I can’t finish it all……
（The essence of man… sensuous activity, that is, practice）
The essence of man is freedom
The first precondition of freedom is self-knowledge[①]
Freedom is indeed the essence of man[②]
Only when news publication is not the product of freedom, that is, not the product of human activity, can it be good. Seen this way, only animals or gods would be able to enjoy the right of news publication[③]
Freedom includes not only what I live on, but also how I live; not only doing things that are free, but also doing those things freely. Otherwise, the difference between an architect and a beaver would be only that the beaver is an architect wrapped in animal skins, whereas the architect is a beaver not wrapped in animal skins.[④]
The very first advantage the worst architect has over the most skillful bee is that, before he builds a honeycomb with beeswax, he has already built it in his head. At the end of the labor process, a result appears that already existed at the beginning of the process in the worker’s imagination, that is, already existed ideally. He not only changes the form of the natural object, but at the same time realizes his own purpose in the natural object[⑤]
……The product of the animal is directly bound up with its body, whereas man treats his product freely. The animal only builds according to the standards and needs of the species to which it belongs, whereas man knows how to produce according to the standards of any species, and knows how everywhere to apply the inmost standard to the object;[⑥]
The essence of man is man’s real activity
The problem as understood by Sancho is, at bottom, still utterly absurd. He thinks that hitherto people have always first formulated to themselves the concept of man, and then attained freedom, and that the degree of freedom depends on the needs in realizing that concept; the degree of freedom people attain is each time determined by their corresponding idea of the human ideal; meanwhile there must necessarily remain in each individual some residue that does not conform to this ideal, and therefore this residue, as something “unhuman,” has not yet been liberated, or has been liberated only malgré eux [against their will].
Of course, in reality things are like this: people each time do not attain freedom within the bounds determined and permitted by their ideal of man, but within the bounds determined and permitted by the existing productive forces.[⑦]
This positive assertion, “human,” corresponds to a certain relation that is dominant at a given stage of the development of production, and to the way of satisfying needs determined by that relation. Likewise, the negative assertion, “unhuman,” corresponds to those intentions that seek, within the existing mode of production, to negate this relation of dominance and the way of satisfying needs that is dominant in that relation, and such intentions are continually produced every day by this stage of the development of production.[⑧]
The development of one person depends on the development of all the others with whom he has direct or indirect intercourse; the generations of individuals standing in relation to one another are mutually connected, the bodily existence of the later generation is determined by that of its predecessors, and the later generation inherits the productive forces and forms of intercourse accumulated by its predecessors, which in turn determines the mutual relations of that generation. In short, we can see that development is constantly taking place, and the history of any single individual can by no means be detached from the history of the individuals before him or of his own time; rather, it is determined by that history.
The transformation of personal relations into their opposite, into pure relations of things, the individual’s own distinction between individuality and contingency, is, as we have already pointed out, a historical process that takes different, increasingly sharp and universal forms at different stages of development. In modern times, the domination of individuals by thing-relations and the repression of individuality by contingency have assumed the sharpest and most universal form, and thus present individuals with a very definite task. This situation sets them the task of establishing the domination of the individual over contingency and relations, in place of the domination of relations and contingency over the individual. This situation does not, as Sancho imagines, demand that “I develop myself” (without Sancho’s advice everyone has always been doing that anyway), but solemnly demands the casting off of a very definite mode of development. This task posed by modern relations coincides with the task of organizing society according to communist principles.[⑨]
The essence of man is in no way an abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of all social relations.[⑩]
People have hitherto always made for themselves false conceptions about themselves, about what they are or ought to be. They have built their relations according to their conceptions of God, of the model human being, and so on. The products of their heads have dominated them. Their own creators have bowed down before their creations. We must liberate them from fantasies, concepts, dogmas, and imaginary beings, so that they no longer groan and gasp under the yoke of these things. We must rise up against this rule of thought.[11]
The chief defect of all previous materialism—including Feuerbach’s materialism—is that things, reality, sensuousness are understood only in the form of the object, or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, as practice, not subjectively. Hence, paradoxically, it came about that the active side was developed by idealism in opposition to materialism—but only abstractly, since idealism of course did not know actual, real sensuous activity. Feuerbach wanted to investigate the sensuous objects that are genuinely different from objects of thought, but he did not understand human activity itself as objective activity[12]
German philosophy descends from heaven to earth; in complete contrast to it, here we ascend from earth to heaven, that is to say, we do not start out from what people say, imagine, conceive, nor from people as narrated, thought, imagined, conceived, in order to understand truly human beings. Our point of departure is the real, active people, and from their real life process we can also reveal the development of the ideological reflections and echoes of this life process.[13]
This method of observation is not presuppositionless. It starts from real premises and never for a moment departs from them. Its premises are human beings, but not human beings in some imaginary, isolated, sequestered state; rather, human beings in the actual, empirically observable development process carried on under definite conditions. As soon as this active life process is described, history ceases to be, as even those empiricists who remain abstract themselves think, a collection of dead facts, and ceases also to be, as idealists think, the imagined activity of an imagined subject.[14]
This conception of history differs from the idealist conception in that it does not seek some category in every epoch, but always stands on the basis of real history, explaining not practice from ideas, but ideational things from material practice[15]
Forty-two: 123
Thus man is a special individual, and precisely his specialness makes him an individual, a real singular social being; likewise he is also totality, the ideal totality, the for-itself-being of the social subject as thought and perceived, just as in reality he exists both as the intuition and actual enjoyment of social existence and as the totality of human life-expression.
