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[XXIV.]
....We
now have to derive a third feature of estranged labour from the two we
have already examined. Man is a species-being, not only because he practically
and theoretically makes the species - both his own and those of other
things - his object, but also, and this is simply another way of saying
the same thing, because he looks upon himself as the present, living species,
because he looks upon himself as a universal and therefore free being.
....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 if 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 labour 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.
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 labour,
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.
.... 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 labour reverses the relationship so that man,
just because he is a conscious being, makes his life activity, his essential
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. The object of labour 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 labour 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.
.... In the same way as estranged labour
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. (3) Estranged labour, therefore, turns man's species-being--both
nature and his intellectual species-power -- into a being alien to him
and a means of his individual existence. It estranges man from his own
body, from nature as it exists outside him, from his spiritual essence
[Wesen], his human existence. (4) An immediate consequence of man's estrangement
from the product of his labour, his life activity, his species-being,
is the estrangement of man from man. When man confront himself, he also
confronts other men. What is true of man's relationship to his labour,
to the product of his labour, and to himself, is also true of his relationship
to other men, and to the labour and the object of the labour of other
men. In general, the proposition that man is estranged from his species-being
means that each man is estranged from the others and that all are estranged
from man's essence. Man's estrangement, like all relationships of man
to himself, is realised and expressed only in man's relationship to other
men. In the relationship of estranged labour, each man therefore regards
the other in accordance with the standard and the situation in which he
as a worker finds himself.
[XXV.]
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