The ''Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844'' (german: Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte aus dem Jahre 1844), also referred to as the ''Paris Manuscripts'' (') or as the ''1844 Manuscripts'', are a series of notes written between April and August 1844 by

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

, published posthumously in 1932. The notebooks were compiled in their original German in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

by researchers at Moscow's

Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute The Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute, established in Moscow in 1919 as the Marx–Engels Institute (russian: Институт К. Маркса и Ф. Энгельса), was a Soviet library and archive attached to the Communist Academy. The instit ...

, decades after Marx's death. They were first released in Berlin in 1932, and in 1933, there followed a republication of this work in the Soviet Union (

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

), also in German. Their publication greatly altered the reception of Marx by situating his work within a theoretical framework that had until then been unavailable to his followers.

Context

The ''Manuscripts'' were composed during the summer of 1844, when Marx was 25 or 26 years old. Marx was at this time resident in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

, then seen as the center of

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...

thought. Several members of the philosophical milieu that he then belonged to, the

Young Hegelians The Young Hegelians (german: Junghegelianer), or Left Hegelians (''Linkshegelianer''), or the Hegelian Left (''die Hegelsche Linke''), were a group of German intellectuals who, in the decade or so after the death of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ...

, had moved to Paris in the previous year to establish a journal, the '' Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher''. Marx himself had taken up residence in 38

Rue Vaneau Rue Vaneau is a street in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France. It is named after Louis Vaneau (1811–1830), a student of the École Polytechnique, who was killed while charging the ''Caserne de Babylone'' (barracks) during the July Revolutio ...

, in the

Left Bank In geography, a bank is the land alongside a body of water. Different structures are referred to as ''banks'' in different fields of geography, as follows. In limnology (the study of inland waters), a stream bank or river bank is the terra ...

of the city, in October 1843. In Paris, he came into contact with German revolutionary artisans and secret meetings of French

proletarian The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philoso ...

societies. It was in this period that Marx made the acquaintance of

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (, , ; 15 January 1809, Besançon – 19 January 1865, Paris) was a French socialist,Landauer, Carl; Landauer, Hilde Stein; Valkenier, Elizabeth Kridl (1979) 959 "The Three Anticapitalistic Movements". ''European Socia ...

Louis Blanc Louis Jean Joseph Charles Blanc (; ; 29 October 1811 – 6 December 1882) was a French politician and historian. A socialist who favored reforms, he called for the creation of cooperatives in order to guarantee employment for the urban poor. Alt ...

, Heinrich Heine,

Georg Herwegh Georg Friedrich Rudolph Theodor Herwegh (31 May 1817 – 7 April 1875) was a German poet,Herwegh, Georg, The Columbia Encyclopedia (2008) who is considered part of the Young Germany movement. Biography He was born in Stuttgart on 31 May 1817, ...

Mikhail Bakunin Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (; 1814–1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist, socialist and founder of collectivist anarchism. He is considered among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major founder of the revolutionary s ...

, Pierre Leroux and most importantly,

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ,"Engels"
'' Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's

philosophy of law Philosophy of law is a branch of philosophy that examines the nature of law and law's relationship to other systems of norms, especially ethics and political philosophy. It asks questions like "What is law?", "What are the criteria for legal val ...

—law, morals, politics, etc.—ending with a general treatise that would show their interrelations. The notebooks are a fragmentary, incomplete work, that range from extracts from books with comments, loosely connected notes and reflections on various topics, to a comprehensive assessment of Hegel's philosophy. The work is best known for its articulation of Marx's argument that the conditions of modern industrial societies result in the estrangement (or alienation) of wage-workers from their own products, from their own work, and in turn from themselves and from each other. The text marks the first appearance together of what Engels described as the three constituent elements in Marx's thought: German idealist philosophy, French

socialism Socialism is a left-wing Economic ideology, economic philosophy and Political movement, movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to Private prop ...

and English

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...