It follows that thought and being, though distinct, are at the same time united with each other.
Production activity
As soon as people themselves begin to produce the means of life they need (a step determined by their bodily organization), they begin to distinguish themselves from animals. While people produce the means of life they need, they are at the same time indirectly producing their material life itself.[16]
However individuals express their life, that is how they are. Therefore what they are coincides with their production—coincides both with what they produce and with how they produce it. Hence what individuals are depends on the material conditions of their production.[17]
This production first begins with the growth of population. Production itself, however, presupposes intercourse between individuals. And the form of this intercourse is determined by production.[18]
Yet not only the relation of one nation to other nations, but the whole internal structure of a nation itself depends on its production and on the degree of development of internal and external intercourse. The level of development of a nation’s productive forces is most clearly expressed in the degree of development of the division of labor in that nation. Every new productive force leads to a further development of the division of labor, since it is not merely a quantitative increase of existing productive forces (for example, the reclamation of new land)[19]
Alienation
The more commodities the worker creates, the more he is transformed into a cheap commodity. The valorization of the world of things is in direct proportion to the devaluation of the world of men. Labor not only produces commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity, and does so in the proportion in which it generally produces commodities.[20]
This realization of labor appears as the worker’s loss of actuality; objectification appears as the loss of the object and as subjugation by the object; appropriation appears as alienation, externalization[21]
The worker’s relation to the product of his labor is the relation to an alien object. For according to this premise, it is clear that the more the worker expends himself in labor, the more powerful becomes the alien, objective world that he creates over against himself, the poorer he himself, his inner world, becomes, and the less there is that belongs to him.[22]
The worker’s relation to the product of his labor is the relation to an alien object. For according to this premise, it is clear that the more the worker expends himself in labor, the more powerful becomes the alien, objective world that he creates over against himself, the poorer he himself, his inner world, becomes, and the less there is that belongs to him.[23]
First of all, labor is external to the worker, that is, it does not belong to his essence; therefore, in his labor he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel happy but miserable, does not develop his physical and mental energy freely but mortifies his body and ruins his spirit. Therefore man feels himself to be at home only outside labor, and in labor he feels out of place; he is at ease when not working, and not at ease when working. His labor is therefore not voluntary labor, but forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need for labor, but merely a means to satisfy needs outside labor. The alien character of labor is clearly shown in the fact that as soon as physical or other compulsion ceases, people flee from labor like the plague. External labor, in which man externalizes himself, is labor of self-sacrifice, of self-mortification. Finally, the external character of labor for the worker is shown in the fact that this labor is not his own, but someone else’s; that it does not belong to him; and that in labor he does not belong to himself but to someone else.[24]
The result is that man (the worker) feels himself to be a free activity only in his animal functions—eating, drinking, sexual activity, at most also dwelling, grooming, and so on—whereas in his human functions he feels himself to be nothing but an animal. The animal becomes human, and the human becomes animal.
Eating, drinking, sexual activity, and so on are indeed genuinely human functions. But if these functions are separated from the rest of human activity and made the ultimate and sole ends, then in this abstraction they are animal functions.[25]
Alienated labor, by alienating from man (1) nature and (2) man himself, his own active function, his life activity, also alienates from him the species; it turns the species life into a means of individual life. First, it alienates species life from individual life; second, it makes the abstract form of individual life the aim of an equally abstract and alienated form of species life.
