1. 1844 economic & Philosophic manuscripts
Marx
1844 economic & Philosophic manuscripts

2. Unit 2: Power as domination
Domination: Power to prevent conflict between unequal persons or groups.
Locke proposes that the purpose of government is to protect our liberty, respect our rights, and establish political conditions under which we may attain happiness.
Happiness Machines: People are less prone to conflict when they are “happy”. Inducing happiness may be one form of domination.
Did Locke misunderstand power by assuming that individuals are by and large rational actors?

3. Review: power as domination
Locke
Freud/Bernays
Individuals are rational
Individuals are irrational, more so in groups
Government should appeal to rationality; punishments
Government must manage this irrationality; rewards
Power is rational, in government by consent
Purpose of power is to secure the conditions under which we may become happy; to avoid social conflict.
Domination by Gov. secures liberty.
Social effects: ?
Limits:?
Resisted by/through: ?
Power is emotional, in symbols, “messages,” in society
Purpose of power is to make people happy so as to avoid social conflict.
Domination by “elites” secures capitalism
Limits: ?

4. How might the “structure” of society be facilitative of “happiness”?
Bernays/Lippmann: Elites (concentrated power) make “the masses” happy through emotional appeals – top down/pyramidal structure facilitates mass-happiness.
Marx: conditions of equality (diffused power) are necessary to realize happiness.

5. MARX: SOCIETY AS A SOCIAL STRUCTURE
Two groups in capitalist society, owners (bourgeoisie) and workers (proletariat) For Marx, capitalism’s capacity to “alienate” humans from their “species being” is the crucial problem of modern societies. Alienation is the unhappiness that afflicts modern societies. Alienation is a byproduct of our social structure.

6. Freedom As “Creative Self-Actualization”
“The scene has often been pictured in which a blind person suddenly gains sight, sees the dawn, the growing Light, and then the Sun as it blazes up. At first, in his complete amazement, he forgets himself utterly, in this pure clarity. But when the sun has fully risen, his amazement is lessened; he looks at the objects around him, and from them he goes on to see his own inwardness, and then the relation of outer to inner. He proceeds from inactive contemplation to activity: by evening he has constructed some sort of building, by the use of his own inner sun—and when he contemplates it in the evening, he values it higher than the first external sun. For he now stands in relation to his own creative spirit and hence in a relation of freedom… If we keep this image before us, we can see the course of world history in it, the great daily work of the Spirit.”
- G.W.F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History
How is this similar to Locke?
1. Awareness of outer (world)
2. Awareness of inner (self)
3. Imagining of House (synthesizing inner/outer)
4. Transform nature’s materials into house (artifice)
5. Beholding of house as external, material object (inner has become outer)
6. Realization of freedom (imprinting our creative genius onto the world)
Have you ever had this kind of creative experience before? What was it? How did it make you feel—about yourself, about your relationship to other people and the world?

7. Freedom as “Creative Self-Actualization”
“The animal is immediately one with its life activity, not distinct from it. The animal is its life activity. Man makes his life activity itself into an object of will and consciousness. He has conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he immediately identifies. Conscious life activity distinguishes man immediately from the life activity of the animal. Only thereby is he a species being” (63).
How does this account of freedom distinguish humans from animals?
Do you find this account of freedom compelling? Alluring? Unsettling?
Do you find Marx’s conception of freedom compelling?

8. “Alienation” = the antithesis of “creative self-actualization”
Alienation – from the Latin alienare (to estrange)
For Marx, Alienation is the opposite of freedom
Alienation is when we are estranged from our “species essence”
When what we do is “inhuman” we become alienated.
Four Dimensions – alienation from object of labor; alienation from laboring process; alienation from our own nature; alienation from others.

9. 4 forms of alienation From the object of labor
From the laboring process
From our own nature
From others

10. 1. Alienation from Object of Labor
“The externalization of the worker in his product means not only that his work becomes an object, an external existence, but also that it exists outside him independently, alien, an autonomous power, opposed to him. The life he has given to the object confronts him as hostile and alien” (60).