. In addition to Hegel, Marx addresses the work of various socialist writers, and that of the fathers of

political economy Political economy is the study of how economic systems (e.g. markets and national economies) and political systems (e.g. law, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied phenomena within the discipline are systems such as labour ...

: Francois Quesnay, Adam Smith,

David Ricardo David Ricardo (18 April 1772 – 11 September 1823) was a British political economist. He was one of the most influential of the classical economists along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith and James Mill. Ricardo was also a politician, and a ...

, Jean-Baptiste Say, and

James Mill James Mill (born James Milne; 6 April 1773 – 23 June 1836) was a Scottish historian, economist, political theorist, and philosopher. He is counted among the founders of the Ricardian school of economics. He also wrote ''The History of Brit ...

. ''Die Bewegung der Produktion'' by

Friedrich Wilhelm Schulz Friedrich Wilhelm Schulz (often known as ''Wilhelm Schulz'' or after his second marriage ''Wilhelm Schulz-Bodmer''; 13 March 1797 in Darmstadt – 9 January 1860 in Hottingen) was a German officer, political writer and radical liberal pu ...

is also a key source.

Ludwig Feuerbach Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (; 28 July 1804 – 13 September 1872) was a German anthropologist and philosopher, best known for his book '' The Essence of Christianity'', which provided a critique of Christianity that strongly influenced gene ...

humanism Humanism is a philosophy, philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and Agency (philosophy), agency of Human, human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical in ...

is an influence that underlies all of Marx's notes. Because the ''1844 Manuscripts'' show Marx's thought at the time of its early genesis, their publication in the twentieth century profoundly affected analysis of Marx and

Marxism Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...

. At the time of their first publication, their most striking feature was their dissimilarity to the philosophy of dialectical materialism that was official within the

and the European

Communist Parties A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of '' The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...

. The ''Manuscripts'' offer a trenchant analysis of Hegel that is far more difficult and complex than the "dialectics of nature" that Georgi Plekhanov and his disciple

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...

had derived from Engels's '' Anti-Dühring''.

Terminology

István Mészáros notes that the language and terminology of the ''Manuscripts'' is one of the work's main difficulties. He mentions that a key term " Aufhebung" can be translated from German to English simultaneously as "transcendence", "suppression", "preserving" and "overcoming". Christopher J. Arthur comments that the term, which appears in Hegel's ''

Science of Logic ''Science of Logic'' (''SL''; german: Wissenschaft der Logik, ''WdL''), first published between 1812 and 1816, is the work in which Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel outlined his vision of logic. Hegel's logic is a system of '' dialectics'', i.e., ...

'', has in ordinary language the double meaning of "to abolish" and "to preserve". Arthur translates the word as "supersede" when the stress is more on abolition, and as "sublate" when the emphasis is more on preservation. Gregory Benton translates the word as "transcendence" and "supersession", and notes that Marx's concept of "critique" is an instance of this double movement. A second terminological difficulty is the translation of the German words "Entäusserung" and "Entfremdung". While both words can be translated to English as "alienation", Entfremdung is often translated as "estrangement" and Entäusserung as "alienation", to draw a distinction between the two concepts. Christopher J. Arthur notes that Entäusserung is an unusual German word that can also be translated as "renunciation", "parting with", "relinquishment", "externalization", "divestiture" or "surrender". Arthur believes "externalization" is the closest of these translations, but he avoids using this word as it may be confused with a distinct term that Marx uses elsewhere: "Vergegenständlichung" or "objectification". Arthur claims "Entfremdung" is a narrower concept than "Entäusserung" in that it applies only to cases of interpersonal estrangement. He takes estrangement to be a state and alienation to be a process. The dialectical structure of Marx's theory is another difficulty of the text, as the definition of certain key concepts can be hard to understand for those trained in positivist and empiricist philosophical traditions. What is more, the meaning of certain terms borrowed from Marx's contemporaries such as Feuerbach is often changed by Marx's appropriation of them.