For, in the first place, labor, this life activity, this life-producing life itself, is for man only a means to satisfy his needs, that is, the needs of maintaining bodily existence. Yet productive life is species life. It is life engendering life. The whole character of a species lies in the character of its life activity, and the free conscious activity is precisely the human species-character. But life itself becomes merely a means to life.
The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It does not distinguish itself from that activity. It is that activity. Man makes his life activity itself the object of his will and consciousness. His life activity is conscious. It is not the determinacy with which he immediately merges. Conscious life activity directly distinguishes man from animal life activity. It is precisely because of this that man is a species-being. Or, because man is a species-being, he is a conscious being, that is to say, his own life is an object for him. Only because of this is his activity free activity. Alienated labor reverses this relation, so that precisely because man is a conscious being, he makes his life activity, his essence, merely a means of maintaining his existence.[26]
By reducing self-activity, free activity, to a means, alienated labor also turns human species life into a means for the bodily existence of man.[27]
Division of labor
Finally, the division of labor also provides us with the first example of the fact that, as long as men are still in a spontaneously formed society, that is to say, as long as there is still a split between private interest and common interest, that is to say, as long as the division of labor is not voluntary but spontaneous, then the activity of man himself becomes for him an alien, opposed force that drives him, instead of being driven by him. For once the division of labor appears, each person has a definite, special sphere of activity imposed on him, from which he cannot escape: he is a hunter, fisherman, shepherd, or a critical critic, and if he does not want to lose his means of life he must always remain such a person. But in communist society, no one has a fixed sphere of activity; each person can develop in any branch he wishes, society regulates the whole production, and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, tend cattle in the evening, and criticize after dinner, without thereby becoming a hunter, fisherman, shepherd, or critic[28]
The common activity of different individuals constrained by the division of labor produces a social power, namely an enlarged productive force. Since this common activity itself is not formed voluntarily but spontaneously, this social power does not, in the eyes of these individuals, appear as their own united power, but rather as some alien power standing outside them. They know nothing at all about the origin and development tendency of this power; thus they can no longer master this force, but on the contrary this force now goes through a series of distinctive stages of development that are determined not by people’s will and action, but instead govern people’s will and action.[29]
This “alienation” (to put it in terms easily understood by philosophers), of course, will only disappear after two practical preconditions have been met. In order for this alienation to become an “intolerable” force, that is, a force against which revolution must be directed, it must cause the majority of humankind to become completely “propertyless” people, while these people in turn stand opposed to the existing wealthy and cultivated world; and both of these conditions presuppose the enormous growth and high development of the productive forces[30]
The mutual shaping of human beings and their environment
Therefore, it is precisely in transforming the objective world that human beings truly prove themselves to be species-beings. This production is humanity’s active species-life. Through this production, nature comes to appear as his work and his reality. Thus the object of labor is the objectification of human species-life: human beings not only intellectually reproduce themselves, as in consciousness, but actively, really reproduce themselves, thereby intuiting themselves in the world they have created. Thus alienated labor has taken from human beings the object of their production, and thereby has also taken from them their species-life, that is, their real, species-objective being, turning the advantage human beings possess over animals into a disadvantage, because it has stripped human beings of their inorganic body, namely nature.[31]
The production of thought, ideas, and consciousness is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and material intercourse of people, with the language of real life. Ideas, thought, and people’s spiritual intercourse here are still the direct product of people’s material relations. The spiritual production that finds expression in the language of a given nation’s politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, and so on is likewise so. People are the producers of their ideas, thoughts, and so forth, but the people spoken of here are real, active people, conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and by the forms of intercourse corresponding to this development, up to its most remote forms. Consciousness can never be anything other than conscious existence, and the existence of human beings is their actual life process.[32]
Human beings create their environment, and in the same way the environment creates human beings. The sum total of the productive forces, capital, and forms of social intercourse handed down as ready-made things to each individual and each generation is the real basis of what philosophers imagine as “substance” and “human essence,”[33]
There is a materialist doctrine that regards human beings as the product of environment and education, and therefore regards changed human beings as the product of a different environment and changed education—this doctrine forgets that it is precisely human beings who change the environment, and that the educator himself must be educated. Therefore, this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which stands above society (as is the case, for example, with Robert Owen). The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.[34]
Forty-two: 123
Thus, human beings are a special individual, and it is precisely their particularity that makes them an individual, a real, singular social being; likewise, they are also totality, the totality of ideas, the self-being of the social subject thought and perceived, just as in reality they exist both as the intuition and real enjoyment of social existence and as the totality of human life-expression.
