Karl Marx said:
“The essence of man is not an abstraction inherent in each particular individual. The real nature of man is the totality of social relations.
Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion, or by anything one likes. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is determined by their physical constitution. In producing their means of subsistence men indirectly produce their actual material life.
My own existence is a social activity. For this reason, what I myself produce, I produce for society and with the consciousness of acting as a social being.
The class which makes a revolution, appears from the beginning not as a class but as the representative of the whole of society, simply because it is opposed to a class. It appears as the whole mass of society confronting the single ruling class.
Society is not merely an aggregate of individuals; it is the sum of the relations in which these individuals stand to one another. It is as though someone were to say that, from the point of view of society, slaves and citizens do not exist; they are all men. In fact, this is rather what they are outside society. Being a slave or a citizen is a socially determined relation between an individual A and an individual B. Individual A is not as such a slave. He is only a slave in and through society. What Proudhon says about capital and product, means, in his doctrine, that from the standpoint of society there is no distinction between capitalists and workers. Whereas in fact this distinction only exists from the standpoint of society.
However, alienation shows itself not merely in the result, but also in the process, of production, within productive activity itself. In what does this alienation of labour consist? First, that the work is external to the worker, that it is not a part of his nature, that consequently he does not fulfill himself in his work but denies himself, has a feeling of misery, not of well-being, does not develop freely a physical and mental energy, but is physically exhausted and mentally debased. The worker therefore feels himself at home only during his leisure, whereas at work he feels homeless. His work is not voluntary but imposed, forced labour. It is not the satisfaction of a need, but only a means for satisfying other needs. Its alien character is clearly shown by the fact that as soon as there is no physical or other compulsion it is avoided like the plague. Finally, the alienated character of work for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his work but work for someone else, that in work he does not belong to himself but to another person.
This circumstance, that a man without wealth, but with energy, strength of character, ability and business sense, is able to become a capitalist, is greatly admired by the economic apologists of capitalism, since it shows that the commercial value of each individual is more or less accurately estimated under the capitalist mode of production. Although this situation continually brings an unwelcome number of new soldiers of fortune into the field, and into competition with the existing individual capitalists, it also consolidates the rule of capital itself, enlarges its basis, and enables it to recruit ever new forces for itself out of the lower layers of society. In a similar way the circumstance that the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages formed its hierarchy with the best brains from among the people, without regard to estate, birth or wealth, was one of the principal means of consolidating priestly rule and the subordination of the laity. The more a ruling class is able to assimilate the most prominent men of the dominated classes the more stable and dangerous is it rule.”
Latent Thoughts #22
Socials
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Source: https://www.amazon.com/Selected-Writings-Sociology-Social-Philosophy/dp/0070406723
Painting: Salome with the Head of St John the Baptist by Andrea Solari