Themes

In the ''Manuscripts'', Marx relates economic categories to a philosophical interpretation of man's position in

nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

. Marx's notebooks provide a general philosophical analysis of the basic concepts of

: capital, rent,

labor Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the la ...

property Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, r ...

money Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are as ...

, commodities, needs, and wages. Their key concept appears when Marx uses philosophical terminology to advance a critique of

capitalist Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, priva ...

society based in " alienation". Marx's theory is adapted (not without changes) from Hegel's ''

Phenomenology of Spirit ''The Phenomenology of Spirit'' (german: Phänomenologie des Geistes) is the most widely-discussed philosophical work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; its German title can be translated as either ''The Phenomenology of Spirit'' or ''The Phenomen ...

'' (1807) and Feuerbach's ''

The Essence of Christianity ''The Essence of Christianity'' (german: Das Wesen des Christentums; historical orthography: ''Das Weſen des Chriſtenthums'') is a book by Ludwig Feuerbach first published in 1841. It explains Feuerbach's philosophy and critique of religion. ...

'' (1841). Alienation is not merely a descriptive concept, it is a call for de-alienation through radical change of the world.

Alienated labor

Marx's first manuscript consists largely of extracts or paraphrases from the works of the classical economists, such as Adam Smith, that Marx was reading at the time of the ''Manuscripts composition. Marx here levels a number of criticisms at classical political economy. Marx argues that economic concepts do not deal with man as a human being, but as one would a house, a commodity, reducing the greater part of mankind to abstract labor. Marx follows Smith's definition of ''capital as the power of command over labor'' and its products. He disagrees with Smith's distinction between a

landlord A landlord is the owner of a house, apartment, condominium, land, or real estate which is rented or leased to an individual or business, who is called a tenant (also a ''lessee'' or ''renter''). When a juristic person is in this position, t ...

and a

, claiming that the character of landed property has been transformed from feudal times so that society is now (increasingly) divided into only two classes: workers and capitalists. He further criticizes the conception of labor found in the classical economists on grounds that their conceptions are superficial and abstract. Marx argues that the classical economists start with a fictional primordial state that takes concepts such as private property, exchange and competition as facts, without seeing a need to explain them. Marx believes he has offered a more coherent account that addresses the connection and the history of these factors. Marx explains how capitalism alienates man from his

human nature Human nature is a concept that denotes the fundamental dispositions and characteristics—including ways of thinking, feeling, and acting—that humans are said to have naturally. The term is often used to denote the essence of humankind, or ...

. Man's basic characteristic is his labor, or his commerce with nature. In earlier societies people could rely in part on nature itself to satisfy "natural needs". In modern society, where land ownership is subject to the laws of a

market Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market Geography *Märket, an ...

economy, it is only through money that one may survive. A worker's labor and his product have become alien from him. His productive powers are a commodity to be bought and sold like any other, at the market price determined by the minimum cost of maintenance. The worker does not toil to satisfy his need to work, but only to survive: "he receives an object of labor, i.e., in that he receives work, and, secondly, in that he receives means of subsistence. This enables him to exist, first as a worker; and second, as a physical subject. The height of this servitude is that it is only as a worker that he can maintain himself as a physical subject and that it is only as a physical subject that he is a worker." While his work produces wealth for the capital class, the worker himself is reduced to the level of an animal. If the wealth of society is diminishing, it is the worker who suffers the most; if it is increasing, then capital is increasing and the product of labor is increasingly alienated from the worker. The modern productive process does not promote the development and deployment of essential human capacities. Human individuals thus experience their lives as lacking meaning or fulfillment; they feel "estranged" or do not feel at home in the modern social world. Marx argues that the worker is alienated in four ways: # From the product he produces # From the act by which he produces this product # From his nature and himself # From other human beings The relation of the worker to the objects of his production is the primary cause of his impoverishment and dehumanization. The object produced by a worker's labor stands as an alien thing, a power independent of its producer. The more the worker produces, the more he approaches loss of work and starvation. Man is no longer the initiator in his interchange with the world outside himself; he has lost control of his own evolution. Marx draws an analogy with

religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...

