On the Alienation of Human Beings from the Perspective of Human Nature —— Taking 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts as an example

Everyone's free development is the condition for everyone's free development. -karl heinrich marx

1844 Economic Philosophy Manuscript is an article in the process of young Marxism transforming into mature dialectical materialism and historical materialism. After Marx's death, Engels compiled and published it. In this article, we can clearly see the influence of Feuerbach's "humanism" thought and its changes on Marx's theory. By criticizing classical economics, Marx expressed his deep concern for workers, inherited Hegel's dialectics and developed "humanism". Marx formed his own unique understanding of human nature. On this basis, Marx paid attention to reality and put forward the problem of human alienation in capitalist society.

Etymologically, this word comes from Latin, which means to shift, alienate and separate. The alienation of people, literally speaking, means that people are divorced from the essence of people and are no longer people. In German classical philosophy, alienation was raised to the height of philosophy. Hegel understood "alienation" as externalization, and put forward human alienation to explain the division and opposition between subject and object. On this basis, Marxist philosophy further discusses the problem of human alienation, puts forward the theory of alienated labor, and points out that alienation is a social phenomenon in which human production and its products rule people in turn.

Marx's exposition of "alienated labor" contains two ends in theoretical logic: one is philosophical thinking about human nature, that is, if the essence of alienated world is not human nature, it is very necessary to understand human nature. Second, the future of alienation-sublation, the question to be answered here is what should we do and what is the destination of people in the alienated world? This paper mainly discusses the former: the alienation of people from the perspective of human nature.

The essence of man deviates from the essence of man. Originally, human beings ruled things, and in turn they were ruled by things. This is the alienation of people. Since human beings have been alienated, what should a real person look like? What are their characteristics? How have these characteristics changed under special historical conditions? What are the consequences?

In other words, to truly understand Marx's alienation theory, we must first understand the concept of real human nature in Marx's thought, so that we can clearly see human alienation in the specific capitalist situation and understand the alienated labor problem of Marxism more intuitively.

The discussion about human nature has a long history. We begin with Feuerbach's "humanism", which has a great influence on Marx, and begin with understanding the relationship between existence and essence.

The logic here is that the actual existence of human beings is objective existence, and what human beings should have is the essence of human beings, that is, the alienation of human beings is manifested in the deviation between human existence (the actual living conditions of human beings) and human essence (the original appearance of human beings).

Therefore, to understand Feuerbach's thought about human nature, we must first understand the relationship between existence and essence, which is different from Hegel's thought (Hegel regards existence, matter and nature as the provisions of self-consciousness and the externalized form of self-consciousness). Feuerbach believes that thinking comes from existence, and existence determines thinking. Feuerbach thought about the relationship between existence and essence from the perspective of existence: essence is the result of thinking and the result of human thinking. In this link, people become the key to all problems. It has become a bridge between existence and essence.

Feuerbach's humanism, despite its complex concepts, mainly has two positions: naturalism and humanity.

The former thinks that man is a natural being first (materialism), while the latter thinks that man is unique (quasi-essence) independent of other animals in nature. These two points are reflected in Marx's exposition on human nature. The only difference is that Feuerbach attributed human nature to a perceptual thinking existence, while Marx understood human nature from the level of actual labor.

So how is human nature related to labor? This involves an objectified concept, because human nature is not a spiritual entity, so human nature emerges from the object. That is, the externalization of human nature. The subject sets himself on the object, thus establishing a non-self "alien" process. Perhaps it can be understood by the concept of "self in the mirror" put forward by sociologist Cooley, and people can know themselves through the mirror (Cooley believes that people's self-awareness is known through other people in social relations). We have replaced the mirror here with the fruits of human labor, that is, people can know themselves through their own creation, which is objectification. The objectification of human nature is embodied in labor. The objectification of labor is embodied in the products of labor.

Tracing back to the source, we can look at Marx's three aspects of human nature (class nature emphasizes the abstract identity of human as a whole from the perspective of nature).

Marx thought: "Life-like life lies in the fact that people live by the inorganic world. The more common people are than animals, the wider the scope of the inorganic world on which people live. Theoretically, plants, animals, rocks, air, light, etc. On the one hand, as the object of natural science, on the other hand, as the object of art, they are all part of human consciousness and the inorganic world of human spirit? In practice, the universality of human beings is manifested in transforming the whole nature-first as the direct means of life of human beings, and secondly as the material, object and tool of human life activities-into human beings without bodies.

From what has been discussed above, we can see that

First of all, people are objective and emotional beings. To recognize the objectivity of human physical existence, we must recognize the rationality of maintaining this existence and meeting the physiological needs of this biological organization. Therefore, Marx once said: human needs are human nature. At this point, Marx inherited Feuerbach's naturalism (man is the existence of nature). Hegel's existence is a complete reversal of self-consciousness and externalization, which can be attributed to materialism. You have to eat and wear warm clothes before you can pursue culture and art. It can be said that this is the premise of everything.