It is therefore clear that thought and being, although distinct, are at the same time unified with one another.
In fact, the terms “mission,” “purpose,” “germ,” “idea,” and so on, as used in earlier history, signify nothing but abstractions derived from later history, abstractions derived from the positive influence earlier history exerts on later history.[35]
(4) Private property is nothing but the sensuous expression of the following state of affairs: that human beings have become for themselves something objective, while at the same time becoming alien and inhuman objects; that their life-expression is the externalization of their life, that their realization is their loss of reality, that it is alien reality. Likewise, the positive supersession of private property, that is, the sensuous appropriation for and through human beings of the human essence and human life, of the objective human being and of human products, should not be understood merely as direct, one-sided enjoyment, nor merely as possession or having. Human beings appropriate their total essence in a total way, that is, as complete human beings. Every human relation to the world—seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking, intuiting, feeling, willing, acting, loving—in short, all the organs of the individual, just as the organs that are in their form directly social organs, ［ＶＩＩ］ appropriate objects through their objective relations, that is, through their relation to objects. The appropriation of human reality, their relation to the object, is the realization of human reality①, is human activity and human passivity; for passivity understood in human terms is a self-enjoyment of human beings.[36]
Thus, on the one hand, as objective reality becomes for human beings everywhere in society the reality of human essential powers, the reality of human beings, and thus the reality of their own essential powers, all objects also become for them the objectification of themselves, the objects that confirm and realize their individuality, their objects—in other words, objects become themselves. How an object comes to be their object depends on the nature of the object and the nature of the essential power corresponding to it; for it is precisely the determinacy of this relation that forms a particular, real mode of affirmation. The eye’s sense of an object is different from the ear’s, and the object of the eye is different from the object of the ear. The distinctness of each essential power is precisely the distinct essence of that essential power, and thus also the distinct mode of its objectification, its distinct mode of objective, real, living existence. Therefore, human beings affirm themselves not only through thought, ［ＶＩＩＩ］ but with all their senses in the world of objects.[37]
On the other hand, from the standpoint of the subject: only music can awaken the musical sense in human beings; for an ear that lacks musical sense, the most beautiful music has no meaning whatever, is no object, because my object can only be the confirmation of one of my essential powers, that is to say, it can exist for me only insofar as my essential power exists for me as a subjective capacity in itself, since the meaning of any object for me (it has meaning only for that sense corresponding to it) is limited by the degree to which my sense extends. Hence the senses of the social human being are different from those of the non-social human being. Only through the objectively unfolded richness of the human essence do the richness of subjective, human sensibility—such as a musical ear, an eye capable of perceiving formal beauty—in short, the senses that can become human enjoyment, the senses that affirm themselves as human essential powers—become partly developed and partly produced. For not only the five senses, but also the so-called spiritual senses, the practical senses (will, love, and so on), in a word, the human senses, the sensuous humanity of human beings, are produced only through the existence of their objects, through humanized nature. The forming of the five senses is the product of the entire history of the world up to now.[38]
Forty-two: 98
In short, the proposition that human beings are alienated from their species-being means that one human being is alienated from another, and that each of them is alienated from the human essence.
Forty-two: 122
Even when I engage in activities like science, that is, in a kind of activity through which I can only directly interact with others in very rare cases, I am still social, because I am acting as a human being. Not only the material I need for my activity, but even language itself, which the thinker uses in carrying out his activity, is given to me as a social product; and my own existence is a social activity. Therefore what I make out of myself I make out of myself for society, and I become conscious of myself as a social being.
The history of industry and the already formed objective existence of industry are an open book on the essential powers of human beings, a psychology of human beings laid out sensuously before us[39]
Forty-two: 128
Natural science, however, through industry increasingly enters human life in practice, transforms human life, and prepares the way for human emancipation, even though it must directly carry out dehumanization. Industry is the real historical relation of nature to human beings, and therefore also of natural science to human beings. Thus, if industry is taken as the open display of human essential powers, then the human essence of nature, or the natural essence of human beings, can also be understood; therefore natural science will lose its abstract-material, or rather idealist, orientation and will become the foundation of the science of human beings, just as it has now already—though in alienated form—become the foundation of truly human life; as for the claim that life has one foundation and science another—that is simply a lie. Nature formed in the course of human history, that is, in the process of the emergence of human society, is the real nature of human beings; therefore, nature formed through industry—though in alienated form—is true, anthropological nature.
