The Concept of Freedom

Marx n'explique jamais pourquoi les forces productives tendraient à s'accroître ; en admettant sans preuve cette
tendance mystérieuse, il s'apparente non pas à Darwin, comme il aimait à le croire, mais à Lamarck, qui fondait
pareillement tout son système biologique sur une tendance inexplicable des êtres vivants à l'adaptation. De même
pourquoi est-ce que, lorsque les institutions sociales s'opposent au développement des forces productives, la victoire
devrait appartenir d'avance à celles-ci plutôt qu'à celles-là ? [p.15]
….
La grande idée de Marx, c'est que dans la société aussi bien que dans la nature rien ne s'effectue autrement que par
des transformations matérielles. « Les hommes font leur propre histoire, mais dans des conditions déterminées. »
Désirer n'est rien, il faut connaître les conditions matérielles qui déterminent nos possibilités d'action ; et dans le
domaine social, ces conditions sont définies par la manière dont l'homme obéit aux nécessités matérielles en
subvenant à ses propres besoins, autrement dit par le mode de production. (Weil, Reflections, p.17.)
Simone Weil erects a barrier between social relations of production and forces of production that
in Marx does not exist. In Marx, as Weil correctly perceives stressing the Hegelian derivation of
his worldview, the social relations of production are already intrinsic part and parcel of what he
calls “the forces of production”. The famous Marxian distinction between “base” and
“superstructure” is meant to refer to the “dialectical contradiction”, in Hegelian parlance, that
Marx believed to exist between the forces of production, which include the social relations of
production, and those social relations that are not “productive” but are rather “ideological”. The
historical materialism propounded by Marx is a direct excrescence of the Hegelian dialectic
according to which “human beings make their own history”. But “they do so in determinate
conditions” not because, as Weil believes, Marx is erecting a barrier – ontological or
epistemological – between objective natural forces of production and subjective historical social
relations: - because for Marx no such barrier or hiatus can exist between Nature and History.
Rather, the “determinate conditions” to which Marx is referring are those self-same “social
relations of production” that ultimately prevail over the ideological superstructure whenever the
two come into conflict.
For Marx, all human reproduction, simple or expanded, all “forces of production” relate purely
and solely to relations between human beings inter se! Nature quite simply plays no autonomous
role – again, ontological or epistemological – in determining social relations of production. Indeed,
Hegel and Marx have this in common – that there is no separation or schism or hiatus between
Nature and History because Nature does not and cannot play an autonomous role in the course of
human history. In this respect, it may be argued that ultimately Hegel’s and Marx’s systems share a
historicist Vichian foundation and a Judaeo-Christian eschatological teleology. Nowhere in Marx’s
entire oeuvre is there any hint of preoccupation with the effect that “the development of the forces
of production”, dictated by humans, can have on the natural environment that humans share with
all other living things. As Weil herself points out, Marx believed firmly in the unlimited
development of human forces of production. Perhaps the only area in which Marx comes close to
setting a lower limit to human production is in the notion of “socially necessary labour time”,
which seems to refer to the labour time needed for the reproduction of human populations in line
with the most basic human needs. – Although even in this regard Marx is quick to note that this
“necessity” and these “needs” are more of a historical than of a biological nature. And the
unlimited “growth” or “development” of the forces of production in Marx can be construed only in
relation to a notion of “growth” or “development” that indicated a linear qualitative progress in
these forces of production – something that Weil is clearly going to contest.