: in religion,

God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...

is the subject of the historical process, and man is in a state of dependence. The more man attributes to God, the less he retains in himself. Similarly, when a worker externalizes his life in an object, his life belongs to the object and not to himself. The object confronts him as hostile and alien. His nature becomes the attribute of another person or thing. The act of production of the object is the second dimension of alienation. It is forced labor and not voluntary. The labor is external to the worker and not part of his nature. The worker's activity belongs to another, causing the loss of his self. The worker is only at ease in his animal functions of eating, drinking and procreating. In his distinctly human functions, he is made to feel like an animal. The third dimension of alienation that Marx discusses is man's alienation from his species. Marx here uses Feuerbachian terminology to describe man as a "

species-being Some Marxists posit what they deem to be Karl Marx's theory of human nature, which they accord an important place in his critique of capitalism, his conception of communism, and his 'materialist conception of history'. Marx, however, does not re ...

". Man is a self-conscious creature who can appropriate for his own use the whole realm of inorganic nature. While other animals produce, they produce only what is immediately necessary. Man, on the other hand, produces universally and freely. He is able to produce according to the standard of any species and at all times knows how to apply an intrinsic standard to the object. Man thus creates according to the laws of beauty. This transformation of inorganic nature is what Marx calls man's "life-activity", and it is man's

essence Essence ( la, essentia) is a polysemic term, used in philosophy and theology as a designation for the property or set of properties that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it ...

. Man has lost his species-being because his life-activity has been turned into a mere means of existence. The fourth and final dimension of alienation is drawn from alienation's other three dimensions: Marx believes that man is alienated from other men. Marx has argued that the product of a worker's labor is alien and belongs to someone else. The worker's productive activity is a torment for the worker; it must therefore be the pleasure of another. Marx asks who is this other person? Since the product of man's labor does not belong to nature nor to the gods, these two facts point out that it is another man who has control of a man's product and a man's activity. From his analysis of alienation, Marx draws the conclusion that private property is the product of externalized labor, and not the reverse. It is the relation of the worker to his labor that produces the relation of the capitalist to labor. Marx attempts to bring forth from this that social labor is in turn the source of all value and thus of the distribution of wealth. He argues that while the classical economists treat labor as the basis of production, they give nothing to labor and everything to private property. For Marx, wages and private property are identical, as they are both consequences of the alienation of labor. An increase in wages does not restore labor to its human meaning and significance. The emancipation of the workers will be the achievement of universal human emancipation, because the whole of human servitude is involved in the relation of the worker to production.

Communism

Marx discusses his conception of

communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a ...

in his third manuscript. For Marx, communism is "the ''positive'' expression of the abolition of private property". Marx here claims that previous socialist writers had offered only partial, unsatisfactory insights on the overcoming of alienation. He mentions

Proudhon Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (, , ; 15 January 1809, Besançon – 19 January 1865, Paris) was a French socialist,Landauer, Carl; Landauer, Hilde Stein; Valkenier, Elizabeth Kridl (1979) 959 "The Three Anticapitalistic Movements". ''European Soci ...

, who advocated the abolition of capital, Fourier, who advocated a return to agricultural labor and Saint-Simon, who advocated the correct organization of industrial labor. Marx discusses two forms of communism that he deems inadequate. The first is "crude communism"—the universalization of private property. This form of communism "negates the ''personality'' of man in every sphere," as it does not abolish the category of worker but instead extends it to all men. It is an "abstract negation of the entire world of culture and civilization." Here the only community is a community of (alienated) labor and the only equality is one of wages paid out by the community as universal capitalist. The second form of communism that Marx sees as incomplete is of two sorts: "(a) still of a political nature, democratic or despotic; (b) with the abolition of the state, but still essentially incomplete and influenced by private property, i.e. by the alienation of man." David McLellan takes Marx to here refer to the

utopian A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia'', describing a fictional island society ...

