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.

Initial Influences

In the German Ideology (Marx 1980: 164), the dominant German thought during Marx’s time, was one that “descended from heaven to earth”, was in fact embodying the school of Idealism. Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Hegel were important German idealists, and for their idealism, existence does not precede consciousness, because we can only know about existence if we are conscious about it. Grounded in the philosophical thoughts of Kant and Hegel, the ideology of morality, religion and metaphysics were verisimilitudes and depicted history as a consequence of these ideologies. Marx (1980: 164) explained, “They have neither history nor development”, proving that these ideas were just products of individuals’ thought. Hegel’s philosophical system (in his Phenomenology of Spirit) was mainly pantheistic as he posited an idea of the “world spirit”; thought itself was a universal self-actualizing activity, which was identical to “God”, and he exerts that this universal spirit was existent even before the dawn of Man (Lien-Te 1984: 7). The core of Marx and Engel’s social and political thought is found in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, as he formulated a theory of dialectical principles to expound a theory of development and change (Lien-Te 1984: 6-7). This dialectical process’s crux is that an established thesis would cause an antithesis to develop in opposition, which consequently in turn would cause a new synthesis. This synthesis becomes the thesis and the process starts all over.

Within the same dialectical process, Hegel posits that Man emerges from Nature and along with him emerges the world history (Lien-Te 1984: 7-8); further reinforcing the point that Nature existed before Man. Nature (according to Hegel), is restrictive and Man has to modify and impose an artificial form upon it in order to realize himself. Moreover, because of Man’s needs (for example, subsistence) he inevitably has to modify Nature to satisfy himself. In Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, he explains that this activity, labour, is the bridge mediating Man and Nature and it contains an intrinsic value of creation and liberation which allows Man to exceed the restrictions of Nature (Lien-Te 1984: 2-3). Hegel also iterates that Man has to continuously toil and labour in order to realise himself (to be conscious, reflexive), which is the objectification of his mental plan and hence imposing a sense of superiority over nature (Lien-Te 1984: 2). He calls Man, Homo laborans (working Man; in contrast to Homo sapiens: thinking Man (Pinnock 2002: 57)), which is linked to his theory of alienation (which Marx adopts as well); for purposes of this essay, I shall not venture into alienation.

Ludwig Feuerbach however rejects the metaphysical notion of Hegel, propounding his subject-thought predicate: “Being is subject, thought the predicate. Thought comes from being, but being does not come from thought” (Hamilton 1974: 23); Man is the subject and God is the predicate as God is an expression of Man’s thought; social product. He also coined the term “species-being” (“species” as a biological commonality, and “being” as having a universal reflexivity: consciousness). The theories by both thinkers formed the ideological nucleus of Marx’s works. 

Marx’s Concept of Human Nature

Marx’s materialism contrasts with idealism that dominated German thought during Marx’s time. Marx asserts the notion of praxis, putting theory into practice; that in order for a theory to be valid is how it informed action. Marx expulsed the German ideology with his first premise of all human history: “the existence of living human individuals” (Marx 1980: 165). His first premise was reinforced with the second and eighth thesis on Feuerbach: “The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth...”; “All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice” (Marx 1977: 156-8).

With the philosophical findings of both Hegel and Feuerbach, Marx formulates his concept of nature of Man and consciousness. Nature according to Hegel was preceded by a metaphysical entity, “the world spirit”, or “absolute spirit”, which ultimately relates to God. Feuerbach argues in contrast to Hegel that God is nothing else than Man, and it is Man who constructs this imaginary transcendental being. Using Hegel’s idea of Homo laborans and flipping his dialectic (which ignored real individuals, Marx located it in the material realm), Marx criticized Feuerbach for ignoring labour and the modification of natural conditions (Nature) of human existence into social conditions, and also ignoring nature as a practical human activity (praxis); Marx’s ninth thesis on Feuerbach (McLellan 1977: 156-8, Hamilton 1974: 23-4). Feuerbach’s “species-being” was based on single, isolated individuals whom Marx criticised with his sixth thesis, stating that human nature is a unity of social relations (Marx 1977: 156-8). Marx however acknowledged Feuerbach’s subject-thought predicate and resolved Feuerbach’s naturalism using the theory of praxis and the Hegelian dialectic – thesis-antithesis-synthesis – that the activity itself links Man to Nature: “Productive life is, however, species-life. It is life creating life; life activity that resides the whole character of a species, its species-character, and free, conscious activity is the species-character of human beings. Life itself appears only as a means of life” (1844 Manuscripts) (Zhang 1994: 16-7). Marx concretely defines this “free conscious activity” of human nature as labour: the life-activity of the worker (Man), resulting in the manifestation of his own life; fulfilling Man’s immediate needs (subsistence) through this life activity.

Within labour, two important concepts of Marx’s philosophical-anthropology are “objectification” and “non-physical needs”. Objectification means that human nature is embodied in the product of human activity, labour: “Thus it is in the working over the objective world that Man first really affirms himself as species-being... the object of work is therefore the objectification of the species-life of Man...” (Marx 1980: 175). Objectification induces self-affirmation (realization) which leads to self-consciousness. In addition, it is precisely this activity (labour) that embodies Marx’s concept of human nature, which it is reliant upon: “The worker can create nothing without nature... It is the matter in which his labour realizes itself, in which it is active out of which and through it produces”  (Marx 1977: 79). The object of labour is the objectification of Man’s species-life.