11. 2. Alienation from Laboring Process
“[T]he worker does not affirm himself in his work but denies himself, feels miserable and unhappy, develops no free physical and mental energy but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind. The worker, therefore feels at ease only outside work, and during work he is outside himself. He is at home when he is not working and when he is working he is not at home. His work, therefore, is not voluntary, but coerced, forced labor. It is not the satisfaction of a need but only a means to satisfy other needs” (62).

12. 3. Alienation from Own Nature
“The object of lab or is thus the objectification of man’s species-life: he produces himself not only intellectually, as in consciousness, but also actively in a real sense and sees himself in world he made. In taking from man the object of his production, alienated labor takes from his species-life, his actual and objective existence as a species. It changes his superiority to the animal to inferiority since he is deprived of nature, his inorganic body. By degrading free spontaneous activity to the level of a means, alienated labor makes the species-life of man a means of his physical existence” (64).

13. 4. Alienation from Others
“If man is related to the product of his labor, top his objectified labor, as to an alien, hostile, powerful object independent of him, he is so related that another alien, hostile, powerful man independent of him is the lord of this object. If he is unfree in relation to his own activity, he is related to it as bonded activity, activity under the domination, coercion, and yoke of another man” (65).
Is the worker just alienated from the capitalist? How might the worker also be alienated from other workers?

14. The Outrage of Modern Capitalism
“The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and extent. The worker becomes a cheaper commodity the more commodities he produces.” (59).
Explain the immiseration of the proletariat.
How many of you have had a really shitty job before? What was it? How did it make you feel?

15. The Outrage of Modern Capitalism
“labor produces marvels for the wealthy, but it produces deprivation for the worker. It produces palaces, but hovels for the worker. It produces beauty, but mutilation for the worker. It displaces labor through machines, but throws some workers back into barbarous labor and turns others into machines. It produces intelligence, but for the worker it produces imbecility and cretinism” (61).

16. Private Property
Worker  Labor  Product of Labor | Private Property  Ownership  Capitalist
Why must private property, according to Marx, be abolished? Why not simply abolish poverty wages?
Why, according to Marx, is the concept of private property unsalvageable? That is, why must we do away with it altogether?

17. Private Property
“An enforced raising of wages… would therefore be nothing but a better slave- salary and would not achieve either for the worker or for labor human significance and dignity. Even the equality of wages… would only convert the relation of the contemporary worker to his work into the relation of all men to labor. Society would then be conceived as an abstract capitalist” (67).

18. Communism
“Communism is ultimately the positive expression of private property as overcome. Immediately it is universal private private property… The condition of the laborer is not overcome but extended to all men. The relationship of private property remains the relationship of the community to the world of things” (69).
What do we have to gain from reading Marx both as a critique of the status quo and a prescription of an alternative, more humanistic future?

19. Power under capitalism is…
Material: Located in man’s productive capacities.
Generative: Produces things, transforms the world.
Animalistic: Instrumentalized to meet man’s basic needs.
Alienating: Diminishes the individual’s humanity.
Atomizing: Isolates the individual.
Dominating: Forecloses human freedom.
Reproduces class distinctions

20. Power under communism is…
Material: Located in man’s productive capacities.
Generative: Produces things, transforms the world.
Life-Affirming: Actualizes man’s species being; transcends basic need.
Relational: Places individuals in community.
Liberating: Enables the individual to be free.
No class distinctions

21. Marx: the effects of power are a product of the economic system
“Mode of production” determines social arrangements, social order
Feudalism, capitalism, socialism…are types of social orders necessary to sustain a mode of production.
Ideas stems from material circumstances
To understand the way wealth is distributed and consumed, it is necessary to understand the conditions under which it was produced.

22. Discussion
What similarities and differences do you see in the way Marx and Locke think about labor?
What similarities and differences do you see in the way Marx and Locke think about Happiness?
Does private property enable us to be free or prevent us from becoming free?
Does private property enable us to be happy or prevent us from becoming happy?