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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
In Marx's writings there is a notion of “nature” as applied to man, which is not the notion ordinarily imputed to Marx. This notion is a more fundamental one and offers the possibility of a fresh analysis of certain aspects of Marx's theory on man and society. Up to now it has not been exploited by Marx's American commentators.
1 Certain French commentators, notably J.-Y. Calvez and H. Lefebvre, have exposed the notion. Nevertheless, this paper owes much to the work of American scholars. In addition to the titles cited in the notes below, the following works, were especially helpful: Bober, M., Karl Marx's Interpretation of History (2nd ed.; New York, 1965)Google Scholar; Hook, S., From Hegel to Marx (Ann Arbor, 1962)Google Scholar; Lichtheim, G., Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study (New York, 1961)Google Scholar; Marcuse, H., Reason and Revolution (2nd ed.; New York, 1954)Google Scholar; Venable, V., Human Nature: The Marxian View (London, 1946)Google Scholar.
2 Scholarly references to Marx's works are ordinarily to the standard German language edition: Karl Marx-Friedrich Engels Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Rjazanov, and Adoratsky, (Moscow & Berlin, 1927–1932)Google Scholar, usually cited as MEGA; reedition by Dietz Verlag (Berlin, 1953). For the benefit of the general reader references here will be to readily available English renditions of Marx's writings. For Marx's bibliography, see Rubel, M., Bibliographie des Oeuvres de Karl Marx (Paris, 1958)Google Scholar; and Supplément à la Bibliographie des Oeuvres de Karl Marx (Paris, 1960)Google Scholar. On the MEGA, see also Hertel, G., Inhaltsuergleichsregister der Marx-Engels Gesamtausgaben (Berlin, 1957)Google Scholar.
3 The Holy Family, translated. Dixon, (Moscow, 1956), p. 201Google Scholar.
4 Capital, translated. Moore, & Aveling, , ed. Engels, (Chicago, 1932), I, 197–198Google Scholar. ”Labor” and “production” are sometimes used interchangeably by Marx, , as in Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, translated. Cohen, (New York, 1965), p. 95Google Scholar. This latter work is a translation of part of a large manuscript composed by Marx, in 1857–58 in preparation for his writing of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)Google Scholar and Capital (Vol. I, 1867)Google Scholar. The manuscript was first published in Moscow by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute (1939–41) under the title Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, Rohentwurf; it is usually cited as Grundrisse. The edition available to Western scholars is that of Dietz Verlag (Berlin, 1953). On the Grundrisse, see esp. Rubel, M., “Contribution à l'histoire de la genèse du Capital: Les manuscrits économico-politiques de Karl Marx (1857–58),” Revue d'Histoire Economique et Sociale, XXVIII (1950), 169–185Google Scholar; and “Fragments sociologiques dans les inedits de Marx,” Cahiers International de Sociologie, XXII (1957), 128–146Google Scholar.
5 Wage-Labour and Capital, translated. Anon. (New York, 1933), p. 31Google Scholar.
6 Capital, I, 49–50; cf. The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, translated. Milligan, , ed. Struik, (New York, 1964), p. 112Google Scholar; hereafter cited as 1844 Manuscripts.
7 See esp. Capital, I, 197 ff.; The German Ideology, ed. Pascal, (New York, 1965), pp. 16 ffGoogle Scholar.
8 In addition to the pages of Capital just cited, see also Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, pp. 71, 81; Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, translated. Stone, (Chicago, 1904), p. 269Google Scholar; hereafter cited as Introduction.
9 1844 Manuscripts, p. 109.
10 Capital, I, 199–200.
11 1844 Manuscripts, p. 112.
12 Wage-Labour and Capital, p. 28.
13 Introduction, pp. 268, 265–266; and Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, p. 96, on the “stupidity” of taking the “isolated man” as point of departure in analyses of social-economic forms.
14 Capital, I, 199–200; cf. The German Ideology, pp. 16–17, where Marx states that the satisfaction of a need through productive activity “… implies … the acquisition of an instrument.”
15 Meyer, A. G., Marxism: The Unity of Theory and Praxis (Ann Arbor, 1963), pp. 24 ffGoogle Scholar.
16 The German Ideology, p. 7.
17 See, for example, Capital, I, 200; Introduction, p. 268; 1844 Manuscripts, pp. 112 ff.
18 Capital, I, 198.
19 1844 Manuscripts, p. 113.
20 The German Ideology, p. 7; on “use-values,” see Capital, I, 41 ff., 201.
21 Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, p. 95.
22 The German Ideology, p. 7.
23 On production as aimed at the satisfaction of needs other than physical needs, see Capital, I, 41–42 and notes.
24 The German Ideology, p. 28: “Our conception of history depends on our ability to expound the real process of production, starting out from the simple material production of life, and to comprehend the form of intercourse connected with this and created by this (thai is, civil society in its various stages), as the basis of all history”; also, ibid., pp. 18–19.
