Paul Dillon wrote:
>Now would you please direct me to the passage you have in
>mind--i.e., the comprehensive account in which Marx discusses nature and
>ecology.
The whole thing. --- I said: "the whole thing". Estrangement in the MSs
*firstly* derives from humans' self-estrangement from nature.
I was tempted to tell you to do your own reading, but since you seem to
have so thoroughly misunderstood what Marx said about estrangement in the
EPMs, even after reading it over and over since 1965, I have quoted *some*
key parts below and annotated some of those.
Please read on ---
>In fact, Marx often used the term "nature's storehouse" in works
>including but not limited to: the 1844 Manuscripts, German Ideology,
>Theories of Surplus Value, the Grundrisse as well as Capital.
Where? Give me a single quote. Marx uses no such terminology to my
knowledge. I know Alfred Marshall used the term a lot, but he came later.
Perhaps you are confusing one of the many quotes Marx collected ("step one"
in classical dialectical "method") with what he actually said --Step 1 of
dialectical method: Collect a huge swathe of writings and opinions on a
given subject. One need not necessarily agree with them. They are for
analysis and comparison.
In any case, the use of a particular terminology (in this case a single
nominal) means nothing when it's decontextualised.
>This usage often parallels the unanalyzed nature of "use value".
Are you trying to say that Marx did not analyse the term "use value"? That
is also *entirely* false.
>The 1844 manuscripts mainly developed the analys of "alienation" and
>"alienated labor"--a
>position which Marx reworked as fetishization after the 1850s period of
>study of economics which he had only briefly begun at the time he wrote the
>1844 manuscripts.
Marx's whole concept of alienation, firstly called "estrangement" in the
manuscripts, has its genesis in the illusory self-separation of humanity
from nature --- alienation is *firstly* alienation from nature. Horkheimer,
Adorno, and Marcuse take up the same argument later to argue vehemently
against the domination of nature.
Also, alienation is not the "main" message of the manuscripts (something
many others besides yourself claim as THE message, but that is to miss MANY
important developments). It is merely one concept developed early in MS 1.
There are many other key concepts developed in the manuscripts, including a
thoroughgoing critique of Hegel, and the notion of species-being, a fairly
significant update on Aristotle which has been much ignored.
>The ecological coneption of man's relationship to nature
>wasn't there in 1844 or 1859
*the* ecological concept??
>(Introduction to a Critique of Political
>Economy) or in 1867-1891 (pub dates of capital v1-v3), the latter
>pothumously of course. One of course should remember that the "ecological
>concept"
*the* ecological concept?? Just the one?
What about Kant , roughly a century and a half earlier? I think he has a
few things to say on the matter.
What is *the* ecological concept? *The one and only*?
Or are you just talking about *terminology* again?
>Neither Marx nor Engels have ever given any indication of being aware of
>Marsh's work and even this work still
>maintained the basic judaeo-christian notion that God created the World
>for humans to enjoy (or conversely, created humans to enjoy the world that
>He had created) but definitely retained that perspective.
Now it's your turn: tell me where Marx of Engels says anything like "God
created the World for humans to enjoy", or the converse.
Perhaps you can pull some quotes from (now that you've introduced him)
Engels's _Dialectics of Nature_, which says precisely the opposite in the
Introduction and many places elsewhere, critiquing the very notion you are
charging Marx and Engels with holding and propagating.
>So, please enlighten me. Exactly where is Marx's discussion of the
>ecological relations between society and environment.
Well, apart from explicit quotes below, and humanity's self-alienation from
nature being the basis of "alienated labour" (and private property, by
which Marx means landed property, not simple possession) in Marx, the
discussion runs right through to the last pages of Capital (p. 1023 of vol
3). Of course, as you would know, the terms "labour" and "worker" for Marx
have very specific meanings, and only exist in relation to capital, i.e. in
capitalist relations.
Nature is not separate from humanity for Marx; humans are a part of nature,
'a force of nature'. The full statement of "in the relation between humans
and nature" (vol 3 1023) would be "humans and *the rest of nature*".
Humanity is nature and is set in nature (see quotes below).
>I would include Stalin as someone who worked in the area of dialectical
>materialism (whether erroneously or not, he still worked there),
Which particular works would you recommend?
>also Ernest
>Mandel.
>In any event, I don't think Marx's theory need be abandoned because of
>this absence.
Oh -- good. Then those of us who wish to may continue with Marx in comfort.
>I compare it the necessary reworking to the correction Kepler
>needed to make to Copernicus' system in order to get it to line up with the
>observed movement of the heavenly bodies.
You compare *what* to "the necessary reworking to the correction Keppler
needed to make"?
