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[XVII.1.]
focuses attention on a particular field of estranged essential activity,
and each stands in an estranged relation to the other. Thus M. Michel
Chevalier reproaches Ricardo with having ignored ethics. But Ricardo
is allowing political economy to speak its own language, and if it does
not speak ethically, this is not Ricardo's fault. M. Chevalier takes no
account of political economy insofar as he moralises, but he really and
necessarily ignores ethics insofar as he practises political economy.
The relationship of political economy to ethics, if it is other than an
arbitrary, contingent and therefore unfounded and unscientific relationship,
if it is not being posited for the sake of appearance but is meant
to be essential, can only be the relationship of the laws of political
economy to ethics. If there is no such connection, or if the contrary
is rather the case, can Ricardo help it? Moreover, the opposition between
political economy and ethics is only an apparent opposition and
just as much no opposition as it is an opposition. All that happens is
that political economy expresses moral laws in its own way.
<Frugality as the principle of political economy is most
brilliantly shown in its theory of population. There are too
many people. Even the existence of men is a pure luxury; and if
the worker is "ethical", he will be sparing in
procreation. (Mill suggests public acclaim for those who prove themselves
continent in their sexual relations, and public rebuke for those who sin
against such barrenness of marriage.... is this not ethics, the teaching
of asceticism?) The production of people appears as public destitution.>
The meaning which production has in relation to the rich is seen revealed
in the meaning which it has for the poor. Looking upwards the manifestation
is always refined, veiled, ambiguous outward appearance; downwards, it
is rough, straightforward--frank--the real thing. The worker's crude
need is a far greater source of gain than the refined need
of the rich. The cellar dwellings in London bring more to those who let
them than do the palaces; that is to say, with reference to the landlord
they constitute greater wealth, and thus (to speak the language
of political economy) greater social wealth.
[XVIII.1.]
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[XVII.2.]
Industry speculates on the refinement of needs, it speculates however
just as much on their crudeness, but on their artificially produced
crudeness, whose true enjoyment, therefore, is self-stupefaction -
this illusory satisfaction of need - this civilisation contained within
the crude barbarism of need. The English gin shops are therefore
the symbolical representations of private property. Their luxury
reveals the true relation of industrial luxury and wealth to man.
They are therefore rightly the only Sunday pleasantries of the people
which the English police treats at least mildly.
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[see page XIII--Marx]
thought--of logical, speculative thought. The estrangement, which
therefore forms the real interest of this alienation and of the transcendence
of this alienation, is the opposition of in itself and for itself
of consciousness and self-consciousness, of object and subject
- that is to say, it is the opposition between abstract thinking and
sensual reality or real sensuality within thought itself. All other oppositions
and movements of these oppositions are but the semblance, the cloak,
the exoteric shape of these oppositions which alone matter,
and which constitute the meaning of these other profane oppositions.
It is not the fact that the human being objectifies himself inhumanly,
in opposition to himself, but the fact that he objectifies himself
in distinction from and in opposition to abstract thinking,
that constitutes the posited essence of the estrangement and the thing
to be superseded.
[XVIII.2.]
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