25 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 13; The German Ideology, pp. 9–13; the notion of history as the progressive dissolution of a primitive property-relation is a principal theme of Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, which also contains a treatment of the different epochal modes of production. In the last analysis all of these ways of describing the evolution of production reduce to different aspects of one historical process.
26 Ibid., p. 114. On the notion of “species being” (Gattungswesen), see Anon. (Moscow, n.d.), esp. pp. 100–111, and the appended letter of Dec. 28, 1846 to P. V. Annenkov, pp. 171 ff.; The Holy Family, esp. p. 201.
27 Capital, I, 198.
28 The German Ideology, p. 17.
29 Ibid., p. 19.
30 1844 Manuscripts, p. 114.
31 Ibid., pp. 137, 141.
32 Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, p. 86.
33 See Capital, I, 199 ff.; especially, 202: “With the exception of the extractive industry (which finds its object ready made in nature, as do mining, hunting, fishing, and agriculture when this is carried on in virgin soil), all branches of industry deal with a Gegenstand which is already filtered through earlier labour, is already a product of labour, an object which we term raw material … Animals and plants which we are apt to regard as natural products may not merely be the products of last year's labour, but the result of a gradual transformation which has been going on through many generations, under human control and aided by human labour.” These lines express not only the notion of a progressive interposition of man's own products between himself and raw nature, as a feature of the historical development of production, but also Marx's distinction between what is “natural” (naturwüchsig) and what is under human control. He also utilized this distinction in regard to the development of forms of society and the division of labor; see The German Ideology, p. 20, and editor's note 12, p. 201; also Korsch, Karl, Karl Marx (New York, 1963), pp. 193 ffGoogle Scholar.
34 1844 Manuscripts, p. 137.
35 Ibid., p. 177. Marx goes on immediately to criticize Hegel for recognizing only “abstract, mental labor.” He also criticized Hegel for conceiving of all objects as nothing other than products of the subject's creative activity. As we shall see, Marx conceived of “object” as being, first, that which is independent of the subject in its existence, and to which the subject is tendentially related. On the relationship of the theories of labor of Hegel and Marx, and the criticism of Hegel's theory by the latter, see Niel, H., “La philosophic du travail chez Hegel et chez Marx. Choix de textes,” Lumière Vie, no. 20 (1955), 23–48Google Scholar.
36 Ibid., p. 114. On the notion of “species being” (Gattungswesen), see ibid., pp. 112–113. Consciousness and freedom are essential to the “species being” of man; ibid., p. 113: “Man makes his life activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness. He has conscious life activity… Conscious life activity distinguishes man immediately from animal life activity. It is just because of this that he is a species being. Or rather, it is only because he is a species being that he is a conscious being, i.e., that his own life is an object for him. Only because of that is his activity free activity.”
37 The Poverty of Philosophy, translated. Quelch, (Chicago, 1910), p. 160Google Scholar.
38 As in The German Ideology, p. 7.
39 This is the usual sense in which Marx's notion of man's “nature” is understood; see, for example, Venable's book; Bober, , op. cit., pp. 77–81Google Scholar; Lewis, John, The Life and Teaching of Karl Marx (New York, 1965), pp. 72–73, 75, 78–79Google Scholar; Fromm, E., Marx's Concept of Man (New York, 1961), pp. 24–25Google Scholar, 78–79.
40 1844 Manuscripts, pp. 178, 180; also The Holy Family, p. 254: “Phenomenology is therefore quite logical when in the end it replaces human reality by ‘Absolute Knowledge’ — Knowledge, because this is the only mode of existence of self-consciousness, because self-consciousness is considered as the only mode of existence of man; absolute knowledge for the very reason that selfconsciousness knows itself alone and is no more disturbed by any objective world. Hegel makes man the man of self-consciousness instead of making self-consciousness the self-consciousness of man, of real man, man living in a real objective world and determined by that world. He stands the world on its head and can therefore dissolve in the head all the limitations which naturally remain in existence for evil sensuousness, for real man. Besides, everything which betrays the limitations of general self-consciousness — all sensuousness, reality, individuality of men and of their world — necessarily rates for him as a limit. The whole of Phenomenology is intended to prove that self-consciousness is the only reality and all reality.”
41 “Theses on Feuerbach,” in The German Ideology, Thesis I, p. 197.
42 Ibid., Thesis V, p. 198.
43 The German Ideology, pp. 35–37.
44 1844 Manuscripts, pp. 144, 180–181.
45 Ibid., p. 181.
46 Ibid., p. 165. Calvez, J.-Y. comments: “Cette présence du besoin en l'homme est la présence en lui d'une force substantielle, d'une intentionalité fondamentale qui le constitue, d'une dynamisrae natif qui soutient son être”; Le Pensée de Karl Marx (Paris, 1956), p. 384Google Scholar; on this point, see pp. 380–388; also the treatment in Lefebvre, H., Le Matérialisme Dialectique (Paris, 1957), pp. 98 ffGoogle Scholar.
