Marx. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.
Chapter: “Estranged Labor” (p. 69-84).
Entäußerung - Entfremdung. Read the definitions in pages 10-11, and explain them.
Why does the worker sink to the level of commodity? (the most wretched of commodities, indeed).
Why, for Marx, the necessary result of competition is monopoly? Do you agree with his idea?
What is the difference between the classical political economy’s approach and Marx’s approach regarding private property?
“It [Political economy] takes the interest of the capitalist to be the ultimate cause” (70). How should this evolve, according to Marx?
Should Political economy criticize competition and avarice? What is, concretely, the Marxist turn in regards to the previous authors (Smith, for example)?
Political economy does not grasp the connections between private property, avarice, and the separation of labor, capital, and landed property. Why should we not explain all these divisions by going back to a fictitious primordial condition?
Explain: “Labor produces not only commodities: it produces itself and the worker as a commodity” (71).
Explain why labor is a power independent of the producer (71).
Labor has been congealed in an object. (Labor’s realization-objectification). Why does Marx speak about a “loss of reality” for the worker? Explain.
Explain: “The worker is related to the product of his labor as to an alien object” (71)
Why does Marx say that the worker creates an alien objective world over-against himself? (72)
Explain: “[H]is [the worker’s] labor becomes an object, an external existence…it becomes a power on its own, confronting him” (72).
Why does the worker become a slave of his object?
Explain the critique: “Political economy conceals the estrangement inherent in the nature of labor by not considering the direct relationship between the worker (labor) and production.
The relation of the worker to production is the essential relationship of labor. Why?
Not only the product is estranging. The very act of production is estranging as well. Production itself is active alienation. Explain. (73-74)
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Synthesis: a) The product of labor is strange to the worker.
b) The act of production is strange to the worker.
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“Labor is external to the worker”. Explain why the worker only feels himself outside his work.
Why is the worker reduced to his animal functions? Explain (74).
Explain: “The universality of man is in practice manifested precisely in the universality which makes all nature his inorganic body” (75-6)
Explain the difference between Man and Animal (according to Marx).
Explain: “[Animal] produces one-sidedly, while man produces universally” (77).
Why does nature appear as man’s work, as man’s reality? Explain.
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Synthesis. The object of labor is the objectification of man’s species life. Man duplicates himself not only intellectually, but actively as well.
But estranged labor transforms man's species life into a means to his physical existence.
Then, we have:
c) Man is an alien to himself.
d) Man is an alien to other man.
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Explain point C.
Explain point D.
To whom does the product of labor belong?
Define private property, according to Marx
Explain Marx’s critique against Proudhon (81-2)
Explain Marx’s notion of “universal emancipation”.
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