Enfin pourquoi [Marx] pose-t-il sans démonstration, et comme une vérité évidente, que les forces productives sont
susceptibles d'un développement illimité ? Toute cette doctrine, sur laquelle repose entièrement la conception
marxiste de la révolution, est absolument dépourvue de tout caractère scientifique. Pour la comprendre, il faut se
souvenir des origines hégéliennes de la pensée marxiste. Hegel croyait en un esprit caché à l'œuvre dans l'univers, et
que l'histoire du monde est simplement l'histoire de cet esprit du monde, lequel, comme tout ce qui est spirituel, tend
indéfiniment à la perfection. Marx a prétendu « remettre sur ses pieds » la dialectique hégélienne, qu'il accusait d'être «
sens dessus dessous » ; il a substitué la matière à l'esprit comme moteur de l'histoire ; mais par un paradoxe
extraordinaire, il a conçu l'histoire, à partir de cette rectification, comme s'il attribuait à la matière ce qui est l'essence
même de l'esprit, une perpétuelle aspiration au mieux. Par là il s'accordait d'ailleurs profondément avec le courant
général de la pensée capitaliste ; transférer le principe du progrès de l'esprit aux choses, c'est donner une expression
philosophique à ce « renversement du rapport entre le sujet et l'objet » dans lequel Marx voyait l'essence même du
capitalisme. L'essor de la grande industrie a fait des forces productives la divinité d'une sorte de religion dont Marx a
subi malgré lui l'influence en élaborant sa conception de l'histoire. Le terme de religion peut surprendre quand il s'agit
de Marx ; mais croire que notre volonté converge avec une volonté mystérieuse qui serait à l'œuvre dans le monde et
nous aiderait à vaincre, c'est penser religieusement, c'est croire à la Providence. (P.16.)
There are at least three distinct implications in Weil’s trenchant critique of Marx’s own critique of
political economy. The first is that, as we pointed out above, all economic activity, whether
analysed from the bourgeois viewpoint or from his own “critical” standpoint, is seen by Marx as
involving purely and solely relations between human beings and not also between human beings
and their environment. Even in the charitable hypothesis that Marx regards “social relations of
production “ as also involving the natural environment to the extent that they satisfy “human
needs”, there can be no doubt whatsoever that Marx regards “nature” as a wholly passive entity, as
an object open entirely to human use and abuse. The second corollary implication is that Marx
sees the development of the forces of production purely and solely in quantitative terms – in terms,
that is, of the “socially necessary labour time” needed for the reproduction of human society. And
the third implication is that Marx sees this growth or development as a totally unlimited,
unstoppable process of technological progress in the human exploitation of the environment both
in qualitative and in quantitative terms!
The notion of progress indeed contains within itself by implication the linearity of the changing
forces of production in both a quantitative and a qualitative sense – a growing perfection of these
forces (a defecto ad perfectionem). And in turn, this linear perfectibility of the forces of production
implies the univocal ability of human beings to adapt to their environment and to transform it in a
suitable manner. Yet, this Marxian “scientific” belief in the progress of the forces of production – a
belief in what he considered a scientific discovery of Darwinian proportions - is precisely what
Weil calls into question, and with justifiable reason! For not only does the human transformation
of the environment inevitably raise the possibility of its irreparable degradation, but also, and
consequentially, this degradation calls into question the linearity of human adaptation both in
terms of conscious human agency and in terms of perfectibility in the sense that this adaptation
cannot be determined, judged or least of all measured ex ante, but can only be determined, if at all,
ex post facto! This is why Weil insists on disabusing Marx about the “Darwinian” basis of his social
theory: as Weil rightly points out, Marx’s social theory is in truth “Lamarckian” in that it relies on
the principle that “the function shapes the organ”. But Lamarck’s functionalist, or better,
interventionist theory of evolution runs directly counter to, where it does not contradict, Darwin’s
genetic theory of evolution! For Lamarck, just as for Marx, it is the positive activity of a species that
leads to the physiological development of organs that are most fitted to its surviving the existing
environment. This interventionist or functionalist theory is founded on the twin premises that (a) a
species pursues actively a function to which it is pre-disposed, and (b) this active pursuit then brings
about the organs or instruments that will lead to the function’s fulfilment. Quite to the contrary, for
Darwin, “the survival of the fittest” occurs not through active physiological adaptation by a species,
but rather through its genetic pre-disposition to adapt to a changing environment!
The difference between the two theories could not be starker. Whereas for Lamarck’s theory, the
survival of a species is due – in line with what Marx theorized for the human species - to a process
of active and, in the human case even conscious, adaptation, for Darwin instead this process is
entirely passive in the sense that survival of a species or of some of its members is due entirely (a)
to changes in the environment, and (b) to reproductive competition between its members! In
neither case, however, can a species change its genetic make-up actively to ensure its eventual
survival – because both conditions are constraints external to the collective activity of the species.
