Karl Marx, Paris Manuscripts of 1844

Posted: Wed, Apr 29, 2026

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.”
Contra Locke, the original accumulation of capital was an actual, violent historical event.
Early Marx: A philosophical argument against capitalism based on alienation.

Reflective activity:

Think of three moments this semester when you felt you were doing something meaningful. What made them so?
Then, think of three moments this semester when you felt burn out. Was is just stress or was there something more?
Do you see any intuitive way in which the concept “alienation” might describe your experiences?

Alienation: Problematic separation.

Alienation is an objective description, not merely a subjective feeling; we can be alienated in ways we may not be aware of.
The separation must be problematic: the entities in question must properly belong together but now stand “alien and hostile” in external opposition to each other.
Cf. breakup vs. forced family separation.

Wage labor: The proletariat (workers) labor on means of production owned by the bourgeoisie (capitalists) in exchange for wages.

The product of the worker is owned by the capitalist.
The worker sells merely a timed amount of their labor power.
The worker is paid a minimal wage—barely enough for subsistence.
The worker labors in punishing conditions and for long hours.
The worker exercises little autonomy and expresses little individuality.

Implicit account of human nature: Creative/productive activity is part of what it means to be and to flourish as a human being.

Labor itself is not to blame; what’s problematic about wage labor is the class character labor takes on under capitalism—labor is alienated under capitalist productive relations.
Likewise, property itself is not to blame; what’s problematic about bourgeois property is the class character it takes on under capitalism—private property.
Private property is a symptom not cause of alienated labor: it is “the product, result, and necessary consequence of externalized labour, of the exterior relationship of the worker to nature and to himself” (Paris Manuscripts, p. 93).

Four aspects of alienated labor under capitalism:

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).

Human 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”, p. 172).
Cf. “political emancipation”: Extension of political rights to all.
- Political emancipation is freedom of property, etc.; human emancipation is freedom from property, etc.
- Political emancipation is ultimately freedom from external interference; human emancipation needs rather than opposes other human beings.
- Political emancipation reduces “man, on the one hand to a member of civil society, an egoistic and independent individual, on the other hand to a citizen, a moral person”; human emancipation restores man to his species-being/humanness.
What needs to happen is a 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” (“Theses on Feuerbach,” p. 173).
- This revolution must be brought about by workers themselves.

How would the communist revolution transform private property? ⇒ Communal property.