File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2002/bhaskar.0201, message 87


From: rgroff-AT-yorku.ca
Subject: Re: BHA: current theme
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 01:29:05 -0500 (EST)


Hi John,

I'm working on only a small portion of my brain cells here (just finished 
getting out a big proposal and am shot), but I didn't want to drop the ball in 
our interpretive fussing.  Yes: "private property is the material, summary 
expression of estranged (or "alienated," I forget now, off the top of my head) 
labour."  Marx says that in the 1844 manuscripts.  It's a wonderful passage.  
But I dont read it as telling us that alienation is exclusive to capitalism.

Let's re-trace our footsteps: I disagreed with your claim that in Marx the 
exclusive cause of alienation is the fetishism of commodities and/or rule by the 
law of value.  I argued that these attributes of capitalist class society lead 
to alienation which is more extreme, but that they are neither its sole nor root 
cause. I said that I read Marx as saying that alienation is a matter of our not 
(yet) having realized our species-being.  The main reason why we have not yet 
done so, and why our objectified creative capacities have thus far been 
alienated from us, is that we have not yet established the social relations of 
production that would make such free activity possible.  So yes, as you suggest, 
I read Marx as saying that wherever you have class-based ownership and control 
of the means of production and surplus, you will have alienation.  Not just when 
the class-based relations are specifically capitalist in character.

You seem to think that this is circular reasoning; if private property is the 
result of labour that is alienated, how can it also be the cause of alienation? 
I know it might look bad, but here's how I read Marx on this point.  

First, it is important to keep in mind the argument in that section is that 
private property - capitalist private property, in this case - does not come 
from the people who have it having worked harder than other people.  Of course, 
absent the labour theory of value and the detailed historical analysis of land 
enclosures Marx hasn't yet completely figured out where it DOES come from.  At a 
minimum, though, he's prepared to say that private property presupposes not hard 
work by the people who have it, but hard work by people who do NOT have it.  
This scenario - where the people who work do not control the means or the 
surplus - is not unique to capitalism (though the capitalist version has certain 
unique characteristics, which he goes on to specify in great detail in later 
life).  But one thing is for certain: wherever you have it, you have a society 
full of people who are, by definition, alienated from their species-being.  


Second, in part I think it may be the language that is misleading.  What if we 
were to say instead (as I more or less just did) that (a) the accumulation of 
wealth and resources in a small number of private hands presupposes relations of 
production and ownership in which direct producers for the most part have 
neither and (b) societies characterized by said type of production/ownership 
relations are necessarily marked by their members' alienation from their 
species-being.  This version doesn't have quite the same appearance of 
being circular, I don't think.  


Finally, I think there is an underlying sense of circularity because in fact we 
are only talking about one thing, or concept, really: viz., class society - 
which, in virtue of its form, is characterized by alienation.  Again, I'm 
willing to grant you that in virtue of its specific form, capitalist class 
society is characterized by far greater alienation than are other types of class 
society.  But I still wouldn't read Marx as saying that alienation is *unique* 
to capitalism.

Is that any better?  (Sorry if I've been repetitive; I'm about to fall over from 
sleepiness!)

Warmly,
Ruth 

 







    



Quoting John Roberts <msrssjmr-AT-man.ac.uk>:

> Hi Ruth

In reply to your last email I would say that you seem fto
> define 
alienation as a form of private property and/or the division of
> labour. 
However the problem here is that the vast majority of
> societies 
must have a division of labour and many non-capitalist
> societies 
have private property. In the German Ideology Marx and
> Engels 
actually say, in fact, that a division of labour brings about a
> form of 
sociability and co-operation. I would therefore say that in
> other non-
capitalist systems there is a process of *objectification*
> whereby a 
surplus is appropriated through an *external* source such as
> a 
feudal landlord. Under capitalism objectification is transformed
> into 
*alienation* whereby a surplus is appropriated through *internal*
> 
means i.e. by labour itself. With capitalism, therefore, alienated
> 
labour is *the* self-mediating form and reproduction of capitalist
> 
social relations. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts 
Marx
> takes Hegel to task for conflating objectification with 
alienation.
> According to Marx, Hegel argues that human 
consciousness objectifies
> and alienates itself, and is thereby 
estranged, because it cannot
> grasp that objects of knowledge are 
in fact part of its sensuous
> being. Marx argues in return that Hegel 
here mistakenly equates a
> specific process of (capitalist) alienation 
with objectification (the
> latter of which Hegel also wrongly terms as 
alienation). Marx further
> argues that capitalist private property is 
constituted through
> alienated labour. As he says: 'Private property 
thus results by
> analysis from the concept of alienated labour i.e. of 
alienated man,
> of estranged labour, of estranged life, of estranged 
man' (p. 72
> Lawrence and Wishart edition). Private property is the 
expression of
> capitalist alienation not its cause.

Not sure if that's an answer to
> your last email, but it's a starting 
point - I hope!

Cheers,
JOhn 
> 

On 15 Jan 02, at 10:33, Ruth Groff wrote:

Hi guys,

My computer
> has been refusing to allow me to send my post.  I'm going 
to try
> re-typing it altogether.  Here goes.

John,

Thanks for the clear
> and prompt response.  And no, rest assured: I was the
one who expressed
> the specificity of capitalist class relations in terms of
exploitation
> through the wage.  I probably put it that way because I was already
> thinking about alienation in Marx not as a product of reificaiton per
> se, but as a product of class (i.e., of an objective relation of
> non-ownership and non-control) -- or perhaps more precisely (though also
> more 
generally) as a product of our activity not yet being a free
> expression of
species-being.

I do see the logic of your position,
> but as an interpretive matter I'm not quite
convinced yet.  I agree
> that with the fetishism of commodities alienation
reached an all-time
> extreme, but I don't think that Marx sees the reification
that is
> specific to capitalism as a *necessary* pre-condition or
> defining
feature of alienation.  I would say that alienation in Marx is
> a matter of
our not (yet) having realized our species-being, of being
> cut off from our
distinctively human capacity for collective,
> self-conscious, self/social-direction
and transformation.  I would say
> that in Marx it is the combination of natural
necessity (until
> capitalism, when we have the productive capacity to
overcome this) and
> the class character of production (until capitalism,
when we have the
> capacity to overcome this) that has rendered us alienated.

I guess I
> might go with you as far as to say that in capitalism this
> truncation
of species-being occurs both because direct producers don't
> own or control
production AND because capitalism, as a particularly
> bizzaro type of class
society, involves the rule of value and the
> mediation of social relations through
objects.  But I still wouldn't
> say that the latter is a definitional pre-requisite.

I'm interested,
> though.  Got any good textual evidence?

Warmly,
Ruth



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