From Socrates To Sartre; #22; Alienated Man

Why were Marx is writing the economic down manuscript which he wrote in Paris in the summer of 1844. Why would these writings kept hidden from the public view for almost a hundred years. Why did Marx never acknowledge them never publish them never refer to them in his later writing before these manuscripts of the young Mox were discovered and made available. Marxism had been thought of primarily in terms of the work of the maturer Marx and as being a scientific system or as scientific socialism as Marx and Engels themselves called it or as an economic and materialistic interpretation of history would stood Hegel's idealistic interpretation of history on its head. Generations of Marx scholars accepted the view that for Marx the the meaning of history is found in class struggle in class conflict and the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism as a scientific theory. Marxism was regarded as having no moral or religious or philosophical meaning but simply as offering

a scientific explanation of the economic laws governing historical change. But when the economic and philosophical manuscripts were discovered and became known by the middle of the 20th century a new view of Marx emerged from the study of these manuscripts. A view of Marxism as a moral or even a religious system of thought which has as its fundamental theme the moral regeneration the moral rebirth of humanity through world revolution. This is taken to be the meaning of the newly discovered system of the young Mox whom the burning issue is human alienation and its overcoming by a world revolution. All other then two Marxist systems are there to Marxist views of the significance of history is world history the process in which human self alienation is finally overcome. And human beings realise themselves through revolution and appropriate that true essence as

creative wise and free. Or is the history of the world the scientific history of class conflict and its ending by the classless society of communism. Does World History have a humanistic goal of human self fulfillment and rebirth as the 1844 power as manuscripts indicate. Or does it have a scientifically explaining economic goal as the writings of the mature Mox proclaim. Or is it possible to find a reconciliation of the humanistic and the scientific viewpoint in the thought of Marx and to show how they may come together in his own understanding of his system. To raise these questions is to penetrate into Marxism below the usual surface accounts which summarize the main arguments of the late Marx. Let us turn to the economic and philosophical manuscripts. The Paris manuscripts of 1844 as they are usually called. Here we see the developing

importance of economics for mocks Marx in Paris had been veracious Lee hungrily reading Adam Smith and David Ricardo and other major economic theorists in his attempt to understand the industrial revolution. Its present disastrous impact on human life and what its future course might be. The importance of economics in human history had already been established in Marxist thinking by Hagel. I hate Google's powerful analysis of civil society in which Hagel had said that the economic relations of civil society constitute a battlefield where everybody's individual private interests meet everybody else's. To haggle civil society and its economic affairs is a war of all against all. It is the continuous conflict of ego with stick desires Hagel's picture of the competitive evils of civil society with this accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few. And

poverty and alienation for the masses was now reinforced in Marx's mind by the descriptions which he read from the French socialists about the miserable lawns of industrial workers. Marx himself began to develop his own thoughts on economic life in civil society in an essay which in titled The Jewish Question marks here speaks of economic alienation of human beings as strange or alienated from the world of commerce in which money is the God the modern commercial world says Marx is a religion of money worship. And he identifies this as Judaism. The juicy points out are no longer a religious or a racial group. They have been forced into money lending and into the competitiveness of economics by society as a result says Marx in his own words. Money is the jealous one God of Israel. Beside

which no other God may stand. Money dethrones all the gods of man and turns them into a commodity. Money is the universal independently constituted value of all things. It has therefore deprived the whole world both the world of man and of the nature of its own value. Money is the alienated essence of man's work and of his being. This alien being this money who rules over him and he worships it. Christianity Mark says has now taken over this money worship. This alienation of man from himself in the worship of money. On the question therefore of the emancipating the Jews from laws which discriminate against them. Marx argues that the only way to deal with the Jewish question is to recognise that it is also a Christian question until we Mensa paid both Christians and Jews from the worship of money and lust from their

