Karl Marx, Paris Manuscripts of 1844
Posted: Mon, Dec 1, 2025
Locke’s account of private property: Picking up the acorn ⇒ It becomes mine.
- Property describes a relation between a man and an external object.
- This relation is a natural phenomenon; it is not specific to any society or time (it even exists in the state of nature).
- Derivative of the world belonging to all men “in common.”
- Mixing my labor with an external object is quite literally making it a part of my person.
- Two constraints on acquisition: No waste, and must leave “enough and as good.”
- Trouble explaining wealth inequality: Technological loophole (i.e., invention of money).
Marx’s critique: Private property is a social relation involving men, the activity of labor, and human nature.
- “Let us not be like the political economist who, when he wishes to explain something, puts himself in an imaginary original state of affairs. Such an original state of affairs explains nothing. He simply pushes the question back.”
- Capitalist organization of society is characterized by private ownership of means of production (machines, raw materials, buildings, land, etc.).
- The bourgeoisie (capitalists) own means of production, employ wager-labors to use these means of production to create products, and sell these products for profits.
- The proletariat (working class) labor on the means of production owned by the bourgeoisie in exchange for wages.
- Note that the proletariat do not own the objects with which they mix their labor.
- Contra Locke, the original accumulation of capital was an actual, violent historical event.
- Early Marx: A philosophical argument against capitalism based on alienation.
Alienation: Something to which I gave birth now stands “alien and hostile” in external opposition to me. Four aspects:
- Alienation of the worker from the product/object of his labor (pp. 87–88).
- Alienation of the worker from the activity of labor (p. 88–89).
- Alienation of the worker from his species-being and thus himself (pp. 89–91).
- Alienation of the worker from other men (pp. 91–92).
In-class activity: What does Marx mean by this? Can you come up with a concrete example of your own to make sense of what he’s saying?
Emancipation: There is no (re)distribution of wealth that can free the proletariat from alienation.
- Private property is a symptom rather than cause of alienation; there is private property because there is alienated labor.
- While my not owning the product of my labor is not inherently alienating, an alienating form of it partially constitutes capitalist social relations.
- Indeed, “after labour has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want” under communism, we flourish in a society of “each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” (“Critique of the Gotha Programme”).
- The worker’s alienation is not natural; he becomes alienated through alienated labor. Human nature is “the ensemble of the social relations” (“Theses on Feuerbach”).
- What needs to happen is a political revolution—the abolition of private ownership of means of production. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”
Is there any connection between different systems of oppression?
- Could white supremacy survive the abolition of private ownership of means of production?
- Could gender liberation be achieved prior to the ending of racism? (Lorde, “Who Said It Was Simple”)