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The object of this essay is to analyze the similarities and differences between Hegel's theory of property in his Philosophy of Right and Marx¡¯s in "The 1844 Manuscripts." For both theorists, property is a subjectified object and, therefore, is strongly related to the perfectibility of the essence of subject or of the freedom of subject. However, while Hegel regards exclusive private property as the universal and completely developed form for the freedom of man, Marx considers it the most estranged one and regards social property as the truly human form. Firstly, This essay will examine what opinions Hegel and Marx share about the relationship between property and freedom. And then, it will analyze the differences between the view of Marx and Hegel on private property.
For
Marx and Hegel, property is the objectification of man himself, i.e. a subjectified external thing. And the existence of property reveals the fact not
only that man is essentially a free being, but also that man can suffer due to
the incomplete possession of external things. According to both theorists,
history is understood as the process by which man overcomes the estrangement
(Entfremdung) of the external world and ultimately will actualize his
freedom by making external things his own property. And, for Marx and
Hegel, all men must have property for the emancipation of all men. If all men
have property, property can be a means for each individual to mutually recognize
each other as a free being and to share and develop their conscious free
abilities.
1)
Hegel
Hegel characterizes human character distinctive from other animals, as mind, especially in his Philosophy of Right, as will, i.e. practical mind. The substance and essence of will is freedom ¡°just as the essence of matter is Gravity¡±(PH, p.17). The will is free, in the sense that it can impose a new life and form upon the object as a means for it to achieve its own goal. The external object becomes property by the free action of the will. Only a free being can have property. Therefore, the existence of property proves the fact that will is free and man is essentially free. However, the will is free, only in the sense that the freedom of will is not naturally given but must come into being by the self-mediating activity of the will. For Hegel, the whole universe is seen as the externalization of subject, Geist. And history is understood as the process by which Mind overcomes the estrangement (Entfremdung) of the external world and returns into its essence through making the external things as its own property.
In his Philosophy of Right, Hegel describes how will develops through the process of education(Bildung) to the stage of absolute freedom. At the starting point, the will is immediate and indeterminate, and it exists only as abstractly universal form. Thus, the will is free only in itself; i.e. the freedom of will is merely potential. Figuratively speaking, this potentiality is like a human baby who has potential to grow up to a human adult rather than another animal adult. It is telos, i.e. a final cause that leads the whole process to an end. Consequently, the immediate will at the starting point contains the whole process, even potentially and formally.
At this stage, the subject is an abstract single person, whose will exists as personality, i.e. abstract universality, and whose ¡°embodiment is an immediate external thing¡±, i.e. property (PR: ¡×35). The abstract person has the abstract right of property. The right of property is abstractly equal right of all single men and becomes a foundation of the fact that all men are free. The will as personality confronting an external world has a right to objectify itself into all external things and to appropriate them as its own. The external things include not only things outside a single person such as land, external matter and so on, but also things within him such as his productive capacity and his body. All men including wage laborers have property and become free citizens through appropriating these external things.
¡°This right of property acquires the character of private property ownership because the will is a single will of a single person¡± (PR: ¡×46). And the private will can develop into ¡°a common will without detriment to the rights of either through alienating property from one to the other¡± (Ibid. ¡×40). Through transference of their property all single men can mutually recognize each other as free beings, and share and develop their conscious free abilities.
Through its self-mediating activity, the will must transform itself from abstract universality into particularity in order to inwardly and outwardly fill itself with contents such as right, property, morality, family, state, and so forth, and, finally, return into itself as concrete universality at the stage of the state. Through this whole process, which Hegel calls the process of education (Bildung), the will is for itself what it is in itself; i.e. the freedom of will is actualized.