economic and nation. Both Christians and Jews he says live in economic alienation as a man producing objects which assume the alien form of money and become an alien power over them. Mark seems to have been uncertain of how to proceed at this point. The concept was dominant with him was that of economic alienation in the manuscripts of 1844 marks as powerful concentration upon economics produced a great new insight which swept him back into the orbit of Hegel in the manuscript entitled criticism of the Galleon dialectic and philosophy as a whole. There appears the insight on Marxist part that hey goes phenomenology of spirit was in its underlying meaning. A philosophy of economic life and economic interpretation of history where Hegel talks about the externalization of spirits of the absolute as

strange from itself alienating itself in human consciousness. He was really speaking in a confused way and not of spirits self externalization and self alienation in human consciousness but really of man externalizing himself in material objects of men self alienation in the objects which he produces. The underlying hidden meaning of the given philosophy Marx discovers is economics. Hegel turned upside down provides a study of man's alienation from the product of his own labor. IN THE MONEY economy of capitalism. And did not haggle in the famous chapter on master and slave in the phenomenology of spirit show that the slaves production of the object appears to him to be an external and alien object but that the slave overcomes the externalization and alienation

of the products of his labor and he recognizes his own essence in the object he has made discovers his freedom in in his object of attention of himself. This lady really appropriates himself from what had been the externalized alienated product of his labor. Moreover now that Marx has the key. Who are the real underlying meaning and truth of a given philosophy. Marx takes haggles phenomenology of spirit as the model for his own construction of an account of the self-realisation of economic man of labor. The true meaning of history is that it is the developmental process in which a man generic man labor produce a creator of material and non-material objects achieve self-realisation and repossesses his own essence from the objects he has produced. And Marx However criticizes Hegel for his idealism which see is the

essence of man as spirits and sees alienation only as the alienation of consciousness or of spirit. But mankind says Marx is a natural being not merely spirit. And mankind develops in the course of world history. He has powers this faculty his desires creative abilities which have their outcome in production. Man is a creative being mankind in its history says Marx has transformed the objects of the entire material world and he has created the entire world of culture. The vast historical and natural accumulation of the material and cultural objects that mankind has produced are the externalization the embodiments of man's creative powers. Man actualize is himself in the world in Marx's own powerful language. The whole so-called world history is

nothing other than the production of man himself through human labor. It is Marxist view which he will never give up that the history of human beings is the developing process in which they have created the entire world of objects of nature and of human culture. And in this developing process human beings will come to realize their own crude nature. But the human species does not realize that it is the creator of the world of natural objects and of the totality of culture. For example the whole of modern industry is man's product. Machines and factories are the externalization of human hands. Ears on brains. But what man sees when he looks at the objects he has produced are alien things in an alien hostile world standing out there over against him.

This is because man's productive activity is done in servitude to the god money rather than in spontaneous self activity and self-determination. Human alienation takes three main forms according to Marx in the 1840 for Paris manuscripts. First a man is alienated from the product of his work. Second from the act of producing and from his own social nature. First. The worker in industrial capitalism is alienated from his product which exists external to him is utilized by strangers as their private property. And the more he produces of them the less is his productivity valued. He becomes cheaper than the cheap commodities he produces and his work and his wages for his work are just sufficient to what is necessary to keep him working. Secondly the capitalist system alienates a man from his productive

activity his activity is not determined by his personal benefit or by his own creativity but is something which he is compelled to do in order to remain alone as a result. So as Marx the worker only feels himself outside his work and in his work he feels outside himself. His labor is forced labor. The more he works the less human he becomes. He finally feels at home only in the Animalia and functions of eating drinking and sexuality. And thirdly capitalist society alienates the worker from his fellow man. Unlike animals as Marx who produce food only for their own immediate needs. Humans produce cultural products such as art and science for the whole human race. Humans produce as universal beings. But the capitalist system reduces man's productivity to animal labor to a mere means to satisfy his immediate physical needs

