For this post I want to characterize our reading on "Estranged Labor" in a way that haven't yet, namely as phenomenology. This characterization will help us see the philosophical lineage between Hegel and Marx a little more.
By phenomenology I mean the usual definition as a descriptive account of how things appear to us. The descriptions we attach to objects in phenomenology do not necessarily "inhere" in the object if no one were there to experience it. In fact, in the phenomenological analysis that Marx is doing here, we would hardly say that the product of labor has the property of "being alienated," even when there is no worker. That just doesn't make any sense. It is vital then to understand that Marx's writing in "Estranged Labor" is a phenomenological account of how things appear to the worker, and in each and every case the thing (whether it is the product of labor, himself, his species being, or his fellow human) appears as alienated.
The connection between Hegel and Marx gets fleshed out here because phenomenology is an entirely new kind of philosophy that did not really exist before them. Since Aristotle, when philosophers speak of things like "predicates," (which, simply defined, are just qualities that can be said about a given object) the predicates usually, if not always, carry the sense with them that they are predicated upon the object regardless of anyone's perception of them. For Hegel and Marx it seems that these kinds of predicates are altogether uninteresting, since both of them are much more concerned with what we add to the object in our experience of it. And that last part of that statement might be able to extend our philosophical lineage back to Kant and his "Copernican Revolution" (meaning the philosophy's shift to focusing on how our minds and experience constitute nature) but I won't explore that here.
Is my description of Marx's account of "Estranged Labor" as phenomenology appropriate? Are there more prevalent connections between Hegel and Marx's philosophies that stand out other than this one?
To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world looks rationally back. ~~G.W.F. Hegel
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI think you are absolutely right that both deal more with the phenomenology of than they do with the predicate nature of things. I would say that one of the difference between Marx and Hegel is that he jumps to conclusions too quickly. In that case, he only needed to flip Hegel to defend it. In Hegel, the object is defined by the Universal. In Marx, he sees the object, and jumps to the Universal. He would then declare that the Universal is wrong and that it needs to be changed. Even though both follow a phenomenological perspective, for the most part, I think that is where it ends.
ReplyDeleteI object to Marx, and conclude Hegel.
I'm having some difficulty seeing how Marx sees the object and jumps to the universal. Would you mind sharing an example of such a case? I'm not trying to challenge you on this, but I did not see any real jump inside the text. Yet this may be due to my own personal bias.
DeleteI completely agree with you on your connection found amongst Hegel and Marx. The consciousness of the worker has its limitations, and it can only perceive so much of the object before becoming frustrated. Although it seems for Marx that the consciousness of the worker can not go past this frustration, and become estranged from their labor even more.
ReplyDeleteAs for more prevalent connections, I can only add that for Hegel, the ultimate goal is to transcend from the individual to the universal, something that I believe influenced Marx greatly. Of course for Marx, the individual is only promoted through the capitalist system and requires a revolution to eventually form communism, or, a system that celebrates the universal. Well, that 's what I perceived after reading the texts.
Phong, I'm not sure that I understand what you mean by 'jumps to conclusions'. Particularly if we restrict our focus to the 'Estranged Labor' section, there is no real discussion of the object leading to the 'universal' (I'm still not sure I understand what this 'jump' really means).
ReplyDeleteTanner, I think this is an interesting idea to try and apply phenomenology to Marx's critique of estranged labor. I would, however, like to push on this analysis in a couple places. First, Marx's analysis begins from the fact of political economy. Not from our perception of of this fact, but from the fact itself. We should keep in mind that Marx is a materialist, which means that he is interested in the material conditions under capitalism, not our perception of them. The same goes for alienated labor. Workers, under capitalism, ARE alienated, whether they perceive it or not. In fact part of the brilliance of capitalism is that workers are often alienated and exploited without them even realizing or having any perception of it.