Author: NAS

Species-Being and Social Consciousness

“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness” – Karl Marx

Introduction

The above notion by Karl Marx is the base of all his succeeding works; it is Marx’s concept of Man and how he critiqued the existing dominant ideology of German thought, and relates his argument to societal change and history – specifically the relations of production. In order to explain what Marx meant by the proposed notion, I will have to explain Marx’s concept of Man, and how an activity (labour) was a primordial means for Man to gain self-realization, which laid the grounds that Marx conjured his argument on the materialist conception of history. This paper is divided into three sections: 1) Initial Influences: I will be explaining briefly how two thinkers influenced Marx’s thoughts and papers (mainly Hegel), 2) Marx’s Concept of Human Nature: Marx conceptualized Nature and Man through an activity which acts as a intermediary to fulfil Man’s necessities, 3) Conclusion: how the structure of epochs were made up of different modes of production and in turn creating different social conditions for Man that determined their form of social consciousness.