In other words, for Darwin, and contrary to Marx’s thesis, no species can ensure its survival ex
ante: for Darwin, and again contrary to Marx, “survival of the fittest” is an attribute that can be
assigned only ex post facto – after the event, not beforehand!
The epistemological and, above all, deontological and therefore practico-political repercussions of
this fundamental reversal of our understanding of our relation to our natural environment are quite
earth-shattering because, forcefully put, they invert the order of our understanding of how human
action affects the natural environment and, consequently, also our understanding of how human
beings should conduct themselves with regard to that environment. The universal attitude or
orientation of humans toward the environment is that it is a passive “tool” or inert “recipient” of
human activity. But seen from this novel perspective, it turns out that “nature”, far from being a
passive or inert receptacle and quarry for human activities, is in fact a very active or at the very least
“reactive” agent in our complex interaction with the world.
First to be subjected to critical reappraisal is the ubiquitous notion that human beings are masters
of their own destiny, that indeed human beings can shape the external world or “nature” in
conformity with the demands of their needs and the ideality of their spirit or minds. This pervasive
ideology of human sovereignty over the lifeworld is something that can be traced from the myth of
Prometheus all the way to German Idealism, Marxist theory and the most recent capitalist
ideologies of political and social transformation through the development of “the forces of
production”, a process figuratively known as “progress” or “civilisation”.
Even if we agree, against Weil, that Marx intended “the forces of production” (“the base” as
distinct from “the superstructure”)) to constitute a socially-defined historical and dialectical force
and not a mechanical one, still Weil is entirely right to expose the fallacy of Marxist thought in
terms of the “passivity” or at best the “neutrality” or inertness of “nature” with regard to human
action (cf. in this regard, as a corrective, Hannah Arendt’s homonymous work, Human Action.
We shall address the oblique link between Arendt and Weil presently). We could identify Marx’s
original mistake highlighted by Weil in his insistent use of the dialectic as a “positive” tool of
historical analysis. For the question then arises of why the development of the forces of production
should result, at a determinate point in history, in the elimination of social oppression:
La réflexion sur cet échec retentissant, qui était venu couronner tous les autres, amena enfin Marx à comprendre
qu'on ne peut supprimer l'oppression tant que subsistent les causes qui la rendent inévi-
Simone Weil, Réflexions sur les causes de la liberté et de l’oppression sociale (1934) 30
table, et que ces causes résident dans les conditions objectives, c'est-à-dire matérielles, de l'organisation sociale. Il
élabora ainsi une conception de l'oppression tout à fait neuve, non plus en tant qu'usurpation d'un privilège, mais en
tant qu'organe d'une fonction sociale. Cette fonction, c'est celle même qui consiste à développer les forces productives,
dans la mesure où ce développement exige de durs efforts et de lourdes privations ; et, entre ce développement et
l'oppression sociale, Marx et Engels ont aperçu des rapports réciproques. Tout d'abord, selon eux, l'oppression
s'établit seulement quand les progrès de la production ont suscité une division du travail assez poussée pour que
l'échange, le commandement militaire et le gouvernement constituent des fonctions distinctes ; d'autre part
l'oppression, une fois établie, provoque le développement ultérieur des forces productives, et change de forme à
mesure que l'exige ce développement, jusqu'au jour où, devenue pour lui une entrave et non une aide, elle disparaît
purement et simplement. Quelque brillantes que soient les analyses concrètes par lesquelles les marxistes ont illustré
ce schéma, et bien qu'il constitue un progrès sur les naïves indignations qu'il a remplacées, on ne peut dire qu'il mette
en lumière le mécanisme de l'oppression. Il n'en décrit que partiellement la naissance ; car pourquoi la division du
travail se tournerait-elle nécessairement en oppression ? Il ne permet nullement d'en attendre raisonnablement la fin ;
car, si Marx a cru montrer comment le régime capitaliste finit par entraver la production, il n'a même pas essayé de
prouver que, de nos jours, tout autre régime oppressif l'entraverait pareillement ; et de plus on ignore pourquoi
l'oppression ne pourrait pas réussir à se maintenir, même une fois devenue un facteur de régression économique.
