On Marx’s Concept Of Labor

This dissertation attempts to reveal the core importance of the concept of labor in Marx’s philosophy through the analysis of Marx’s main texts, namely through the detailed elucidation of labor topics in Paris manuscript, in "German Ideology" and in "Das Kapital". This chief reason for this choice is that they represent the three milestones in the development of Marx’s thought, which has core persuasive. Paris manuscript mainly clarified the ontological meaning of labor, "German Ideology" made a preliminary exposition of Historical Materialism based on productive work, and in "Das Kapital", By such particular principle of social relations of production ——through wage labor system capital forcibly and freely occupied surplus value——the capitalist reality represents its complete process including production, circulation and distribution.Paris manuscript’s core thesis is the concept of alienated labor, which has a double dimension of political-economic research and philosophical critique. In terms of the political-economic research, it is the theory product of Marx’s initial contact with the political economy.it is only four basic aspects, but if linked to "Das Kapital ", then these four aspects will later touch off the critique of political economy, the fuse is alienated labor process itself.In the Paris manuscript, Marx elaborated description rather than analyzing only because he cannot break through the non-critical premise of the national economy fundamentally, i.e. The "trinity" of falsity. In terms of the philosophical criticism, the main aim here is Hegel’s philosophy. In the study of political economy, Marx swerved to the philosophical theory was not accident but inevitable process of critical thinking. Although Feuerbach once declared himself completed a critique of Hegel’s philosophy, and Marx’s once believed that Feuerbach’s assertion, but through the research on the political economy Marx found that Hegel’s philosophy had some important viewpoints beyond Feuerbach’s analysis. Hegel’s philosophy and political economy in some way to grasp the fundamental characteristics of the era of labor, namely abstract labor. Hegel found that all social alienation comes from the nature of human labor alienation, while superseding the world of alienation must be carried out only in the basis of the alienated world itself, but this critical principle was coerced by speculative forms and the revolutionary and critical characteristic of Hegel’s philosophy was suffocated by the essence of metaphysics. Accordingly, through the theory of sensus activity Marx subvert the fundamental flaw of speculative philosophy, and saved the critical principles of Hegel’s philosophy.Objective activity actually provided the ontological basis of Historical Materialism, in this basis; Marx elucidated the Historical Materialism through the analysis of productive activity. However, the polemic nature of "German Ideology" makes historical materialism initial elaboration directed at the fundamental defects of Young Hegelians. Therefore, in this elucidation of the fundamental position of productive labor with particular emphasis on the economy, stressing the absolute first status of economy in the nature of all other thoughts and consciousness. However, as Engels pointed out later, this emphasis should not be understood as a dogma——the absolute position of the mode of production only in the sense of final meaning——all kinds of consciousness and thought can be possible to dominate the society in different historical conditions. When Marx declared that he was not a Marxist, it is precisely against such vulgarization of the Historical Materialism, and it’s typical form was economic determinism. Thus, specific research still needs a lot of different scientific evidence of meticulous research after the principle of Historical Materialism was given. As" Das Kapital" illustrated:general discussion of labor was the scientific abstraction but not proper to understand the specific labor in any age, the study of labor under the capitalist mode of production, not only rely on historical materialism elucidation of basic doctrine, but also need empirical criticism of political economy, which detailed in analyzing the history of specific forms of production.Thus, after elucidation of historical materialism, Marx immediately proceed to the specific research of capitalist mode of production, which theoretical forms were the manuscript groups of critique of political economy and the core of such groups is "Das Kapital". However, as the basis of historical materialism of Marx expounded is real productive labor which is the historical forms of objective activity, Marx grasp capitalist production is still unfolding around the topic of labor, by which the capital forcibly and freely possessed surplus labor from worker through wage labor system. For the reason that capitalism reversely performed itself, it is difficult to understand the nature of such logic for ordinary workers. Thus, Marx described capitalism mainly through two steps expanded. One is the pure process of capital exploitation. In this part, Marx explained how the capitalist mode of production as the material wealth and prosperity to promote great, apart from the impact of this description needs such as commercial fraud, currency exchange rates, interest on capital, and so the scope of the causal factors derived from the ideal, pure state to reveal the history of the capital to promote the development of the fundamental mechanisms. But this analysis is only the beginning, further work is to show how the nature of logic unfolding itself when the derived concepts involved in the process of capitalist production. If we understand capitalism directly by these confounding factors and derived category of the capitalist mode of production, then this is ideology of political economy and vulgar socialist economics approach. Therefore, the understanding of the pure process of capital exploitation provided the understanding of this process in reality. At the same time, if we only talk about the pure process, rather than the reality of the process unfolding itself, then this will become a metaphysical interpretation. Accordingly, the two aspects together constitute the understanding of capitalism. In fact, the fundamental and revolutionary aim of Marx’s analysis of capitalism is to identify the fact that whether in the pure state of the process of capitalist exploitation (its crisis lie in the improvement of the organic composition of capital), or in the real process of capitalist production (its crisis lie in that the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall), it undermining the spiritual environment and the physical environment for human survival greatly as well as promoting the development of human civilization to a higher level. Thus, capitalism is nothing but a certain stage in human history and will replace by the communism.