Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

“Even the wealthiest state of society leads to [the] suffering of the majority—and since the economic system (and in general a society based on private interests) leads to this wealthiest condition, it follows that the goal of the economic system is the unhappiness of this system.”

Having explained that no set of economic circumstances under capitalism can result in the general welfare of the worker, Marx goes on to explain that the misery of the workers is the point and not an unintended consequence. As he will explain in subsequent essays, the material deprivation of the workers is indicative of their broader alienation from authentic sources of human happiness and that the logic of capitalism aims directly at this severance. It seeks to establish money as the source of human fulfillment, which can only occur when money has become the means of satisfying every imaginable need, both physical and emotional.

“While the interest of the worker, according to the political economist, never stands opposed to the interest of society, society always and necessarily stands in opposed to the interest of the worker.”

Marx challenges one of the foundational claims of “classical economics,” namely Adam Smith’s argument that an “invisible hand” directs the interests of all economic actors, such as owners, laborers, and consumers, toward the interests of society as a whole. This assumes that all economic actors have equal power, and Marx argues that modern industrial economics places workers at a disadvantage relative to owners. Since the economy is built around the interests of capital, it is automatically opposed to the good of the workers whose compensation is a business expense that owners constantly seek to reduce.

“Capital is thus the governing power over labor and its products. The capitalist possesses this power, not on account of his personal or human qualities, but inasmuch as he is an owner of capital. His power is the purchasing power of his capital, which nothing can withstand.”

Marx insists upon a fundamental difference between wealth generated through labor and wealth generated through capital. According to Marx, capital is an abstraction, a legal fiction that awards tremendous money and power to someone who has done nothing to earn it other than to possess a valuable asset. The system of capitalism is designed to facilitate the interests of those who work the least.

“Thus the advance made by human labor or in converting the product of nature into the manufactured product of nature increase, not the wages of labor, but in part the number of profitable capital investments, and in part the size of every subsequent capital in comparison with the foregoing.”

Rapid technological advancement is a hallmark of industrial capitalism, and here Marx shows that this advancement corresponds to the worsening of conditions for the worker. As the division of labor becomes more complex, the individual worker represents a smaller fraction of the overall production and thus receives a diminishing share of its value. At the same time, the capitalist can extract more wealth with more stages of production since labor costs fall as production capacity increases.

“When, therefore, this large capital is opposed by small capitalists with small profits, it is under the presupposed condition of intense competition, it crushes them completely.”

Marx is refuting the notion that capitalism permits free competition among producers, who then must provide the best product at the lowest price to attract consumers. Just as the relationship between labor and capital is tilted to the advantage of the latter, competition among capitalists favors large corporations, which have more sources of revenue, more efficient production techniques, and enough cash on hand to weather a dip in prices that would bring smaller producers to ruin. Once their competition is eliminated, capitalists are then free to produce low-quality goods at higher prices, since consumers are left with no other choice.

“Since a real reduction in the price of manufactured products raises the rent of land, the landowner has a direct interest in lowering the wages of industrial workers, in competition amongst the capitalists, in over-production, in all the misery associated with industrial production.”

Marx is commenting on the phenomenon of landlords being able to charge higher rents even as the cost of labor decreases, based on the expectation that the property will be able to produce greater yields and thus increase profits. The resulting overproduction lowers wages and exerts tremendous physical and psychological stress and environmental degradation. It leads to the evacuation of the countryside into overcrowded cities and ultimately fills society with an overabundance of valueless things while the hyper-rich refine their taste for luxuries.

“Association, applied to land, shares the economic advantage of large-scale landed property, and first brings to realization the original tendency inherent in land division namely, equality. In the same way association also reestablishes, now on a rational basis, no longer mediated by serfdom, overlordship and the silly mysticism of property, the intimate ties of man with the earth.”

Marx sketches the philosophic roots of the communist ideal. Before this vision can take hold, capitalism needed to reach a stage of development where it generates enough output for the satisfaction of all. History then comes full circle, as the most advanced technology allows human beings to restore their original condition of equality once it abolishes the historical middle stage of capital and land ownership.

“Political economy starts with the fact of private property, but it does not explain it to us. It expresses in general, abstract formulas the material process through which private property actually passes, and these formulas it then takes for laws. It does not comprehend these laws, i.e. it does not demonstrate how they arise from the very nature of private property.”

Turning his attention from the practice to the theory of political economy, Marx finds that free market champions such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo put the cart before the horse. They identified property as the key variable, whereas private property is an artificial creation resulting from the inequitable relationship between labor and capital. This then permits the holders of property to justify their wealth as the natural reward of their labor, while the value of the property is completely cut off from the labor that created it.