Surtout Marx omet d'expliquer pourquoi l'oppression est invincible aussi longtemps qu'elle est utile, pourquoi les
opprimés en révolte n'ont jamais réussi à fonder une société non oppressive, soit sur la base des forces productives de
leur époque, soit même au prix d'une régression économique qui pouvait difficilement accroître leur misère ; et enfin
il laisse tout à fait dans l'ombre les principes généraux du mécanisme par lequel une forme déterminée d'oppression
est remplacée par une autre.
For it is undeniable that Marx regarded “progress” in a linear as well as functionalist dimension, in
terms of socially necessary labour time: for him, the specific “exploitation” of the worker by the
capitalist consists crucially in “the theft of labour time”, that is, in the quantitative difference
between the labour time that is “socially necessary” to ensure the reproduction of a society and the
“surplus labour time” enforced by the capitalist to realise a monetary profit. Clearly, then, as Weil
argues above in opposition to Marx, the origin of social oppression and its final elimination cannot
be found and sought solely in the relation between humanity and “nature” through “socially
necessary labour time” or “human needs” – that is to say, through an unavoidably mechanical
“social function” that pre-destines human beings to subjugate “nature” actively – consciously and
intentionally. Rather, the origins and eventual elimination of oppression bear an essential and
fundamental relation to the objective “conditions of existence” that constrain how and to what
extent humans can actively “exploit” this (presumably passive) “nature”. The vice or error of
Marx’s critique of capitalism is that it locates its oppression and its eventual supersession in a
purely functional dimension whereby human beings in the historical semblance of the working
class or proletariat are “destined” to overcome the “historical dialectical contradictions” that this
oppression expresses.
Emancipation from labor, in Marx's own terms, is emancipation from necessity, and this would ultimately mean
emancipation from consumption as well, that is, from the metabolism with nature which is the very condition of
human life.83 Yet the developments of the last decade, and especially the possibilities opened up through the further
development of automation, give us reason to wonder whether the Utopia of yesterday will not turn into the reality of
tomorrow, so that eventually only the effort of consumption will be left of "the toil and trouble" inherent in the
biological cycle to whose motor human life is bound. However, not even this Utopia could change the essential worldly
futility of the life process. The two stages through which the ever-recurrent cycle of biological life must pass, the stages
of labor and consumption, may change their proportion even to the point where nearly all human "labor power" is
spent in consuming, with the concomitant serious social problem of leisure, that is, essentially the problem of how to
provide enough opportunity for daily exhaustion to keep the capacity for consumption intact.84 82. The classless and
stateless society of Marx is not Utopian. Quite apart from the fact that modern developments have an unmistakable
tendency to do away with class distinctions in society and to replace government by that "ad- ministration of things"
which according to Engels was to be the hallmark of socialist society, these ideals in Marx himself were obviously
conceived in accordance with Athenian democracy, except that in communist society the privileges of the free citizens
were to be extended to all. 83. It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that Simone Weil's La condition ouvriere (1951) is
the only book in the huge literature on the labor question which deals with the problem without prejudice and
sentimentality. She chose as the motto for her diary, relating from day to day her experiences in a factory, the line from
Homer: poll' aekadzomene, kratere d'epikeisef anagke ("much against your own will, since necessity lies more mightily
upon you"), and concludes that the hope for an eventual liberation from labor and necessity is the only Utopian
element of Marxism and at the same time the actual motor of all Marx- inspired revolutionary labor movements. It is
the "opium of the people" which Marx had believed religion to be. (Arendt, HC, p.131.)
