Examining Hanna Arendts Interpretation Of Marxs Concept Of Labor

Labor is not only an activity to maintain human basic survival and life, but alsoone of the main topics discussed in Western philosophy. From ancient Greekphilosophy to modern philosophy, philosophers’ understanding of labor hasundergone a history process from relegated to respected, Marx make the status oflabor to the peak due to combined labor and human development of freedom.However, the US female philosopher Hannah Arendt has divided the area ofhuman activity into labor, work and action, and the understanding of labor will returnto the position of the ancient Greek philosophy. She believes that labor is just onlyconstrained the inevitability of natural activity a necessity of life natural activities andhas nothing to human freedom,and on this basis to start to critiquing on Marx’sconcept of labor. In Hannah Arendt, Marx’s concept of labor is linked with the originof the concept of totalitarianism, destruction of public areas and the loss of freedom.But in fact, Arendt’s interpretation and critique of Marx’s concept of labor is wrong,because Marx’s labor is not only the inevitability activity to maintain the survival ofhuman, but also a freedom of conscious activity to achieved social progress andhuman’s freedom and comprehensive development.In the field of Marx’s philosophy,the labor not only digested the survive soil of totalitarianism, open a real public realm,but also become "the first requirement" on human’s free development.Clarified the misunderstanding of Arendt on Marx’s concept of labor, it is notonly helping to show rich and profound meaning of Marx’s concept of Labor, butalso help deepen our understanding of the overall philosophy of Marx.This paper is divided into three parts:The first part discusses the theoretical sources and basic connotation of HannahArendt’s concept of labor. Arendt’s understanding of labor is mainly based on theancient Greek of Aristotle’s distinction between human activities triple and Heideggerpractical wisdom and techniques of two points. Arendt called human activity "active life", and it is divided into three parts: labor, work and action. Among them, the laboris a natural inevitability activity, work has a certain creativity, production out ofsomething with a certain persistence, action has the ability to start a new beginning, itis an activity enable people to be free.The second part focuses on the Arendt’s understanding and criticism to theMarx’s concept of labor. Due to Arendt understood Marx’s concept of labor only as anatural necessity activity to maintain the human existence, so she naturally linked tothe Marx’s labor with the origin of totalitarian, the undermine public realm, and theloss of freedom.In Arendt’s view, Marx didn’t distinguish the difference between labor and work,so he raised the status of the labor is the fundamental factors led to totalitarianmovement. While Marx praised labor making it into the public realm, so that thepublic realm suffered damage and destruction. Meanwhile, the development of laborhas brought a "consumer society", even lasting durable goods directly will beconsumed after produced, in Arendt’s eyes, such labor would gradually lead to the lossof freedom.The third part is a defense of Marx’s concept of labor. Arendt’s misreading andcritique to Marx’s concept of labor is based on the narrow understanding about richcontent of Marx’s concept of labor. In Marx’s view, labor is not only the basic meansto maintain human existence, it is more a free activity of achieve human progress andman’s comprehensive development. Firstly, with the revival of "alienated labor" andthe elimination of free labor, the state will become a history in the future society,"freepeople of the Commonwealth" will become the basic organization of communistsociety, therefore, the "totalitarianism"called Arendt impossible enter the view ofMarx’s concept of labor;Secondly, Marx understood the labor completely differentfrom the slave labor of Aristotelian, Marx pointed out that with the development ofcapitalism, labor has lost its "individuality" and gradually evolved into a kind of"socialized large production ", that labor has become the community ties to linkedpeople together. With the development of human society, labor broke through theprivate realm of Aristotle’s slave labor, what’s more, it open and expanded the public realm of human activity, to become the first need of human life; Finally, becauseMarx gives labor the "society" perspective, it is not only making the labor out of theprivate realm, but also making laboring people join together freedom. In social labor,people occur certain production relationships, along with the conflict developmentof the productive forces and production relations, human beings gradually entercommunist society which built on the new relations of production, so people’sfreedom comprehensive development is possible, so labor not only did not destroy thefreedom, but made the people’s freedom truly possible.