communism of Etienne Cabet as democratic, the despotic communism to be the

dictatorship of the proletariat In Marxist philosophy, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a condition in which the proletariat holds state power. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the intermediate stage between a capitalist economy and a communist economy, whereby the ...

advocated by the followers of

Gracchus Babeuf The Gracchi brothers were two Roman brothers, sons of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus who was consul in 177 BC. Tiberius, the elder brother, was tribune of the plebs in 133 BC and Gaius, the younger brother, was tribune a decade later in ...

, and the abolition of the state to be the communism of

Théodore Dézamy Alexandre Théodore Dézamy (4 March 1808 – 24 July 1850) was a French socialist, a representative of the Neo-Babouvist tendency in early French communism, along with Albert Laponneraye, Richard Lahautière, Jacques Pillot and others. He w ...

. Having discussed the nature of "crude communism", Marx describes his own idea of communism: Marx discusses three aspects of his conception of communism in depth: its historical bases, its social character and its regard for the individual. Marx firstly draws a distinction between his own communism and other "underdeveloped" forms of communism. He cites the communism of Cabet and Francois Villegardelle as examples of communism that justify themselves by appealing to historical forms of community that were opposed to private property. Where this communism appeals to isolated aspects or epochs of past history, Marx's communism, on the other hand, is based in the "entire movement of history"; it finds "both its empirical and its theoretical basis in the movement of ''private property'', or to be more exact, of the economy." The most basic alienation of human life is expressed in the existence of private property, and this alienation occurs in man's real life—the economic sphere. Religious alienation occurs only in man's

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

. The overcoming of private property will thus be the overcoming of all other alienations: religion, the family, the state, etc. Marx secondly claims that the relation of man to himself, to other men and to what he produces in an unalienated situation shows that it is the social character of labor that is basic. Marx believes that there is a reciprocal relationship between man and society: society produces man and is produced by him. Just as there is a reciprocal relationship between man and society, so is there between man and nature: "society is therefore the perfected unity in essence of man with nature, the true resurrection of nature, the realized naturalism of man and the realized humanism of nature." Man's essential capacities are produced in social intercourse: when working in isolation, he performs a social act by virtue of being human; even thinking, which uses language, is a social activity. This emphasis on the social aspects of man's being does not destroy man's individuality: "Man, however much he may therefore be a ''particular'' individual—and it is just this particularity which he makes him an individual and a real ''individual'' communal being—is just as much the ''totality'', the ideal totality, the subjective experience of thought and experienced society for itself." The rest of Marx's third manuscript explicates his conception of the total, all-sided, unalienated man. Marx believes the supersession of private property will be a total liberation of all human faculties: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking, observing, feeling, desiring, acting and loving will all become means of appropriating reality. It is difficult for alienated man to imagine this, as private property has conditioned men so that they can only imagine an object to be theirs when they actually use it. Even then, the object is only employed as a means of sustaining life, which is understood as consisting of labor and the creation of capital. Marx believes that all physical and intellectual senses have been replaced by a single alienation—that of ''having''. The "supersession of private property", Marx claims, "is therefore the complete ''emancipation'' of all human senses and attributes." Need or satisfaction will lose their egoistic nature, and nature will lose its mere utility "in the sense that its use has become ''human'' use". When man is no longer lost in an object, the manner in which his faculties appropriate the object becomes totally different. The object that unalienated man appropriates corresponds to his nature. A starving man can only appreciate food in a purely animal way, and a dealer in minerals sees only value, and not beauty, in his wares. The transcendence of private property will liberate man's faculties to become human faculties. A full and harmonious development of man's cultural potentialities will arise, where abstract intellectual oppositions—"subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity"—will disappear. "The practical energy of man" will instead tackle the real problems of life. In a passage that anticipates Marx's later detailed accounts of

historical materialism Historical materialism is the term used to describe Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx locates historical change in the rise of class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods. For Marx and his lifetime collaborat ...