Engels has a bit to say about those developments too, in Dialectics of
Nature, especially in the introduction and the chapter on motion.
In any case, since you've had your mind made up about this since 1965, I
assume I have probably spent my effort for your amusement ("enlighten me",
Phil).
Therefore I hope you gather some amusement from my efforts, if nothing else
--- so please do enjoy.
regards,
Phil
Annotated quotes follow
****************
From MS 1
The workers can create nothing without nature, without the sensuous
external world. It is the material in which his labor realizes itself, in
which it is active and from which, and by means of which, it produces.
[note the "in"-ness PG]
But just as nature provides labor with the means of life, in the sense of
labor cannot live without objects on which to exercise itself, so also it
provides the means of life in the narrower sense, namely the means of
physical subsistence of the worker.
[doesn't this prove your point? NO! -- only if it is decontextualised ---
read on.]
The more the worker appropriates the external world, sensuous nature,
through his labor, the more he deprives himself of the means of life in two
respects: firstly, the sensuous external world becomes less and less an
object belonging to his labor, a means of life of his labor; and, secondly,
it becomes less and less a means of life in the immediate sense, a means
for the physical subsistence of the worker.
[trans: the formerly immediate relationship between humans and the rest of
nature becomes mediated by more alien social relations of production with
nature-- an immediate relation becomes wholly mediated in the "labor" relation]
In these two respects, then, the worker becomes a slave of his object;
firstly, in that he receives an object of labor, i.e., he receives work,
and, secondly, in that he receives means of subsistence. Firstly, then, so
that he can exists as a worker, and secondly as a physical subject. The
culmination of this slavery is that it is only as a worker that he can
maintain himself as a physical subject and only as a physical subject that
he is a worker.
[trans: by being subject to the mediations of capital, i.e. by being
transformed into "workers", humans enslave themselves to the very object of
work, nature itself -- i.e. nature confronts humanity as an alien force ---
hence]
(The estrangement of the worker in his object is expressed according to the
laws of political economy in the following way: the more the worker
produces, the less he has to consume; the more value he creates, the more
worthless he becomes; the more his product is shaped, the more misshapen
the worker; the more civilized his object, the more barbarous the worker;
the more powerful the work, the more powerless the worker; the more
intelligent the work, the duller the worker and the more he becomes a slave
of nature.)
[-------]
Species-life, both for man and for animals, consists physically in the fact
that man, like animals, lives from inorganic nature; and because man is
more universal than animals, so too is the area of inorganic nature from
which he lives more universal. Just as plants, animals, stones, air, light,
etc., theoretically form a part of human consciousness, partly as objects
of science and partly as objects of art -- his spiritual inorganic nature,
his spiritual means of life, which he must first prepare before he can
enjoy and digest them -- so, too, in practice they form a part of human
life and human activity. In a physical sense, man lives only from these
natural products,
whether in the form of nourishment, heating, clothing, shelter, etc. The
universality of man manifests itself in practice in that universality which
makes the whole of nature his inorganic body, (1) as a direct means of life
and (2) as the matter, the object, and the tool of his life activity.
Nature is man's inorganic body -- that is to say, nature insofar as it is
not the human body. Man lives from nature -- i.e., nature is his body --
and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it is he is not to die.
*To say that man's physical and mental life is linked to nature simply
means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.*
Estranged labor not only (1) *estranges nature from man* and (2) *estranges
man from himself, from his own function, from his vital activity*; because
of this, *it also estranges man from his species*. It turns his
species-life into a means for his individual life.
[trans: the labor relation is an expression of utterly alienated humanity;
human life -- a force of nature --- becomes a *means* rather than an end --
i.e. becomes total alienated from life itself; and, it proceeds from the
alienation of humans from nature and from themselves]
Firstly, it estranges species-life and individual life, and, secondly, it
turns the latter, in its abstract form, into the purpose of the former,also
in its abstract and estranged form.
For in the first place labor, life activity, productive life itself,
appears to man only as a means for the satisfaction of a need, the need to
preserve physical existence.
*But productive life is species-life. It is life-producing life.*
The whole character of a species, its species-character, resides in the
nature of its life activity, and free conscious activity constitutes the
species-character of man.
*Life appears only as a means of life.*
[trans: "appearance" has a formal meaning here (and throughout the MS); it
is distinct from "essence" or "reality"]
The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It is not distinct
from that activity; it is that activity. Man makes his life activity itself
an object of his will and consciousness. He has conscious life activity. It
is not a determination with which he directly merges. Conscious life
activity directly distinguishes man from animal life activity. Only because
of that is he a species-being. Or, rather, he is a conscious being -- i.e.,
his own life is an object for him, only because he is a species-being. Only
because of that is his activity free activity. Estranged labor reverses the
relationship so that man, just because he is a conscious being, makes his
life activity, his
being [Wesen], a mere means for his existence.