Zhang (1994: 16-7), explains that the non-physical needs refers both to the essence of humanity and to the necessary precondition for the realization of this essence. A good example would be comparing between animals and mankind, as Man differs from animals (with whom he shares essential physical needs) in possessing the gift of invention, the ability to alter his own nature and needs. Marx’s concept of nature comprises of not only animals, stones, air, light etc. that forms part of human consciousness, but other individuals as well (Marx 1977: 81). This universality of Man, which appears in activity, is the essential ingredient for Man’s nonphysical needs, and this universality embeds the whole of nature into his inorganic body – Man’s immediate means of subsistence, material object and tool of his vital activity. The activity of labour links man to man, it is the universal link among men as it sustains each other and this is the gist of Marx’s notion of species-being, a social activity that is an act of producing for the species as a whole: “Of course, animals also produce... But they only produce for themselves or one-sidedly, whereas Man produces universally; animals produce only itself whereas Man reproduces the whole of nature” (Marx 1980: 168).

This inorganic extension of Man (nature) is such that it is not itself a human body and in order for Man to exist, he has to be in constant interchange with nature: “Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both Man and Nature participate” (Marx 1980: 174). Moreover, Man, being part of nature, with his intellectual and physical needs depending on nature means that nature depends on itself; in transforming Man’s environment, Man transform themselves. In addition, through labour, the manipulation of inorganic nature is the confirmation of Man as a conscious species-being: “The whole character of a species... is contained in its manner of vital activity, and free conscious activity is the species-characteristic of Man” (Marx 1977: 82).

For Marx, consciousness is a social product, which is grounded in activity. Consciousness exist only when needs are required, and is never isolated from activity. Marx’s concept of human nature can be concluded: the essence of human nature is productive labour; the entire character of a species resides in the nature of its life activity that constitutes the species-character of Man, and the state of Man’s consciousness differs in different epochs as he changes his natural and social environment. Man attains subjugation of his world not by contemplation, but through activity (labour), the conscious moulding by men of their environment and of each other (Berlin 1978: 93). Therefore, labour transforms Man’s world and himself too, through the course of its activity; this was the fundamental element that comprise Marx’s materialist concept of history and how societies change.

Conclusion

Marx viewed history as a relation between Man and labour, “the history of society is the history of the inventive labours that alter Man, alter his desires... both to other men and to physical nature...” (Berlin 1978: 93) With this explanation – and since consciousness is grounded in activity – and that Man has to modify and interact with Nature in order to survive (affirms himself in his activity), the nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their consciousness: “the production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life” (Berlin 1978, p. 164). Thus, the materialist conception of history; materialism; which means for Marx, the idea that existence precedes consciousness, that is, our ideas about the world comes from the interaction as living organisms with the world as our environment (Collier 2004: 141). For Marx, it is in this way that we should explain the culture of a society, in terms of how it makes its living from nature rather than the inverse. The whole base-superstructure is an accurate model about this idea: the relations of production establishes the economic structure of society that gives rise to the superstructure, in turn constituting the normative structure that represents definite forms of social consciousness.

Each epoch consists of different modes of production of material life, which conditions the social and intellectual life process. The dominant ideology that creates the normative structure and governs man, is created by man (specifically ruling class), and contradictions in the productive forces with existing relations of production, begins an epoch of social revolution (Marx 1980: 389); the transition of civilization to different epochs. This is how history for Marx, ought to be analysed – through material relations of Man – and how civilizations’ progression depended on the advancement of the modes of production, which supports the over-arching superstructure.

The Hegelian notion of Homo laborans, and his dialectic process, explains how Man must continuously be engaged in activity to exist. Feuerbach’s naturalist notion of subject-predicate and his contemplative materialism, which was critiqued by Marx, was the main impetus for Marx’s notion of praxis that opposed the metaphorical discourse of the dominant German thought during Marx’s time (materialism vis-à-vis idealism). Marx’s concept of Man which mediates Nature through labour to exist, describes the core of human nature is labour. Human consciousness is a dialectical interplay between a creative subject and the objective material environment and this dialectical materialism is a teleological interpretation of history. The species-character of the species-being is the activity of Man, and based on this notion, how the history of civilizations was in fact made up of different modes of production, which in turn determined the social conditions and forms of consciousness of Man. Moreover, this consequence is a process of reification (“reinforcing” one’s conscious will and catalysed by objectification of labour; false consciousness) by the ideologies that were in place and in fact, created by Man himself; man governed man throughout history and his own forms of consciousness are created by man himself (religion, production, consumption etc.). In Marx’s context, thought can never take precedence over the existence of Man: “Men are producers of their conceptions, ideas... conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces... Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process” (Marx 1977: 164). In conclusion, it is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but their social being that determines their consciousness.

References

Marx, K. 1977. Selected writings, edited by McLellan D. Oxford [Eng.]: Oxford University Press.

Marx, K. 1980. The thought of Karl Marx: An Introduction, edited by McLellan D. London; Basingstoke: Mcmillan.

Berlin, I. 1978. “Chapter 6: Historical Materialism” in Karl Marx, His Life and Environment, 4^th ed. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

Zhang, B. 1994. “Reforms: Understanding the Origins of Our Contemporary Theoretical Dilemma.” Pp. 13-27 in Marxism and Human Sociobiology: The perspective of economic reforms in China. New York: State University of New York Press.

Hamilton, P. 1974. “Hegel and Marx” Pp. 23-4 in Knowledge and social structure: An introduction to the classical argument in the sociology of knowledge (by) Peter Hamilton. London, England: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Pinnock, Sarah. K. 2002. “PostHolocaust Faith in God.” Pp. 53-59 in Beyond theodicy: Jewish and Christian continental thinkers respond to the Holocaust. New York: State University of New York Press.

Lien-Te, H. 1984. The Hegelian and Feuerbachian Origins of Marx’s Concept of Man. Singapore: Singapore University Press.

Collier, A. 2004. Marx: A Beginners Guide. Banbury, England: Oneworld Publications.