but the worker too is in bondage to greed is a slave before the master of money. The money go out of capitalism. Capitalists advised him to save his money and invest it. As Mark says in the Paris manuscripts This is the advice they get. The less you eat drink and read books The less you go to the theatre. The dance hall the public houses the less you think love theorised sing paint the more you save the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour your capital. The less you are the more you have. Hegel had identified human passion as the prime motivating force in the human world. But Marx identifies this force as The Passion of the greed for money in capitalist society to Marx greed has been the motivating force throughout all of human history alienating man from

himself and dehumanizing him. Man worships money as the all powerful master. And no marks moves on to the final and inevitable question. How can economic alienation be overcome. How can man reappropriate from the objects which he has created his own essence. And the more fundamental question. How can man self be regained the entire world is distorted by alienation alienation infiltrates pervades every aspect of human life says Marx. Politics law the family morality religion and economics. Alienation is the most important single character of a man's life in human history. Man the producer has created a world of infinite objects and has lost himself in the process. Unlike Hegel's man finite Spirit who in the course of

history is continually progressing in consciousness of his own freedom. Marxism and natural man the producer progresses in consciousness but not of freedom but of slavery. Suffering and exploitation. The law of his life is of constantly increasing alienation says Marx. A law of increasing misery. For Marx the only way for a man to overcome self alienation to change himself to free himself from the money mania is to carry out a world revolution a world wide of violent action which will see the world of private property from the capitalists and appropriate all the material objects which humans have created throughout history. After a brief stage of rock communism has passed. There will come about the time of ultimate communism which Marx also calls the humanization of mankind. Man will repossess the last world of created

objects and will regain his and slaved powers. Labor itself will be abolished and in its place there will be free joyous spontaneous productive activity and the end of economic alienation will also mean the abolition of all the other human relationships in which a man has lived a life of alienation and history. There will be an end to the state to the family to all law and morality. All of these institutions in Marx's view forms of human slavery. A man will repose us reappropriate regain himself from alienation in these institutions and he will live in unity with his fellow man and with nature in the communist world to come. These were the principal ideas of the hastily written disjointed economic and philosophical manuscripts which Mox wrote in the summer of 1844 that summer Jenny had returned home to

Tria with her baby where she had visited her mother and Marx's mother. Both are now widowed. Jenny had already begun a life long pattern of ill health which was in part perhaps a response to the tensions crises and the grinding poverty of her life with Mark's highly intelligent as Jenny was she accepted but was troubled by the limited possibilities for self development which were available to women in her day. But she served her husband faithfully and devotedly as his secretary. Copying his manuscripts handling his correspondence and she in fact became knowledgeable in the sphere of radical philosophy and politics. A recent study of Jenny offers evidence that she is the actual author of several essays which had been credited to Marx. When Jenny returned to Paris in September of 1844 she discovered that Marx had established a friendship with Friedrich Engels a friendship so stable

and unwavering that it soon became a legend in its own time. Both Marx and Engels had much in common. They were almost the same age Anglos was two years younger. They came from upper class homes. They both wrote poetry. They both became involved with the young who gave me an brand of radicalism and they both moved on from that to communism and radical politics. But their intellectual styles and their lifestyles were very different. Marx was a speculative creative synthesizing type of mind while Engels was practical and empirical. Marx was a family man Angle's was a womanizer and never married Engels was a son of a Protestant family of wealthy cotton mill owners in the German Rhineland and his lifelong career was in his family's business and his interests were primarily in economics. During the year of his military service in Berlin Anglos came to know the radical young who gave the NS at the