The practical creation of an objective world, the fashioning of inorganic
nature, is proof that man is a conscious species-being -- i.e., a being
which treats the species as its own essential being or itself as a
species-being. It is true that animals also produce. They build nests and
dwelling, like the bee, the beaver, the ant, etc. But they produce only
their own immediate needs or those of their young; they produce only when
immediate physical need compels them to do so, while man produces even when
he is free from physical need and truly produces only in freedom from such
need; they produce only themselves, while man reproduces the whole of
nature; their products belong immediately to their physical bodies, while
man freely confronts his own product. Animals produce only according to the
standards and needs of the species to which they belong, while man is
capable of producing according to the standards of every species and of
applying to each object its inherent standard; hence, man also produces in
accordance with the laws of beauty.
It is, therefore, in his fashioning of the objective that man really proves
himself to be a species-being. Such production is his active species-life.
Through it, nature appears as his work and his reality.
[trans: again, "appears" means nature takes on an illusory character as a
product of human activity -- this is explained more in the following]
The object of labor is, therefore, the objectification of the species-life
of man: for man produces himself not only intellectually, in his
consciousness, but actively and actually, and he can therefore contemplate
himself in a world he himself has created. In tearing away the object of
his production from man, estranged labor therefore tears away from him his
species-life, his true species-objectivity, and transforms his advantage
over animals into the disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is
taken from him.
[trans: humanity is alienated firstly from nature, then from itself]
In the same way as estranged labor reduces spontaneous and free activity to
a means, it makes man's species-life a means of his physical existence.
Consciousness, which man has from his species, is transformed through
estrangement so that species-life becomes a means for him.
[------]
Every self-estrangement of man from himself and nature is manifested in the
relationship he sets up between other men and himself and nature. Thus,
religious self-estrangement is necessarily manifested in the relationship
between layman and priest, or, since we are dealing here with the spiritual
world, between layman and mediator, etc. In the practical, real world,
self-estrangement can manifest itself only in the practical, real
relationship to other men. The medium through which estrangement progresses
is itself a practical one. So through estranged labor man not only produces
his relationship to the object and to the act of production as to alien and
hostile powers; he also produces the relationship in which other men stand
to his production and product, and the relationship in which he stands to
these other men. Just as he creates his own production as a loss of
reality, a punishment, and his own product as a loss, a product which does
not belong to him, so he creates the domination of the non-producer over
production and its product. Just as he estranges from himself his own
activity, so he confers upon the stranger and activity which does not
belong to him.
[----]
Let us now go on to see how the concept of estranged, alienated labor must
express and present itself in reality.
If the product of labor is alien to me, and confronts me as an alien power,
to whom does it then belong?
To a being other than me.
Who is this being?
The gods? It is true that in early times most production -- e.g., temple
building, etc., in Egypt, India, and Mexico -- was in the service of the
gods, just as the product belonged to the gods. But the gods alone were
never the masters of labor. The same is true of nature.
And what a paradox it would be if the more man subjugates nature through
his labor and the more divine miracles are made superfluous by the miracles
of industry, the more he is forced to forgo the joy or production and the
enjoyment of the product out of deference to these powers.
[---]
Every self-estrangement of man from himself and nature is manifested in the
relationship he sets up between other men and himself and nature. Thus,
religious self-estrangement is necessarily manifested in the relationship
between layman and priest, or, since we are dealing here with the spiritual
world, between layman and mediator, etc. In the practical, real world,
self-estrangement can manifest itself only in the practical, real
relationship to other men. The medium through which estrangement progresses
is itself a practical one. So through estranged labor man not only produces
his relationship to the object and to the act of production as to alien and
hostile powers; he also produces the relationship in which other men stand
to his production and product, and the relationship in which he stands to
these other men. Just as he creates his own production as a loss of
reality, a punishment, and his own product as a loss, a product which does
not belong to him, so he creates the domination of the non-producer over
production and its product. Just as he estranges from himself his own
activity, so he confers upon the stranger and activity which does not
belong to him.
Up to now, we have considered the relationship only from the side of the
worker. Later on, we shall consider it from the side of the non-worker.
Thus, through estranged, alienated labor, the worker creates the
relationship of another man, who is alien to labor and stands outside it,
to that labor. The relation of the worker to labor creates the relation of
the capitalist -- or whatever other word one chooses for the master of
labor -- to that labor. Private property is therefore the product, result,
and necessary consequence of alienated labor, of the external relation of
the worker to nature and to himself.
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