“It is true that labor produces for the rich wonderful things—but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces—but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty—but for the worker, deformity. It replaces labor by machines, but it throws a section of the workers back to a barbarous type of labor, and it turns the other workers into machines. It produces intelligence—but for the worker stupidity, cretinism.”

Marx insists on a distinction between labor and production. Labor refers to a work of creation, the value of which belongs to the creator. For Marx, this is the essence of genuine economic activity, providing the worker with both the means to survive and a sense of purpose. Production, on the other hand, simply refers to the making of something, with no implied social relationship. Under capitalism, the worker is a mere producer. They can make no valid claim on the product of their labor, and so the value of their work passes entirely into other hands.

“The object of labor is, therefore, the objectification of man’s species life; for he duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he contemplates himself in a world that he has created.”

Marx endows labor with a kind of religious significance. Producing a piece of work represents the fundamental connection between human beings in the world around them. It links them with nature, which provides the tools with which they operate. It connects them to other human beings, who will benefit from their creation. This bestows upon the creator a more profound sense of themselves now that they have externalized a part of themselves and given it to the world.

“This contradiction between landowner and capitalist is extremely bitter, and each side tells the truth about the other. One need only read the attacks of immovable on moveable property and vice versa to obtain a clear picture of their respective worthlessness.”

Marx reminds his audience that the competition between capitalists is in many respects more bitter than that between capital and labor. The capitalist and the landowner can each subjugate the worker with relative ease, but they pose an existential threat to one another. The landowner’s critique of the capitalist as cynical and mercenary shows that a future under the rule of finance capital is grim, whereas the capitalist’s rejection of the landowner as a retrograde tyrant also shows that the past is not to be idealized. Their joint accusations serve as a mutual confession.

“The real course of development (to be inserted at this point) results in the necessary victory of the capitalist over the landowner—that is to say, of developed over undeveloped immature private property—just as in general, movement must triumph over immobility, open, self-conscious baseness over hidden, unconscious baseness; greed over self-indulgence; the avowedly restless, adroit self-interest enlightenment over the parochial, world wise, naïve, idle and deluded self-interest of superstition; and money over the other forms of private property.”

Finance capital will subjugate the landowner because it more consistently follows the logic of political economy. Because money is mobile, it can be devoid of sentimentality, with no reliance on a particular place or people, whereas a landowner depends on a specific piece of land and a local workforce, which can lead to inefficiencies such as sentimental attachments. The triumph of money is thus the triumph of the cosmopolitan over the local, obliterating local customs in favor of universal standards of production and profit.

“Locating private property in man’s own being, it can no longer be conditioned by the local, national, or other characteristics of private property as of something existing outside itself. This political economy consequently displays a cosmopolitan, universal energy which overthrows nearly every restriction and bond so as to establish itself as the sole politics, the sole universality, the sole limit and sole bond.”

Modern political economy helped to introduce the idea that possessing property was intrinsic to human nature, which had the practical effect of turning humanity itself into a commodity. This idea opened the floodgates for capitalism to spread rapidly and recreate the world in its image by turning every human being into a capital asset.

“All wealth has become industrial wealth, the wealth of labor; and industry is accomplished labor, just as the factory system is the essence of industry—of labor—brought to its maturity, and just as industrial capital is the accomplished objective form of private property. We can now see how it is only at this point that private property can complete its dominion over man and become, in its most general form, a world-historical power.”

Industrial capitalism represents the next and more complete stage of a process that has been ongoing for centuries. In pre-modern times, land and farming represented the main metric of labor and value, and being tied to the land, the relationship between labor and value was much closer. The factory system succeeds in extracting vastly more labor from the worker while reducing their share of value, creating massive inequalities of wealth and the dependency of workers upon owners.

“[Communism] is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man—the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the isolated and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be the solution.”

This is the most definitive statement Marx makes on communism in the Paris Manuscripts. It is not merely a more equitable and humane system for distributing wealth, although it certainly is that. It represents the final stage of humanity’s ideological and psychological evolution by linking technological prowess with natural human needs. It aims at nothing less than the resolution of every contradiction in the human condition.

“My general consciousness is only the theoretical shape of that which the living shape is the real community, the social fabric, although at the present day general consciousness is an abstraction from real life and as such confronts it with hostility.”

