Franz J. T. Lee

Introduction to Marxism


Pandemonium Electronic Publications, Mérida, Venezuela, 1999

Copyright 1999, by Franz J. T. Lee. All Rights Reserved


SCIENCE  AND  PHILOSOPHY

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER  TWENTY-FOUR

Introduction to Marxism

Karl Marx and the "Human Being"

Here we will only concentrate on the Marxian concept of Man, of the Human Being.

What is the concrete program of Marx? His point of departure is "Beduerfnis",
need. The interpretation of the "human being" begins with human need. In his
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, he stated:

"Man is first of all a natural being. As a natural being
and a living natural being, he is endowed on the one
hand with natural powers, vital powers . . . ; these powers
exist in him as aptitudes, instincts. On the other hand,
as an objective, natural, physical, sensitive being, he is a
suffering, dependent and limited being . . . , that is, the
objects of his instincts exist outside him, independent of
him, but are the objects of his need, indispensable and
essential for the realization and confirmation of his
substantial powers".

As can be seen above, Marx confirmed that the "human being"
is a "living natural being", which is endowed with "natural, vital powers".
Scientifically completely correct and stringent! These "powers" exist in him ,
that is, they constitute his Existence. Philosophically totally precise!

In our philosophical terminology, Marx states that the Human Being is Cosmos
(Nature)  a n d  it exists as Einai (Society). Of course, he does not identify this
Being  a n d  Existence precisely as Human Being  a n d  Human Existence.
in nuce, as Human Existence.

Furthermore, he only mentions "aptitudes and instincts";  these are not exactly
synonyms for our understanding of "Intellect  a n d  Reason", but at least they
blaze the trail towards Thinking and Thought. What Marx explains "on the other hand" is very confusing and jumbled together, mixing up natural and social traits, hence no further comments.

Of greater interest are the "objects" of man's instincts, of his "needs"; they
"exist outside him", "independent of him". Well, where? In the objective external world, in Cosmos, in Nature. We are approximating the crux of the Marxian definition of Man, of the Human Being. These cosmic, natural
resources are " the objects of his need, indispensable and essential for the realization and confirmation of his substantial powers ".

Human evolution, human history, is identical with the living Human Being, with MAN, who exploits Nature to satisfy his primary human needs. And what does Marx deem to be the "first historical fact"?  "The production of the means to
satisfy these needs". The very satisfaction of human needs paves the way for the reproduction of more needs. This human productive process is human activity,
"menschliche Taetigkeit", to satisfy human needs:  eating, drinking, clothing, sheltering, etc. It produces and reproduces his "powers", and here "power" is central, especially when we will speak later about political power (domination, the State) and economic power (exploitation, Capital). Also, this human activity produces and develops the intellectual and artistic human abilities and capabilities.

Human Activity, Labour, humanizes Man

For Marx, human activity is Labour; as a productive being, Man humanizes himself. Through Labour, in the production process, Man humanizes Nature,
while He, Man, naturalizes Himself! Obviously, here we do not have a scientific,
philosophic process, where Man (Society) humanizes Nature, and where Nature
naturalizes Man (Society). Human Labour is defined as Man socializing Nature, and as Man naturalizing Society, naturalizing himself. Here we encounter not a dialogic, but a one-sided pseudo-dialectic, which takes place within the framework of the Patria, which never transcends its boundaries, which always preserves and conserves the status quo.

By means of his creative activity, of Labour, the Human Being identifies itself,
becomes an entity, an identity. According to Marx, by mastering, an euphemism for exploiting, Nature,  Man realizes his identity with Nature, that is, he achieves free consciousness, he develops his own thinking. Actually Marx argues that
Man who is a Child of Mother Nature, can only become fully human, fully manly,  by opposing Nature. Here the macho, the masculine Man, becomes the Lord of the Universe, by opposing, mastering and exploiting feminine Mother Nature, and all this is called Labour, Human Labour! How deep patriarchal ideology is rooted even in Marxism! And, from bad to worse, embodied in a fundamental concept of Marxism, Labour, on which the whole edifice of Marxian Theory and Praxis stands and falls!

This aurora of "human consciousness", we would say Human Existence, cannot
be separated from the dawn of the "human being" itself, with its "struggle against Nature" (later the "class struggle" will be added). The consciousness about the struggle against Nature, being aware of exploiting Nature, gives Man the powers, the conditions, for his self-realization, for the fulfilment of the whole Human Being. What a natural disaster! What a human "Crown of Creation", what a
"Highest Blossom of Nature"!

