotesubsequent higher phases in the evolution of "absolute knowledge" or"the absolute."
12. Die Entfremdete Arbeit. See the Note on Texts andTerminology, p. xli, above, for a discussion of this term. [R. T.]
13. "Alienation"--Entausserung.
14. "Species nature" (and, earlier, "speciesbeing")--Gattungswesen: "man's essential nature"--menschlichen Wesen.
15. At this point the first manuscript breaks off unfinished.
