Marx on alienation and employee capital participation

Abstract

The paper aims to show that the theory of alienated labour that Marx develops in his early and still endorses in his mature work is an application of Hegelian dialectics, that the conditions of production in which the alienation of labour is sublated do not coincide with the conditions of production that Marx’s political writings say should characterise post-capitalist societies (i.e. do not coincide with central planning), and that in order for alienated labour to be sublated, it suffices to transfer the means of production to the ownership of workers (to introduce what is nowadays known as ‘employee capital participation’).

Keywords:

• Marx
• Hegel
• conditions of production
• alienation
• employee capital participation

JEL CODES:

• B14
• B51
• J54
• J81
• P13

Notes

1 Its presentation of the basics of Hegel’s conception of history will concentrate on the Phenomenology of Spirit (Hegel 1807/1931). Limited space does not allow for a detailed consideration of more mature works such as Science of Logic or Philosophy of Rights (Hegel 1821/1952). But a detailed consideration of these works is also unnecessary because both may be read in light of the Phenomenology (cf. the end of section II for a more elaborate version of this remark).

2 To show that knowledge in the traditional sense is unavailable to us is in fact the principal purpose of the first three chapters of the Phenomenology.

3 Pinkard (1996, 12) accurately describes that necessity as “the necessity to be found in a line of argument. Just as only some kinds of things can complete a certain line of argument, only some types of things can complete a dialectical historical progression.”

4 Note, moreover, that Marx’s mature work uses hundreds of words associated with alienation (cf. Sève 2004, 27–28).

5 Perhaps unsurprisingly, recent Marx scholarship is rather divided over the legitimacy of Marx’s first and second criticism. While Murray (1988) and Arthur (2002) think that his first criticism is justified, Smith (1990) believes that it is misdirected, and that for Hegel, absolute knowledge or spirit is not a metaphysical or abstract subject. Heiss (1963) and MacGregor (1984, 6) argue against the legitimacy of Marx’s second criticism.

6 Cf. Lotz (2018, 4) for a more complete and clearly arranged list of applications of the term “alienation” in Marx.

7 Speculation about why the originally planned Part Seven of Capital was discarded is otiose. It is clear, however, that the presence of Marx’s theory of alienation in that Part cannot be the reason: the originally planned Part Seven only touches upon that theory. In his introduction to the first English translation of this Part, Mandel provides a more plausible explanation: in the “dialectically articulated artistic whole” that Marx was planning, the originally planned Part Seven would be out of place because as a summary of Volume 1 and as a bridge between Volumes 1 and 2, it had a somewhat ugly double-didactic function (C 944).

8 Cf. Schumpeter 1976, 9 for a particularly succinct expression of that hope.