And, how does Marx explain this cruel ecocide? What does the "Human Being" discover?

"all that is called history is nothing else than the process
of creating man through human labour, the becoming of
nature for man. Man has thus evident and irrefutable proof
of his own creation by himself....for man, man is the supreme being."

Now we know, who is Man, who is the Human Being! For the dominant
ruling classes. they are Man; for them, for Man, Man is God, Man is the Supreme Being. They need not believe in any God, they are Gods themselves, Man is God Himself! If Modern Science wants to find God, it would be the most simple investigation that was ever performed on this planet. In this sense, Marx was very clear about Religion and God; he had a famous tutor: Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach.
 

The Marxian "Human Being" in Modern Capitalist Society

However, across the historical process, no Man, no Human Being, had acquired
the fulfilment of his labour dreams, of his human needs. Few members of the species homo sapiens had enjoyed heaven on earth, but this is not what Marx understood by human emancipation.  Let us see how Marx explains this historical phenomenon.

Marx himself, living in a capitalist society, came to the conclusion that Man is not really free. Adopting the concept of alienation of Hegel and Feuerbach, Marx was convinced that modern Man is estranged, that he is not at home in his earthly labouring world: "Man is made alien to man." But Labour cannot be blamed; it is sacred, it is human. Hence, Labour was alienated across the ages. The central problem is alienated Labour. Urgently Labour must be disalienated! But, how, and why, did Labour become alienated, and consequently, why is Man an alienated Being, an alienated Human Being?

The Encyclopædia Britannica gives us an excellent summary of Marx's views in The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 :

"In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts the alienation
of labour is seen to spring from the fact that the more the worker
produces the less he has to consume, and the more values he creates
the more he devalues himself, because his product and his labour
are estranged from him. The life of the worker depends on things
that he has created but that are not his, so that, instead of finding
his rightful existence through his labour, he loses it in this world of
things that are external to him: no work, no pay. Under these conditions,
labour denies the fullness of concrete man. "The generic being
(Gattungswesen) of man, nature as well as his intellectual faculties, is transformed into a being which is alien to him, into a means of his
individual existence." Nature, his body, his spiritual essence become
alien to him. "Man is made alien to man." When carried to its highest
stage of development, private property becomes "the product of
alienated labour . . . the means by which labour alienates itself (and)
the realization of this alienation." It is also at the same time "the tangible
material expression of alienated human life.""

In brief, Marx saw alienated labour as the historic result of the exploitation and domination of Man by Man, of market production, of the division of labour, into manual and intellectual labour, of the division of society into antagonistic classes. The Encyclopaedia Britannica continues with the Marxian explanation:

"As producers in society, men create goods only by their labour.
These goods are exchangeable. Their value is the average amount
of social labour spent to produce them. The alienation of the worker
takes on its full dimension in that system of market production in
which part of the value of the goods produced by the worker is
taken away from him and transformed into surplus value, which
the capitalist privately appropriates. Market production also
intensifies the alienation of labour by encouraging specialization,
piecework, and the setting up of large enterprises. Thus the labour
power of the worker is used along with that of others in a
combination whose significance he is ignorant of, both individually
and socially. In thus losing their quality as human products, the
products of labour become fetishes, that is, alien and oppressive
realities to which both the man who possesses them privately and
the man who is deprived of them submit themselves. In the market economy, this submission to things is obscured by the fact that the exchange of goods is expressed in money."

This economic alienation causes political, social and human alienation; this
estrangement results in distorted human relations. The alienated economic base distorts the ideological superstructure, thus creating perverted religious, metaphysical, philosophical, legal, political and moral ideas and notions. But let Marx himself explain the alienation and disalienation process:

                "The act of making representations, of thinking,
                the spiritual intercourse of men, seem to be the
                direct emanation of their material relations."

               "Men produce their representations and their ideas,
                but it is as living men, men acting as they are
                determined by a definite development of their powers
                of production."

                "Men developing their material
                production modify together with their real existence
                their ways of thinking and the products of their ways
                of thinking."

                "It is not consciousness
                which determines existence,
                it is existence which
                determines consciousness."

 Led by the International Proletariat, in the Class Struggle, which logically will evolve into Social Revolution, which will topple capitalist society, and which will introduce Socialism, and finally Communism,  Marx saw the
historical process of disalienating Labour, and of emancipating the Human Being.
Free Labour, which freely will exploit Nature, and which will eliminate the domination of Man by Man, hence liberating Society, is the solution which Marx offered to annihilate all misery and oppression in contemporary capitalist society.


CHAPTER  TWENTY-FIVE