Re-writing an already completed assignment

Vasquez 1
Vasquez 2
Ludwin Vasquez
Professor Paul Warren
PHP 4510
February 5, 2021

Study Questions, Set # 2, Early Marx

(Q1) Marx seems to be pointing out the fact that a worker produces goods, he puts all of his calories, time, and life into a product that does not belong to him, but to the boss who does not produce but only owns the factory. Therefore, he is alienated and exploited because even if he works more, he will be getting paid the same, even if he puts his soul and creativity into that object, which does not belong to him. In contrast, a craftsman’s product belongs to him. The labor is alien to the worker because it is labor that he has no control over because he only obeys on how and what to produce; the labor and the products of labor belong to the bourgeois. The labor belongs to the owner of the factory when he agreed to work for a wage.

(Q2) The first way is that he becomes a “worker” by receiving work and the other way is that he receives “means of subsistence” or a wage used to sustain his life. He, therefore, becomes a wageworker whose sole means of existence depends on his ability to work for someone else.
(Q3) Estrangement from the product of labor means that the object that the worker produces does not belong to him even if he put the effort and skill into it. Alienation within the act of producing is different because it is alienation when he produces things rather than the results of his work. The act of working, the monotony of work makes the worker feel estranged, it makes him hate his work and loves the times where he is out of work.

(Q4) First, labor is external to the worker, it is alien to him and makes him unhappy. The worker yearns for times out of labor rather than actually loving it such as a craftsman loves his craft and the objects he makes. He works out of necessity, to feed himself and probably his family, rather than out of actual free choice. Instead of doing what makes him feel human and creative, things such as writing poetry, he is forced to work for someone else and on someone else’s terms, thus the activity of working dehumanizes him and lowers him to the status of an animal.

(Q5) The world of the worker is inverted upside down because instead of finding freedom in his human characteristics (intellect), he is most free and active in his animal characteristics, he gives the example of eating, drinking, etc. His main point is that he becomes an animal.

(Q6) Species being is the nature of man. Marx understands that man is universal, in that he turns nature into tools for him to subsist. He also says that man is a free conscious and productive being. Animals for example, only produce things for their immediate use in their survival, but humans are universal in the sense that they produce things according to their consciousness, such as a primitive society producing a statue or a symbol. Humans also produce things they consider beautiful. The third aspect of estranged labor is that humans are forced to produce things for a wage useful only for their subsistence rather than according to their creative and free human essence.

(Q7) Marx uses species-being as the essence of man and compares it to how the workplace should be to how it is right now (estranged). He says that the object of labor is the objectification of his essence or species life and when he is forced to work for someone else, he loses that aspect of his humanity, it is robbed from him, dehumanizing him.

(Q8) Marx does seem to have a conception of human nature. Human nature for Marx is creative, spontaneous, even prideful in the sense that a man has a great pride when he says “I made that” and “it is mine”. Additionally, human nature for Marx would be social and most importantly conscious and sentimental. I do think it is a plausible conception, every human has a certain hobby he would like to pursue if he or she did not have to work for subsistence or had the time for it and if they were not alienated. With the current pandemic, for example, a lot of people suddenly had the time to produce things for themselves and shared their crafts and arts, paintings, clothing, writings, photographs, etc. Sewing machines and other crafting tools ran out in many stores.

(Q9)  What Marx is saying in this passage is that there is a contradiction between the propertyless and the propertied, which has to be understood as the workers who are propertyless and the bosses who have private property. The antithesis has existed but in earlier times it was not seen, there was indifference. However, the antithesis of indifference will give away and the real antithesis will arise. The conflict lies in that workers produce private property but have none and bosses who don’t work have it all. Marx sees that this antithesis will eventually lead to synthesis or final resolution.

(Q10)

1. The first type is crude communism which wants to level off everything and give private property to everyone. He mentions that community is the community of labor but also that the community becomes the capitalists. In this stage, everyone is paid the same wages.
2. The second type of communism is communism in electoral politics, Marx mentions that this type of communism is influenced by private property and the state. This type has not eliminated alienation.
3. The third type of communism is positive, it has transcended alienation and private property. It is a type of communism that does not negate human nature and has solved the conflicts of man and nature.
 

(Q11) As it was stated before, this type of communism has abolished or transcended private property and the alienation that man has been subjected to. This type also reinforces man’s nature as a social being. This type of communism seems to have resolved the contradictions in history, man and nature, man as a free individual laboring out of desire rather than subsistence.

(Q12) Marx thinks that to reach communism, many other stages have to be reached at first. It is a constant development and little by little it will be reached. It is not static becomes it is not simply reached as one reaches a place but it is to be reached in a chain of evolution and even when it is reached it will continue developing until it solves the contradictions. On page 86 Marx says that he is an active man, as society itself is active. Most importantly, on page 92 Marx mentions that the entire history of the world has been developed by man bettering himself through labor, which indicates the numerous stages he will present after.

Q13) The return of man to himself indicates that since alienation will be overcome, man will turn to himself and live according to his human essence. The conflict of man and man indicates that the type of alienation that forces us to see other humans as competition will be solved since, in communism, we will see others as human. The conflict of man and nature hints at the conflict of being subjected to nature and its spontaneity such as scarcity after a draught. The alienation of man from nature will be solved because man does not consider himself to be a part of nature, but Marx says that the study or science of nature will be the study of men.

(Q14) The relation starts at first with egoism. In a capitalist economy, new needs have to be created so the capitalist generates more capital. People desiring those new things can only obtain them by first obtaining money, which generates an egoistic desire for money to satisfy those needs. Marx describes it as a swindling process and egoistic in nature. In turn, the capitalist must exploit workers, paying them the minimum, to keep competing. He says that a human is reduced into a worker, his human needs (fulfillment and happiness) are subdued into bare animal needs (subsistence needs such as food and shelter) and everything that is not an animal need in a worker is stripped away and considered a luxury. In this, Marx recognizes consumerism and the artificial creation of needs, which hints at marketing.

(Q15) The contradiction lies in the fact that political economy has no ethics, it sees other people merely as a means to an end, to satisfy a need or desire. Marx gives the example of selling a friend into slavery or prostitution, which does not violate any economic laws. Political economy is devoid of any ethics or probably it has its own language of ethics, which would be egoism.

(Q16) Marx explains that the splendid results of the association of communist workmen are the creation of societies where they can discuss theory and propaganda, as well as the need to keep in constant association.

(Q17) Marx quotes both Goethe and Shakespeare and explains that money has a lot of power. It can bind but also divide, it can do many things such as make the coward, brave, and turn thieves into honorable men. Money is necessary for exchange, therefore, also universal.