Marx inverts the standard Hegelian concept of alienation. For Hegel, abstract thinking is necessary to achieve a higher degree of self-consciousness than one can attain by interacting with the material world. For Marx, this kind of abstraction leaves the person alone and unable to make meaningful connections with the natural world and their fellow human beings. Communism is, above all, an attempt to restore the organic connection between humans and their nature.

“The poverty of man—under the assumption of socialism—receives in equal measure a human and therefore social significance. Poverty is the passive bond which causes the human being to experience the need of the greatest wealth—the other human being.”

Under capitalism, money becomes the most crucial human need because it is impossible to satisfy other needs without it. Through socialism, and ultimately communism, Marx wants to liberate humans from their dependence on money and to connect with other humans. Since money is property, it draws a person into themselves and multiplies their wants even as it diminishes their ability to satisfy them. Under socialism, human beings become ends unto themselves rather than vehicles for building capital.

“The political economy of ethics is the opulence of a good conscience, of virtue, etc.; but how can I live virtuously if I do not live? And how can I have a good conscience if I am not conscious of anything?”

Capitalism attempts to reframe the poverty of the worker as a kind of virtue, a simple life governed by relatively few wants and relentless dedication to duty. Marx aims to show that modern labor is impoverished in a spiritual as well as material sense. Working for countless hours under dangerous conditions, only to retire to dingy bars and ill-kept apartments reduces someone even below the level of an animal. It is thus impossible for them to exhibit the human quality of virtue or conscience as their minds have been confined to the barest level of survival.

“Society, as it appears to the political economist, is civil society, in which every individual is a totality of needs and only exists for the other person, as the other exist for him, in so far as each becomes a means for the other. The political economist reduces everything (just as does politics in its Rights of Man) to man, i.e., to the individual whom he strips of all determinateness so as to class him as capitalist or worker.”

The philosophy of the Enlightenment regards the individual human person as the central unit, who enters into society voluntarily and for the maximization of their benefit. Marx rejects this view as ultimately resulting in the reduction of the person into a mere unit of economic activity. If people have no obligations beyond maximizing their value, those with the most wealth have the power to subordinate others to their profit margins.

“Division of labor and exchange are the two phenomena which lead the political economist to boast of the social character of his science, while in the same breath he gives expression to the contradiction in his science—the establishment of society through unsocial, particular interests.”

In classical economic theory, trade is the principal means through which individuals form a society. In David Ricardo’s classic example, England learns that rather than produce cloth and wine, it is more efficient to produce more cloth and trade the surplus to Portugal for wine, ending up with the same amount of product through less labor. Marx argues that trade is ultimately tied to the division of labor, as markets learn to collect parts more efficiently from different sources (as in modern supply chains). Rather than promote sociability, this isolates the worker in a single task that they perform over and over again for the main purpose of generating as much product as possible. Their products travel across markets, but the workers stay put.

“If money is the bond binding me to human life, binding society to me, binding me and nature and man, is not money the bond of all bonds? Can it not dissolve and bind all ties? Is it not, therefore, the universal agent of separation?”

Capitalism ultimately results in the absolute power of money, elevating it above nature itself. It achieves something akin to a magical power to its owner, who can purchase anything from goods and services to love and public esteem. As the medium through which a person acquires everything they need and want, and the more money they acquire, the more it will multiply their wants and turn them into perceived needs.

“He who can buy bravery is brave, though he be a coward. As money is not exchanged for any one specific quality, for any one specific thing, or for any particular human essential power, but for the entire objective world of man and nature, from the standpoint of its possessor it therefore serves to exchange every property for every other, even contradictory, property and object: it is the fraternization of impossibilities. It makes contradictions embrace.”

Marx ultimately relies on a moralistic critique of capitalism. The most obvious focus of moral critique may be the inequitable treatment of workers, but it also corrupts foundational social virtues such as honesty and courage. Like the story of the emperor with no clothes, a rich person uses their funds to project an image of themselves that is false, but the power dynamics involved force everyone to play along. The power of money is so absolute in its ability to unite its possessor with any object that it multiplies contradictions between what everyone understands to be virtue and what they are forced to call virtuous in the presence of the powerful.

“To say that man is a corporeal, living, real, sensuous, objective being full of natural vigor is to say that he has real, sensuous, objects as the objects of his being or of his life, or that he can only express his life in real, sensuous objects.”

Hegel views the development of self-consciousness in terms of a relationship between self and object, but this process occurs entirely within consciousness. For Marx, humanity’s relationship with objects, both natural and created, is rooted in physical experience. Human beings are drawn outside of themselves to experience the world around them and be enriched by it, physically and emotionally.