, Marx next claims that it is the history of

industry Industry may refer to: Economics * Industry (economics), a generally categorized branch of economic activity * Industry (manufacturing), a specific branch of economic activity, typically in factories with machinery * The wider industrial sector ...

—rather than that of

politics Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that stud ...

and

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

—that reveals man's essential faculties. Industry reveals man's capabilities and psychology and is thus the basis for any science of man. The immense growth of industry has allowed natural science to transform the life of man. Just as Marx earlier established a reciprocal relationship between man and nature, so does he believe that natural science will one day include the science of man and the science of man will include natural science. Marx believes that human sense-experience, as described by Feuerbach, can form the basis of a single all-embracing science.

Critique of Hegel

The section of the ''Manuscripts'' that follows Marx's discussion of communism concerns his critique of Hegel. Marx deems it necessary to discuss the Hegelian dialectic because Hegel has grasped the essence of man's labor in a manner that was hidden from the classical economists. Despite his abstract and mental understanding of labor, Hegel has correctly discerned that labor is the creator of value. The structure of Hegel's philosophy accurately reflects the real economic alienation of man in his work process. Marx believes Hegel has made very real discoveries but has "mystified" them. He argues that Feuerbach is the only critic who has a constructive attitude to Hegel. However, he also uses Hegel to illuminate weaknesses in Feuerbach's approach. The greatness of Hegel's dialectic lies in its view of alienation as a necessary stage in mankind's evolution: humanity creates itself by a process of alienation alternating with the transcendence of that alienation. Hegel sees labor as an alienating process that realizes the essence of man: man externalizes his essential powers in an objectified state, and then assimilates them back into him from outside. Hegel understands that the objects which appear to order men's lives—their religion, their wealth—in fact belong to man and are the product of essential human capacities. Nonetheless, Marx criticizes Hegel for equating labor with spiritual activity and alienation with objectivity. Marx believes Hegel's mistake is to make entities that belong objectively and sensuously to man into mental entities. For Hegel, the transcendence of alienation is the transcendence of the object—its reabsorption into the spiritual nature of man. In Hegel's system, the appropriation of alien things is only an abstract appropriation, which takes place in the realm of consciousness. While man suffers from economic and political alienation, it is only the thought of economics and politics that interests Hegel. Because Man's integration with nature takes place on a spiritual level, Marx views this integration as an abstraction and an illusion. Marx holds that Feuerbach is the only one of Hegel's disciples who has truly conquered the master's philosophy. Feuerbach has succeeded in showing that Hegel, having started from the abstract, infinite point of view of religion and

theology Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

, then superseded this with the finite and particular attitude of philosophy, only to then supersede this attitude with a restoration of the abstraction typical of theology. Feuerbach sees this final stage as a regression, to which Marx agrees. Hegel believes that reality is

Spirit Spirit or spirits may refer to: Liquor and other volatile liquids * Spirits, a.k.a. liquor, distilled alcoholic drinks * Spirit or tincture, an extract of plant or animal material dissolved in ethanol * Volatile (especially flammable) liquids, ...

realizing itself, and that alienation consists in men's failure to understand that their environment and their culture are emanations of Spirit. Spirit's existence is constituted only in and through its own productive activity. In the process of realizing itself, Spirit produces a world that it initially believes is external, but gradually comes to understand is its own production. The aim of history is freedom, and freedom consists in men's becoming fully self-conscious. Marx rejects Hegel's notion of Spirit, believing that man's mental activities—his ideas—are by themselves insufficient to explain social and cultural change. Marx comments that while Hegel talks as though human nature is only one attribute of self-consciousness, in reality self-consciousness is only one attribute of human nature. Hegel believes that man can be equated with self-consciousness, since self-consciousness has only itself for an object. Moreover, Hegel views alienation as constituted by objectivity and the overcoming of alienation as primarily the overcoming of objectivity. Against this, Marx argues that if man were merely self-consciousness then he could only establish outside himself abstract objects that have no independence via-a-vis his self-consciousness. If all alienation is the alienation of self-consciousness, then actual alienation—alienation in relation to natural objects—is only apparent. Marx instead sees man as an objective, natural being who has real natural objects that correspond to his nature. Marx calls his view "naturalism" and "humanism". He distinguishes this view from

