Marx’s comments on James Mill's book

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NOTES [1]
THE ECONOMIC AND PHILOSOPHIC MANUSCRIPTS
THE ECONOMIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL MANUSCRIPTS
The Second Manuscript

then our mutual thraldom to the object at the beginning of the process

is now seen to be in reality the relationship between master and slave,

that is merely the crude and frank expression of our essential

relationship.

Our mutual value is for us the value of our mutual objects. Hence for

us man himself is mutually of no value.

Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings.

Each of us would have in two ways affirmed himself and the other

person. 1) In my production I would have objectified my

individuality, its specific character, and therefore enjoyed not only an

individual manifestation of my life during the activity, but also when

looking at the object I would have the individual pleasure of knowing

my personality to be objective, visible to the senses and hence a power

beyond all doubt. 2) In your enjoyment or use of my product I would

have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied

a human need by my work, that is, of having objectified man's

essential nature, and of having thus created an object corresponding to

the need of another man's essential nature. 3) I would have been for

you the mediator between you and the species, and therefore would

become recognised and felt by you yourself as a completion of your

own essential nature and as a necessary part of yourself, and

consequently would know myself to be confirmed both in your

thought and your love. 4) In the individual expression of my life I

would have directly created your expression of your life, and therefore

in my individual activity I would have directly confirmed and realised

my true nature, my human nature, my communal nature.

Our products would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our

essential nature.

This relationship would moreover be reciprocal; what occurs on my

side has also to occur on yours.

Let us review the various factors as seen in our supposition:

My work would be a free manifestation of life, hence an enjoyment of

life. Presupposing private property, my work is an alienation of life,

for I work in order to live, in order to obtain for myself the means of

life. My work is not my life.

Secondly, the specific nature of my individuality, therefore, would be

affirmed in my labour, since the latter would be an affirmation of my

individual life. Labour therefore would be true, active property.

Presupposing private property, my individuality is alienated to such a

degree that this activity is instead hateful to me, a torment, and rather

the semblance of an activity. Hence, too, it is only a forced activity

1844: Marx’s comments on James Mill's book

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844-mil/index.htm (20 of 22) [23/08/2000 18:56:15]

and one imposed on me only through an external fortuitous need, not

through an inner, essential one.

My labour can appear in my object only as what it is. It cannot appear

as something which by its nature it is not. Hence it appears only as the

expression of my loss of self and of my powerlessness that is

objective, sensuously perceptible, obvious and therefore put beyond

all doubt.

NOTES

[1] Translated as "Monetary System": This was a specific belief

among early Mercantilists. They contended that wealth consisted in

money itself, in building bullion reserves. It’s because of this that the

export of gold or silver was not allowed, forcing active trade balances

between nations.

[2] This passage reads, in the original German: "Durch die

wechselseitige Entäusserung oder Entfremdung des Privateigentums

ist das Privateignetum selbst in die Bestimmung des entäusserten

Privateigentums geraten." It demonstrates that, when using the terms

"Entäusserung" and "Entfremdung" to denote alienation, Marx

imparted to them an identical, or nearly identical, meaning. In all

translations from early Marx, the Collected Works translates

Entäusserung as "alienation" and Entfremdung as "estrangement."

They made this decision based on the fact that Marx would later

(Theories of Surplus-Value ) directly employ the word alienation as

the English equivalent of Entäusserung.

[3] This refers primarily to James Mill, who divided his system of

political economy into four independent sections: Production,

Distribution, Exchange and Consumption.

[4] The rest of the conspectus contains further excerpts from Mill’s

book. After the excerpts dealing with the question of land rent, capital

profit and wages as sources of taxation and state revenues, Marx

wrote:

"Needless to say, Mill, like Ricardo, denies that he wishes to impress

on any government the idea that land rent should be made the sole

source of taxes, since this would be a partisan measure placing an

unfair burden on a particular class of individuals. But -- and this is a

momentous, insidious but -- but the tax on land rent is the only tax

that is not harmful from the standpoint of political economy, hence the

only just tax from the point of view of political economy. Indeed, the

1844: Marx’s comments on James Mill's book

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844-mil/index.htm (21 of 22) [23/08/2000 18:56:15]

one doubt raised by political economy is rather an attraction than a

cause for apprehension, namely, that even in a country with an

ordinary number of population and or ordinary size the amount

yielded by land rent would exceed the needs of the government."

Marx / Engels

Document Outline

marxists.org
- 1844: Marx’s comments on James Mill's book
- The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts
- Marx/Engels Internet Archive
- Marxists Writers Archive

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