47 Ibid., p. 181. In these early writings Marx called this view of man “naturalism.”
48 Capital, I, 197; Introduction, p. 279: “No wants, no production” (Ohne Bedürfnis Keine Produktion).
49 The German Ideology, pp. 16–17.
50 Ibid. and Capital, I, 204–205.
51 Ibid., 17; and Introduction, esp. pp. 278 ff., where the treatment is in terms of the relationship between “production” and “consumption.”
52 Ibid., p. 71.
53 Capital, translated. Untermann, , ed. Engels, (Chicago, 1909), III, 954Google Scholar; “Just as the savage must wrestle with nature, in order to satisfy his wants, in order to maintain his life and reproduce it, so civilized man has to do it, and he must do it in all forms of society and under all possible modes of production. With his development the realm of natural necessity expands, because his wants increase; but at the same time the forces of production increase, by which these wants are satisfied.”
54 Wage-Labour and Capital, p. 33.
55 Introduction, p. 279.
56 1844 Manuscripts, p. 165; speaking here about the “ontological” significance of needs, and referring to the “feelings” and “passions,” which are the affective manifestations of needs, Marx says: “they have by no means merely one mode of affirmation, but rather … the distinct character of their existence, of their life, is constituted by the distinct mode of their affirmation. In what manner the object exists for them, is the characteristic mode of their gratification.”
58 Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, pp. 84–85.
59 1844 Manuscripts, p. 147.
60 1844 Manuscripts, pp. 143–144. Regarding the reappearance of notions from Marx's early writings in the Grundrisse, M. Rubel writes: “Les matériaux contenus dans ces manuscrits sont intéressants à plus d'un titre. Outre qu'ils montrent, malgré leur forme prolixe et les nombreuses redites, le cheminement logico-théorique de la pensée économique de Marx, ils sont très riches en aperçus de tous ordres, historiques, sociologiques et éthiques. Ils présentent à maints endroits ce caractère de Selbsteverstaendigung, de ce besoin intime de clarté dont Marx a fait une maxime constante de son travail scientifique. Ils rappellent à beaucoup d'égards les manuscrits dits économico-philosophiques de 1844, ce qui nous montre l'importance qu'il faut attribuer aux idées du jeune Marx et nous permet de mieux saisir l'inspiration fondamentale et la cohésion intime de son oeuvre vaste …”; “Contribution à l'histoire de la genèse du Capital …,” pp. 171–172; see also the same author's remarks in “Marx lecteur (Les carnets d'extraits de Paris, 1844–45),” La Revue Socialiste, nouvelle série, no. 5 (11, 1946), 529–539Google Scholar.
61 D. Struik, in the edition of the 1844 Manuscripts cited here; see, pp. 244–245.
62 The foregoing is offered more as an indication of the way in which such an analysis of Marx's social doctrine would proceed, than as an adequate treatment. Some of the pertinent references for such a treatment are the following: on the primitive social relationship as a cooperative one, The German Ideology, esp. pp. 18–19; on man as naturally “zoon politikon,” Introduction, pp. 265–268; on “civil society,” The German Ideology, esp. pp. 26–27, 1844 Manuscripts, p. 159, and The Holy Family, pp. 176, 162–163—but cf. Bottomore's, T. rendition of the latter passage in Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy (New York, 1964), pp. 219–220Google Scholar, and “Theses on Feuerbach.” In addition see also: The German Ideology, pp. 70 ff., Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, pp. 90 ff., “On the Jewish Question,” in Karl Marx: Early Writings, translated. Bottomore, (New York, 1965)Google Scholar, The Poverty of Philosophy, passim, and 1844 Manuscripts, passim.
63 1844 Manuscripts, pp. 137, 142–143; Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 13.
64 Ibid., pp. 148–149; also p. 121.
65 Ibid., p. 149; also p. 111: “Man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in 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 be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal. Certainly eating, drinking, procreating, etc., are also genuinely human functions. But abstractly taken, separated from the sphere of all other human activity and turned into sole and ultimate ends, they are animal functions.”
66 Ibid., p. 150; also p. 157: “To be sure, the industrial capitalist also takes his pleasures. He does not by any means return to the unnatural simplicity of need; but his pleasure is only a side-issue—recreation—something subordinated to production. …” Marx saw the perversity of this state of affairs as consisting in the suppression of human needs in the service of production, rather than, as should be the case, production serving for the satisfaction and development of human needs. Production, rather than the satisfaction and development of man's needs, is said to have become the purpose of labor; or again the life and development of the producer have ceased to be the end of production. Cf. Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, pp. 84–85.
67 This is also expressed by Marx, especially in his early writings, in terms of “alienation” (die Entfremdung). The distinction is between labor as Selbstentfremdung, and labor as Selbstbetätigung. The latter is labor which results in the “naturalization” or fulfillment of the laboring subject; the former is labor which results in the denaturalization of the laboring subject. See The German Ideology, pp. 66–68; 1844 Manuscripts, esp. the Manuscript entitled “Die entfremdete Arbeit”; in the English edition of Struik, pp. 106–119.
68 See, for example, Metaphysics, 1015a 15; Physics, 192b 6–193a.