idealism In philosophy, the term idealism identifies and describes metaphysical perspectives which assert that reality is indistinguishable and inseparable from perception and understanding; that reality is a mental construct closely connected t ...

and materialism, yet claims it unifies what is essentially true in both. For Marx, nature is that which is opposed to man, yet man is himself a part of the system of nature. Man's nature is constituted by his needs and drives, and it is through nature that these essential needs and drives are satisfied. As such, man needs objects that are independent of him to express his objective nature. A being that is neither an object itself nor has an object would be the only existing being—a non-objective abstraction. Following this discussion of human nature, Marx comments on the last chapter of Hegel's ''Phenomenology''. Marx criticizes Hegel for equating alienation with objectivity, and for claiming that consciousness has transcended alienation. According to Marx, Hegel holds that consciousness knows that its objects are its own self-alienation—that there is no distinction between the object of consciousness and consciousness itself. Alienation is transcended when man feels at one with the spiritual world in its alienated form, believing it to be a feature of his

authentic Authenticity or authentic may refer to: * Authentication, the act of confirming the truth of an attribute Arts and entertainment * Authenticity in art, ways in which a work of art or an artistic performance may be considered authentic Music * A ...

existence. Marx differs fundamentally from Hegel on the meaning of "transcendence" (''Aufhebung''). While private property, morality, the family, civil society, the state, etc. have been "transcended" in thought, they remain in existence. Hegel has arrived at genuine insight into the process of alienation and its transcendence: atheism transcends

to produce theoretical humanism and communism transcends private property to produce practical humanism. However, in Marx's view, these attempts to arrive at humanism must themselves be transcended to generate a self-creating, positive humanism.

Needs, Production, the Division of Labor and Money

In the concluding portions of the ''Manuscripts'', Marx reflects on the morality of private property and the meaning of money. This discussion is within the same framework as the first section on wages, rent and profit. Marx claims that private property artificially creates needs in order to bring men into dependence. As men and their needs are at the mercy of the market, poverty increases and men's living conditions become worse than those of animals. In line with this, political economy preaches utter asceticism and reduces the needs of the worker to the miserable necessities of life. Political economy has its own private laws, since alienation separates activities into different spheres, often with different and contradictory norms. Marx mentions that classical economists wish to limit the population and think even people a luxury. He then returns to the topic of communism. He claims that the situation in England provides a surer basis for the transcendence of alienation than that in Germany or France: the form of alienation in England is based in practical need, whereas German communism is based on an attempt to establish universal self-consciousness and the equality of French communism has merely a political foundation. Marx returns to the dehumanizing effects of capital in the second half of this section. He discusses the declining rate of interest and the abolition of land rent, as well as the question of the division of labor. In the next section on money, Marx quotes

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

and

Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as tr ...

to argue that money is the ruin of society. Since money could purchase anything, it could remedy all deficiencies. Marx believes that in a society where everything would have a definite, human value, only love could be exchanged for love, etc.

Publication and reception

The ''Manuscripts'' were published for the first time in Moscow in 1932, as part of the '' Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe'' edition. They were edited by David Ryazanov under whom

György Lukács György Lukács (born György Bernát Löwinger; hu, szegedi Lukács György Bernát; german: Georg Bernard Baron Lukács von Szegedin; 13 April 1885 – 4 June 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary historian, critic, and aesth ...

worked in deciphering them. Lukács would later claim that this experience transformed his interpretation of Marxism permanently. On publication, their importance was recognized by Herbert Marcuse and

Henri Lefebvre Henri Lefebvre ( , ; 16 June 1901 – 29 June 1991) was a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist, best known for pioneering the critique of everyday life, for introducing the concepts of the right to the city and the production of s ...

