On Marx’s Concept Of Labor

Marx’s concept of labor is one of the core concepts of Marx’s philosophy,and it is a clue and path to understand Marx’s thought.This paper takes ancient Greek philosophy and classical economics as the background,from the origin of the concept of labor in ancient Greece,the concept of labor in classical political economists to the evolution of the concept of labor in classical German philosophy and Utopian socialism,expounds and analyzes the essential differences and theoretical references between these ideas and Marx’s concept of labor.Chapters 23,34,mainly from the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844,German Ideology,Capital as the starting point,to elaborate the main contents and viewpoints of different periods,different works,compare the similarities and differences and connections of his theories,reflect the evolution of his logic.In the Manuscript,Marx takes the real human labor as the object of study,starts from the alienation of labor,takes the significance of labor for human beings,human society and social history as the starting point,focuses on the logical relationship between private property and alienated labor,and aims at the abolition of private property and alienated labor,finally achieving the liberation of labor.Following the problem perspective of Manuscript,Form explains the labor problem from three perspectives: real labor,productive labor and social division of labor."Form" marks the gradual maturity of Marx’s labor thought and reveals the basic contradiction movement law of human society in a certain sense.The book also starts from the actual labor of human beings,and analyzes the alienation of human beings caused by labor and social division of labor under the transformation of human production mode.Like the Manuscript,the ultimate goal of the book is to liberate people from the state of alienated capitalist labor and move toward a higher social form-communism,so that people can realize their all-round development through free labor.Capital marks the perfection and maturity of Marx’s concept of labor.This book not only inherits the theories of alienation and social division of labor in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and the German Ideology,but also deeply recognizes the role of labor in the construction of modern society from the perspective of abstract labor and concrete labor.In Capital,Marx takes abstract labor as the cornerstone and deeply analyzes the complicated relationship between commodities,money and capital.In the context of capitalist society,the exchange value created by abstract labor has become the essential feature of labor,thus transforming labor itself into a form of capital.At the same time,Marx also takes concrete labor as the starting point,discusses the practical,historical and social nature of labor in detail,and reveals the internal logic and process of the development of human society by examining various practical activities and historical changes.Marx’s concept of labor has profound system characteristics and modern value.First,the concept of labor has a consistent historical dimension,second,the concreteness of Marx’s concept of labor is reflected in the clear construction of the scientific path,third,the class nature of Marx’s concept of labor is the liberation of the proletariat as a way out,and finally,the social nature of Marx’s concept of labor is reflected in the creative role of the field of labor society.Its modern value is embodied in the revelation of the concept of labor to the social history,the understanding of materialist dialectics,and the interpretation of the law of human development.