2) Marx
For Marx, human essence is freedom. Man is a free conscious species being. Marx maintains that such human essence is ¡°contained in the character of free, conscious activity¡± (EPM: p.76). While, for Hegel, man¡¯s will is free and conscious, for Marx, man¡¯s activity is free and conscious. Free activity is the activity objectifying man¡¯s consciousness into external things; the activity making all nature man¡¯s inorganic body; the activity making external things as man¡¯s property. For example, an automatic machine is the embodiment of the accumulated labor; it contains man¡¯s consciousness; it is man¡¯s inorganic body. For Marx, an automatic machine proves that man is essentially a free being. At the same time, it will be possible for man to be degraded into accessory organ to an automatic machine due to the incomplete possession of it.
Marx adopts Hegel¡¯s notion of ¡®the negation of the negation¡¯ to describe the historical development of human Freedom and property. At first, free activity of man is only potential. It was negated. The free activity appears as the most estranged and inverted form in capitalism. It is alienated labour. Marx says, ¡°Private property is therefore the product, result, and necessary consequence of alienated labor, of the external relation of the worker to nature and to himself¡±(EPM: p.79). In this sentence, since ¡®alienated(entäu©¬erten)¡¯ means ¡®transferred¡¯ or ¡®sold¡¯, ¡®alienated labour¡¯ signifies commodity labour, i.e. wage labour. Wage labour is the cause of the most estranged form of property, capitalist private property, which ¡°rests on the exploitation of the labor of others not on the labor of the producer himself¡±(Marx, Das capital 1, ch.33). The externality of relation of the worker to nature and to himself means the fact that man has not fully appropriated his inorganic body yet. Like the words of Aristotle that ¡°nature is an end; for we say that each thing¡¯s nature¡¦is the character it has when its coming-into-being has been completed.¡±[1], human beings will negate this private property and fully appropriate their external world in communism. It is second negation. In communism all men can achieve their full freedom by socially sharing their property.
2. Different views on Private Property
Even though Hegel and Marx agreed that all men must have property for the emancipation of all men, the realized form of the property is different: for Hegel, exclusive private property is the completely developed form for all men¡¯s emancipation; for Marx, social property is. And Marx thinks that exclusive private property is the most estranged one. Such opposite views of Hegel and Marx on private property is due to their opposite ontological ideas over human essence, i.e. idealistic and materialistic views. Even though both regard the human essence as freedom, while, for Hegel, the will is free, for Marx human activity is free. According to Hegel, the different wills of private individuals can develop and be united into a general will by entering a contract, and a wage laborer can be a free citizen as an independent property owner through alienating his/her productive activity to others within a limited time. On the contrary, in the form of private property, according to Marx, the coexistence of the particular wills and a common will is impossible, i.e. there is only an endless war of an arbitrary, avaricious will against the others. And because spirit and action cannot be separated, a wage laborer, who alienates his essence to others by transferring his free activity to others, is a mere propertyless slave.
Let us look at more details.
To the question of why property should acquire the form of exclusive private property, Hegel¡¯s response seems to be more or less insufficient. According to him, as long as will is a particular will of a single person, and property is the embodiment of the particular will, property should acquire the character of private property. This explanation appears when Hegel writes about family property. According to him, since the partners in a marriage are not individual persons but together constitute a single person, ¡°No member of a family has particular property, but each has a right in what is common¡±(PR: ¡×171). Here, we can expand his approach into the whole society. If the whole society constitutes a single person, i.e. all men act harmoniously to a common will, property should acquire the character of common property. This expansion happens to Marx¡¯s theory. For Marx, man essentially is a conscious species being who acts universally and freely. The good example is a mother. When she makes food, she does not only for herself but also for her family; she considers what her family wants to eat as well as what she wants; her food leads her and her family to be pleased.
Hegel embraces diverse aspects of private property under each moment of his dialectic process. According to the will¡¯s relation to the thing, private property develops through three moments: possession of the thing directly, use of the thing, and alienation of property. The first moment is again divided into three sub-moments: ¡°directly grasping physically, forming, and merely marking¡±(PR: ¡×46). Contrary to Locke¡¯s justification of private property merely based on labor, Hegel¡¯s theory seems to reveal more frankly the true origin of private property. Private property starts from merely physical grasping of something that will wills. This reminds us how western capitalists took into possession the American continent driving out the natives, and how they have transplanted their institution of private property into the third world countries.