On this premise, labor, as the embodiment of human nature, has the following characteristics: Marx believes that real labor must be objectified labor (expressed through actual existence), and people must experience and confirm their own nature through objects and the dynamic relationship with them.

To sum up, whether it is the embodiment of human nature or human nature, it is an objective reality in the end.

Secondly, people have rational consciousness. This kind of consciousness is self-knowledge, which can be projected on the object for understanding, which is also the biggest difference between people and animals. Only when people transcend individuality through self-awareness and take their own class as the object, can human life have duality, external material life and internal rational life. The difference between human labor and animal labor also lies in the class scale of human labor-initiative and creativity.

Finally, people are social. Marx once said that man is the sum of all social relations. Here we can relate to the humanity mentioned above. One of the differences between human beings and animals is that we can know ourselves by projecting our self-awareness on the object, and we can transcend the individual and grasp ourselves from the category of human beings as a whole. Marx once said: "Death seems to be a class's cold victory over a specific individual, which seems to contradict their unity, but a specific individual is only a specific class existence. As such an existence, it will die sooner or later." For this passage, we can understand that individual existence as an objective nature will inevitably die with the laws of nature, but the existence as a class is eternal. This overall grasp of class and specific understanding of social relations is the essence of human beings.

Therefore, labor, as the externalization and real realization of human nature, is also a kind of social labor, in which people find their own understanding.

These are all Marx's understanding of human nature, and also talked about real labor and affirmative labor. It is Marx who regards labor in this sense as the externalization of adult essence, so denying labor in this sense becomes human alienation. Through the investigation of economy and politics, Marx found that in real life, the essence of human beings is different from each other. Based on Marx's understanding of human nature, we can also see this alienation more clearly.

There are two main lines about human alienation, capitalists and working class. Marx mainly discussed the alienation of the working class, but rarely mentioned the alienation of capitalists.

Because labor is the essence of human beings, Marx's observation of alienation is closely related to labor. There are three aspects about labor inspection and regulation, namely, labor products, production activities and human nature.

Let's first look at the alienation of the working class in these three aspects: first, the product of labor, which is the result of labor and the most direct form of expression, is no longer owned by workers, but plundered by capitalists in the form of monetary wages. Workers who should dominate their own labor products are dominated by labor products instead (workers live by labor). Secondly, in production activities, real labor should be human nature, the realization of human nature and free nature, and the way and purpose of human existence. However, in capitalist commodity production, labor has become passive labor, and people only feel pain in labor. This is alienation. In this way, the result of labor is the alienation of human existence and human nature.

Then, at the capitalist level, Marxism also believes that there is alienation, but this alienation is regarded as a symbol of its own strength and an illusory happiness and affirmation. First of all, as far as labor products are concerned, the capitalist does not produce labor products, so there is no process of externalizing his own essence. Although he has labor results, this labor result is not the externalization of his class essence. Furthermore, in the production process, capitalists do not participate in production activities, but participate in capital activities. In order to earn more capital, although he can decide the production of workers, he has to obey the requirements of the capital market and immerse himself in profit-seeking behavior, making himself a slave to capital. In this way, although the capitalist owns labor products in the capitalist market, it is not out of his own will, although he finally gets material labor products. He has illusory material satisfaction, but in this process, his essence has not been externalized and embodied, which is the alienation of capitalists, mainly reflected in two aspects: the class essence has not been realized and he has become a slave of capital.

Therefore, the alienation of the two classes has caused the alienation between people. Originally a class, a whole and social human beings deviated from their own essence and alienated from each other.

Then the result of alienation is private property, which is actually alien possession of labor products. Its appearance further deepened the gap between capitalists and working class, proletarians and property owners, and deepened the opposition between the two classes. Marx later put forward the view that private ownership must be abolished in order to realize the essence of human beings and return to the essence of labor. The fundamental solution to the problem of alienation lies in the all-round development of productive forces, which is also the basis of germination.

Of course, as a transitional work, Marx's understanding of human nature here is far from real materialism, such as defining human perceptual existence from human nature, but we can see Marx's practical attitude and concern for human's free and all-round development from beginning to end. This is quite different from the philosophy that we generally believe that Marxism is cold and emphasizes material existence.

Supplement: combing

Human alienation-that is, human existence deviates from human essence-that is, existence deviates from human essence-asking what is human essence-tracing the relationship between Feuerbach's existence and essence-so as to grasp Marx's human essence setting in this relationship-comparing with the real situation, we can see what alienation has happened-the working class and labor products, production activities, and finally the alienation with human nature-and finally with human beings.