Sensuousness (see Feuerbach) must be the foundation of all science. Science is only real science when it proceeds from sensuous consciousness and sensuous need, that is, only when it proceeds from nature. The entire history is the history of development preparing the way for “man” to become an object of sensuous consciousness and for the need of “man as man” to become a［natural, sensuous］ need. History itself is a real part of natural history, namely of the process by which nature becomes human. Natural science will in the future include the science of human beings, just as the science of human beings includes natural science: this will be one science.
Forty-two: 132
［ＸＩＶ］(7) We have already seen what significance the richness of human needs has under socialist premises, and thus what significance a new mode of production and a new object of production have: a new confirmation of human essential powers and a new enrichment of human essence. Within the bounds of private property, all this has the opposite meaning. Everyone tries by every means to arouse some new need in others, in order to force them to make new sacrifices, place them in a new position of dependence, entice them to pursue new ways of enjoyment, and thereby plunge them into economic ruin. Everyone seeks to create a power over others, an alien essential power, so as to find in it the satisfaction of his own egoistic needs.
Forty-two: 134
A desolation utterly contrary to nature, a nature increasingly corrupted, becomes the element of his life. None of his senses continues to exist not only in a human way, but not even in a non-human way, and thus not even in an animal way. ………. Even barbarians and animals still have needs for hunting, exercise, and so forth! — The simplification of machine labor is used to turn completely immature, still-growing human beings, that is, children, into workers, just as workers are turned into unattended children. Machines are adapted to human weakness in order to turn weaker people into machines.
Forty-two: 169
Human beings, as objective, sensuous beings, are beings that suffer; because they feel themselves to be suffering, they are beings with passion. Passion, fervor, is the essential power by which human beings pursue their object with intensity.
The Poverty of Philosophy
Four: 144
With the acquisition of new productive forces, people change their mode of production, and with the change in the mode of production, that is, in the way they secure their lives, they also change all their social relations. The hand-mill produces a society with feudal lords at its head, and the steam-mill a society with industrial capitalists at its head.
————–Labor may be “a free activity”; it can become “attractive labor, the individual’s self-realization.” (Second edition, vol. 30, p. 616) “The object of labor is the objectification of human species-life”; it enables one to “intuit oneself in the world one has created” (Collected Works, second edition, vol. 3, p. 274)
[①] The Debate on Freedom of the Press and the Publication of the Proceedings of the Provincial Estates, I: 139
[②] The Debate on Freedom of the Press and the Publication of the Proceedings of the Provincial Estates, I: 167
[③] The Debate on Freedom of the Press and the Publication of the Proceedings of the Provincial Estates, I: 168
[④] The Debate on Freedom of the Press and the Publication of the Proceedings of the Provincial Estates, I: 181
[⑤] Capital, 23: 202
[⑥] Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Forty-two: 97
[⑦] The German Ideology, 3: 506~507
[⑧] The German Ideology, 3: 508
[⑨] The German Ideology, 3: 515
[⑩] Theses on Feuerbach, 3: 5
[11] The German Ideology, 3: 16
[12] Theses on Feuerbach, 3: 3
[13] The German Ideology, 3: 30
[14] The German Ideology, 3: 30
[15] The German Ideology, 3: 43
[16] The German Ideology, 3: 24
[17] The German Ideology, 3: 24
[18] The German Ideology, 3: 24
[19] The German Ideology, 3: 24
[20] Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Forty-two: 90
[21] Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Forty-two: 91
[22] Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, vol. 42: 91
[23] Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, vol. 42: 93
[24] Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, vol. 42: 93~94
[25] Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, vol. 42: 94
[26] Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, vol. 42: 96
[27] Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, vol. 42: 97
[28] The German Ideology, vol. 3: 37
[29] The German Ideology, vol. 3: 38~39
[30] The German Ideology, vol. 3: 38~39
[31] Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, vol. 42: 97
[32] The German Ideology, vol. 3: 29
[33] The German Ideology, vol. 3: 43
[34] Theses on Feuerbach, vol. 3: 4
[35] The German Ideology, vol. 3: 51
[36] Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, vol. 42: 123~124
[37] Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, vol. 42: 125
[38] Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, vol. 42: 126
[39] Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, vol. 42: 127
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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