The freedom of private property ownership culminates in the last moment of alienation of property. For, through alienation of property, each property-owner recognizes each other as a free property owner, i.e. enters a contract in conformity with a common will. At the same time, each property owner becomes a full owner of the thing, because they are owners of its value as well as of its use(PR: ¡×63). ¡°Value is the universal in which the subjects of the contract participate(PR: ¡×77)¡± and value is the true essence or substance of the object and the object by possessing value becomes an object for consciousness(PR: ¡×63). Here we can infer one reason why Hegel holds to private property. He believes that since private property and contract are complementary to each other, the two extremes, i.e. particular wills and a common will can coexist, furthermore, value which is the genuine substantiality and universality of things can be established. On the contrary, Marx¡¯s opinion is totally opposite. For him, the coexistence of the particular wills and a common will is impossible. There is only an endless war of an arbitrary, avaricious will against the others. And, for Marx, the value is not the obtainment of the substance of things but the loss of that. The genuine essence of things is not the universality but the particularity that satisfies a specific need of man. Man does not have the universal need but a specific need. While, for Hegel, the birth of money as an embodiment of value means a new development of human will, for Marx, it proves that the dominance of the estranged external things over man become complete. For Marx, money leads producers to work in order to satisfy his/her inverted endless and avaricious need, rather than to satisfy the specific need of his/her and the species. And, for Hegel, human will can transfer and change the place, in which it stays, starting from human body to external things, and finally develop to the abstract in money. In money the will would enjoy its endless freedom. On the contrary, for Marx, human will cannot be separated from human action, and actions are always concrete. Also products as objectification of actions are always concrete. The specific products cannot develop into the abstract. Only estranged social relationship make them change into the abstract.
For Hegel, everything including human mind and body can become property, i.e. one takes possession of oneself and becomes one¡¯s own property by cultivating one¡¯s mind and body. To alienate one¡¯s productive capacity and service to others within a limited time is one kind of completion of the freedom of property-ownership, as long as it encourages the freedom of will. For, through alienation, a person can earn others¡¯ recognition as a free independent property owner, and his/her properties can develop to the universality, value. A wage laborer, who alienates his/her productive capacities and service to others within a limited time, is a free citizen who enjoys the absolute freedom of private property. On the contrary, for Marx, to alienate one¡¯s productive capacity and service to others is to sell one¡¯s essence to others and to subordinate oneself to others. Since human essence is free conscious activity within which actions and spirit cannot be separated, to sell actions even with limited time indicates to transfer one¡¯s whole essence including spirit as well as capacities. Marx emphasizes that the alienated labour turns the products, the act of production, and the other mans, into being alien and antagonistically opposing to the producer. And the alienated labor gives birth to capitalist private property. Consequently, for Marx, a wage laborer is a mere slave rather than a free citizen.
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3.
Conclusion
To sum up, for Marx and Hegel, property is objectification of human essence and the form of property is directly related to the emancipation of all human beings. History is seen as the process by which man is overcoming the estrangement of the externality of relation of man to external things and to himself and is returning to his essence by completely making the external things as his property. Even though Hegel and Marx think that all men must have property for all men¡¯s freedom, the form of property is different: for Hegel, exclusive private property; for Marx, social property. This essay analyzed their different views on private property based on the difference of philosophical views, i.e. idealistic and materialistic view. While the idealistic view of Hegel allows him consider private property as the completely developed form, the materialistic view of Marx leads him to regard private property as the most estranged form.
Works Cited
Karl Marx, (1978) Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844(EPM) in the Marx-Engels
Reader, edited by Robert C. Tucker, W.W. Norton & Company
_________ (1976) Capital 1, Tr. By Ben Fowkes, Penguin Books
Hegel, G.W.F. (1952) Hegel¡¯s Philosophy of Right(PR), Tr. by T.M. Knox, Oxford University
___________ (1991) The Philosophy of History(PH), Tr. by J. Sibree, Prometheus Books
Aristotle, (1998) Politics, Tr. by C.D.C Reeve, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.