: Marcuse claimed that the ''Manuscripts'' demonstrated the philosophical foundations of Marxism, putting "the entire theory of 'scientific socialism' on a new footing"; Lefebvre, with

Norbert Guterman Norbert Guterman (1900–1984) was a scholar, and translator of scholarly and literary works from French, Polish and Latin into English. His translations were remarkable for their range of subject matter and high quality. Born in Warsaw, Guterman ...

, was the first to translate the ''Manuscripts'' into a foreign language, publishing a French edition in 1933. Lefebvre's ''Dialectical Materialism'', written in 1934–5, advanced a reconstruction of Marx's entire body of work in the light of the ''Manuscripts''. In spite of this intense interest, copies of the published volumes of the ''Manuscripts'' subsequently became difficult to locate, as the ''Marx–Engels-Gesamtausgabe'' project was effectively cancelled shortly afterward. The text became more widely disseminated after the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, with satisfactory editions appearing in English only in 1956, and in French in 1962. In this period,

Galvano Della Volpe Galvano Della Volpe (24 September 1895 – 13 July 1968) was an Italian professor of philosophy and Marxist theorist. Life Born on 24 September 1895 in Imola, in the then province of Bologna, Della Volpe served in the First World War and after ...

was the first to translate and discuss the ''Manuscripts'' in Italian, propounding an interpretation that differed greatly from that of Lukács, Marcuse and Lefebvre and that inspired its own school of thought. Many

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

writers, particularly those in France, took interest in the ''Manuscripts'' at this time. The existential Marxism of

Maurice Merleau-Ponty Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty. (; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest an ...

and

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lit ...

also drew heavily from the ''Manuscripts''. In the US, the ''Manuscripts'' were embraced enthusiastically in the late fifties and early sixties by the intellectual current subsequently known as the New Left, with a volume containing an introduction by Erich Fromm published in 1961. Since the terminology of alienation does not appear in any prominent manner in Marx's magnum opus '' Capital'', the publication of the ''Manuscripts'' caused great debate regarding the relationship of the "

Young Marx The correct place of Karl Marx's early writings within his system as a whole has been a matter of great controversy. Some believe there is a ''break'' in Marx's development that divides his thought into two periods: the "Young Marx" is said to be ...

" to the "Mature Marx". The ''Manuscripts'' were the most important reference for "

Marxist humanism Marxist humanism is an international body of thought and political action rooted in an interpretation of the works of Karl Marx. It is an investigation into "what human nature consists of and what sort of society would be most conducive to huma ...

", which saw continuity between their Hegelian philosophical humanism and the economic theory of the later Marx. Conversely, the

largely ignored the ''Manuscripts'', believing them to belong to Marx's "early writings", which expound a line of thought that had led him nowhere. The structural Marxism of Louis Althusser inherited the Soviet Union's harsh verdict of Marx's early writings. Althusser believed there was a "break" in Marx's development - a break that divides Marx's thought into an "

ideological An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied prim ...

" period before 1845, and a scientific period after. Others who ascribed a break to Marx idealized the ''Manuscripts'' and believed the young Marx to be the real Marx. Marxist economist

Ernest Mandel Ernest Ezra Mandel (; also known by various pseudonyms such as Ernest Germain, Pierre Gousset, Henri Vallin, Walter (5 April 1923 – 20 July 1995), was a Belgian Marxian economist, Trotskyist activist and theorist, and Holocaust survivor. He f ...

distinguishes three different schools of thought with respect to this controversy:

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

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External links

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''Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844''Original German text
{{Marx/Engels 1932 non-fiction books Books by Karl Marx Communist books Philosophical literature Books published posthumously