On Marx

I’ve just reread Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts… The part on estranged labor and alienation is brilliant. It’s weird, I tend to have a revelation of some sorts everytime I read Marx. I remember the first time I ever read some of his work. I was on the subway, trying to pass time until my stop… I had just bought the Marx and Engels reader for class, and I was flipping through its pages when I randomly happened to stumble upon the Communist Manifesto. Right then and there I was blown away by the enermous power of his words – “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win” – I was ready to storm out of the subway car to start conquering the world… Marx is a profoundly powerful writer (I can totally understand why some people are so passionate about his theory).

Anyway, back to the 1844 Manuscripts… Human beings are the only conscious species on this planet, and man can realize his true potential and become truly free only through a conscious awareness of his life activity. When a man performs menial labor with the sole purpose of making ends meet, he is not free because he cannot see his work as a satisfaction of a need in itself. We are only free when we derive pleasure from our activities, when we consciously enjoy the work we do. However, I am pretty sure that 90% of the labor force in a modern society do not see their jobs as satisfying a certain intrinsically personal need. Rather, most of us work in order to get paid – quite too often, a job is only a means to an end. Marx would say that we are not genuinely free if we spend most of our lives working merely to receive a paycheck. Communism was supposed to give people freedom in this larger sense. However, it is obvious that communism as we know it came a little too prematurely – the economic foundation, which would allow every man to pursue his interests, did not exist (nor does it exist now). A communist utopia in the Marxist sense would be only possible if technological progress advances to such a degree that men would not need to work for subsistence. In other words, if all of our primary needs can be met without us having to work insane hours, then we can devote our time to higher goals of promoting the life activities of our species being. It sounds like a sci-fi fantasy, where you get an extremely advanced society, where nobody has to work and people in white robes just float around and philosophize. I’d like that.

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7 Comments

  1. There’ll be always someone who wants to destroy, and often would be able to achieve that. A constant war is only thing that will let homo sapiens realize it’s full potential. Creative as well as destructive. I think 🙂

  2. Man, why can’t we just float around in white robes? That would have been perfect ??????????. 😛

    You seem to be saying that only conflict can create movement, that without constant war we’d be facing total stagnation. Even if we take that for granted, what is so good about movement anyway… I think I’d rather stagnate than be in a constant conflict. Then again, maybe not…

  3. Stagnation is good in it’s own right… It never endures. A society, a person has to go down to hell to find the way to heaven. Up and down, the tao of life :p

    Although, if we look really really good floating around in white robes, why not?

  4. Say, we go down to hell.. and finally find the way to heaven. Wouldn’t heaven be the ultimate equilibrium, the final stagnating point in our lives? How can you go down from heaven? I hope the tao of life doesn’t work like a carousel… It’s gotta stop at some point.

    On that note, I am sure you’d look fabulous in a white robe.

  5. All the way up there in heaven… the air is thin and you feel dizzy and happy and euphoric… you feel like you only have to reach out your hands to grab the stars themselves… but you can’t go any higher so I guess that would be stagnation? Ahh this is way too much thought for a piece of meat like myself, just gonna go and get myself a white robe and enjoy the ride 😀

  6. If you are a piece of meat, then I’d be…. chicken, 🙂 Anyway, let’s just go for the white robes. No, let’s make them togas, I always wanted to float around in a toga ??????????.

    By the way, you didn’t by any chance move to Amsterdam, did you? For some reason, your IP says you are from the land of legal pot. I was just wondering…

  7. Hey people, going back to Marx, dont you think that communism HAS indeed a great purpose,…, many advantages over capitalism, even over democracy in certain chains of life cycle. I think Jagie is right.. communism came a little too soon. were there better societal and human conditions to accomodate the features of communist rule, who knows- maybe it would have worked.

    ALthough the world today isnt perfect, I still think the human race is better off with the current (or a little modified) prevalent form of government. we are too primitive to accept another, arai uhamsartai societal structure.

    God, iimerhuu yum bichij bj anu.giin erunhiilugch ahiin ariin armiin haraand ordog yum bish bgaa, keke

    Jagie, compliments on your blog 🙂

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