marx

Essay on Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts and German Ideology
by Charles Glenn

Karl Marx asked fundamental questions, but not in the tradition of Plato or Aristotle. Rather than assuming anything, he attempted to examine the most basic functions of political economy and human nature that most people have always taken for granted. Rather than accepting things like capitalism, political economy, and the nature of human labor, Marx tried to shift humanity’s paradigm.

In Manuscripts, he dealt with the abstract dichotomy of human productivity and modern labor. According to his analysis, modern labor alienated the worker from himself, because the object the worker produced did not belong to him or benefit him directly.

Furthermore, because workers were exploited, they would not be able to afford the objects they produced. Marx’s intricate argument in support of this was that, according to nature, whatever a human produced or created was for the benefit of himself or others at his own discretion. Consequently, industrial production was the antithesis of "real" labor, and was dehumanizing.

His view is ultimately very idealistic and unconstrained, because in order for this argument to make sense, he must appeal to an objective standard – an ideal state of nature in which all human labor was limited to those things which would directly benefit the worker himself. Although he never explicitly wrote about this ideal state of nature, he could not avoid obliquely referring to it throughout his work.

Similarly, in German Ideology, Marx attempted to shift modern thinking. In his mind, it was important to make a distinction between the idea that human history "happened" to humans, and the alternate idea that humans made history happen. Using this paradigm, he reevaluates the history of politics, showing that mankind has moved up the same scale – that throughout history, the mass has been exploited by the few for their own gain.

Using the political models of feudal Europe, he attempts to prove that the worker, in a perpetual effort to improve his condition, became more and more entrenched in the exploitative patterns of political economy.

Although many of his arguments are rational and reasonable, Marx’s attempt to categorize and "scientize" human nature and history fails – people are not so predictable as all that.