University of Berlin. He soon became radicalized by them and wrote essays for radical journals such as Marx and German French annals and he also began to gather data for what was to be his angles as finest work. The situation of the working class in England which was a bitter indictment of the early stages of capitalism. NGOs had spent a year in England working at the Manchester branch in England of his father's firm and on his way back to Germany he stopped off in Paris where on August 20 8th 1844 in a famous Paris cafe he met Marx and began a conversation which ran on for 10 days during which they decided to collaborate on a radical pamphlets which turned out turned to be a 300 page book called The Holy Family. Before this book was finished Mark was expelled from Paris and moved to Brussels Angle's

soon moved into the house next door and Marx and Engels began to work in September 1845 upon a criticism of the younger galleons which was to become their important work entitled The German ideology. What is significant about the book The German ideology of 1846 is the intellectual break between it and the economic and philosophical manuscripts of 1844. Here in the German ideology so soon after the 1840 for manuscripts there appears the first formulation of the so-called mature Marxism in which the theory of self alienated man which had been the central theme of the 1844 manuscript is now shrugged off as a conception of the philosophers and presumably as having no value missing from the German ideology or the idea of the self. The object is the cation of the human essence in Object produced the working

man's alienation from himself. World history as a loss of self and ultimate self regained. In place of the self and the humanistic concerns of the 1844 manuscripts with self-realisation mature Marxism in the German ideology speaks about so saya TI's labor versus capital proletariat versus words was easy. It speaks about relations and forces of production in speaks about an economic base and an ideological superstructure. These are all words from the familiar language of mature conventional Marxism. They appear to represent the impersonal scientific vocabulary of the social sciences. Why did Marx make this fundamental shift from the humanistic focus upon the self to the impersonal scientific focus upon economic relationships are there to Marxism. That of the 1844 manuscripts and that of the later scientific

socialism of the German ideology. Or can they be reconciled. First in answer to the question why this switch. Several suggestions can be offered as to why Marx made the dramatic switch from understanding human life in terms of the alienation or conflict within the self to understanding it in terms of x to an all economic class conflict the taking of this step may have represented to Marx gaining the objectivity and the great prestige of social science for his theory. A second suggestion is the role of angles. Engels had an impressive knowledge of the economics of industrial capitalism and Engels had made the claim that once an economic system is operative It is beyond human control. These may have influenced Marques toward economic explanation rather than philosophical explanation. Third the

futility of the idealistic philosophical humanistic young movement and the failure of this philosophic movement either to interpret or to change the world may have led Mox to turn to a scientific perspective instead to other explanations are psychological in nature. First the growing personal maturity of Marx may have permitted him now to identify with his father's Enlightenment ideals of science and scientific objectivity and to obey at last his father's constant urging him that call given up. You're a fanciful young again your speculations and become more prosaic. Come down to earth and a final explanation in Marx's reference to in the German ideology to settling accounts with the good Indian philosophy. Marx appears to be

switching to economics in order to establish at last he is own separation and independence from the domination over himself of the Galilean philosophy specifically of Hegel's humanistic account of finite spirit in the phenomenology of spirit. These are possible explanations of Marx's shift. There remains the need to answer the second question. Are there then two marks as that of the young and of the mature remarks. And if so can they be reconciled. What we have found is that the scenario of world history presented by the economic and philosophical manuscripts of 1844 is that of economic man's alienation from the products he has himself created and that of regaining him selve through a world revolution. This scenario is revised in the writings of the mature marks beginning with the German ideology. There is a new scenario a world history as qua

struggle and its overcoming by the revolution of the proletariat in class and the ultimate advent of a class less so so I think the scientific scenario for the most part illuminates the idea of the self alienation. The drama of the loss of self and Self regain and the new scientific scenario uses instead the impersonal concept of labor capital economic production. Nevertheless the scientific scenario of world history will continue to be expressive of the themes of alienation conflict or revolution that produces human deliverance and salvation. Marx will use the impersonal concepts of the scientific scenario in such a way that the themes of the alienated man scenario will still be expressed. There are not two large systems them but only one which evolves

from the conflict with alienated me to the conflict of economic losses and Lisi creativeness of Marx Engels and Soviet officialdom. With regard to the 1844 manuscripts is clearly the result of their embarrassment concerning revealing the philosophical nonscientific humanistic and subjective roots of Marxism. We turn next to the powerful works of the mature market. For Public Broadcasting.