The Political Significance Of Labor

Labor has the foundational status in Marxist philosophy. The political philosopher Hannah Arendt uniquely interpreted of Marxist labor view in The Human Condition, she thought that human being’s activities have three basic characteristics: labor, work and action, the three activities has the different level sequence in the western cultural tradition. Labor is considered to be the minimum of human activities in ancient Greek city-states, work provides a stable world for human life, action in the highest and most preferred position, and it is the most free and most human way. Arendt supply to the basic view about labor mainly comes from the ancient Greece to labor understanding, at the same time she absorbs the analysis of labor from Marx. Arendt from this background of the tradition of Western political thought To investigate the thought of Marx, on the one hand she admitted to the basic view of Marx to labor that labor itself does have its own "productivity", but on the other hand, Arendt still hold the attitude of criticism on Marxist labor view. Of course, she is standing in her position and angle up to criticize Marx’s labor view, this is interrelated her political practice and public space view. Arendt criticize on Marxist labor view explain that she criticism not only catch the political modernity core, but also to a great extent is a distorted dialogue with Marx, and its ultimate aim is to reveal the theory of its own theory significance. However, both theory have different understanding in sources of alienation, the distinguish between work and labor, labor status, labor and the essence of human relations, the starting point of philosophy different understanding, at the same time, there had some common capacity, they supply to an critical attitude to that labor caused the alienation of modern world, actively advocated political freedom, realized the philosophy steering by reflection to practice.This paper attempts to explore the requirements for labor’s political significance by the unification of history and logic method, the theory and the reality of the method of combining, literature analysis, induction, comparison and comprehensive analysis method, etc. Through analyzed Arendt’s interpretation of Marxist labor view, and the unscramble frame of theory and misreading from Arendt, comparison the similarities and differences of the theory, we find that there are fundamental differences between Marxist labor view and Arendt labor view. And Arendt has a largish misregistration in Marxist labor view. Of course, Arendt labor view also has a certain contemporary value. Finally, on the basis of criticizing and reference Arendt action view, as we look at the correct Marx and Arendt labor view in contemporary China characteristic socialism practice levels of significance of the value to provide some reference suggestions.