Thus, in Weil’s justified critique, the Marxian theory of social oppression and exploitation fails to
confront the specific ways in which oppressive social relations of production have a deleterious
destructive, even cataclysmic effect on the human “exploitation” of nature itself – and therefore
Marx also neglects the reality that at least part of this “social oppression” may be due to the
inalterable limits and constraints that this “nature” imposes on humanity! In this Marxian
functionalist perspective, the relation between human beings and “nature” is mediated by the
forces of production and obstructed by the social relations of production in such a manner that
“nature” appears irrevocably as a “tool” open to human evolutionary manipulation. This
functionalist and intentionalist perspective vitiates the entire Marxist exegesis of the phenomenon
of oppression.
Bien plus, non seulement les marxistes n'ont résolu aucun de ces problèmes, mais ils n'ont même pas cru devoir les
formuler. Il leur a semblé avoir suffisamment rendu compte de l'oppression sociale en posant qu'elle correspond à
une fonction dans la lutte contre la nature. Au reste ils n'ont vraiment mis cette correspondance en lumière que pour
le régime capitaliste ; mais de toute manière, supposer qu'une telle correspondance constitue une explication du
phénomène, c'est appliquer inconsciemment aux organismes sociaux le fameux principe de Lamarck, aussi
inintelligible que commode, « la fonction crée l'organe ».
Consequently, for Marx and Marxism, the elimination of social oppression is simply the inevitable
future outcome of humanity’s functional and progressive domination of “nature”.
Furthermore, and perhaps even more erroneously, Darwin’s theory of evolution itself(!) is turned
upside down – by Marx and by all evolutionary science after Darwin - and misconstrued as a
Lamarckian process of conscious (for humans) and wilful or intentional (for all animals)
“adaptation”! As Weil impetuously yet quite correctly stresses in the passage below, all science
after Darwin has misconstrued his theory of evolution as an internal “adaptation” by species to
their external environment that ensures “the survival of the fittest”. But the “adaptation” and
“fitness” that Darwin meant is an attribute that is determined entirely by factors external to the
actions and intentions of species – as something that can be attributed only after and not before the
eventual “survival” of a species! In other words, evolution is an objective process quite
independent of the actions and intentions of species.
La biologie n'a commencé d'être une science que le jour où Darwin a substitué à ce principe [i.e. le fonctionnalisme de
Lamarck] la notion des conditions d'existence. Le progrès consiste en ce que la fonction n'est plus considérée comme
la cause, mais comme l'effet de l'organe, seul ordre intelligible ; le rôle de cause n'est dès lors attribué qu'à un
mécanisme aveugle, celui de l'hérédité combiné avec les variations accidentelles. Par lui-même, à vrai dire, ce
mécanisme aveugle ne peut que produire au hasard n'importe quoi ; l'adaptation de l'organe à la fonction rentre ici en
jeu de manière à limiter le hasard en éliminant les structures non viables, non plus à titre de tendance mystérieuse,
mais à titre de condition d'existence ; et cette condition se définit par le rapport de l'organisme considéré au milieu
pour une part inerte et pour une part vivant qui l'entoure, et tout particulièrement aux organismes semblables qui lui
font concurrence. L'adaptation est dès lors conçue par rapport aux êtres vivants comme une nécessité extérieure et
non plus intérieure. Il est clair que cette méthode lumineuse n'est pas valable seulement en biologie, mais partout où
l'on se trouve en présence de structures organisées qui n'ont été organisées par personne. Pour pouvoir se réclamer de
la science en matière sociale, il faudrait avoir accompli par rapport au marxisme un progrès analogue à celui que
Darwin a accompli par rapport à Lamarck.
Thus, there are two orders of objections that Weil moves against Marx, and indeed against nearly
all Western political and economic theories of social oppression, as well as against the ubiquitous
misinterpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution as a theory of (conscious and intentional)
“adaptation”. The first order is that Marx’s theory seeks to establish a mechanical, functionalist
link between human needs, forces of production and oppressive social relations of production.
The second order is that this functionalist link, unlike and contrary to Darwin’s genetic theory of
evolution, has a deterministic or even teleological bias in that human beings are deemed to be
capable of dominating consciously and intentionally their environment or “nature” in accordance
with their “ideation” or planned intentions. Marx himself, in one of the most deservedly renowned
passages in the first Book of Das Kapital, refers to this “ideal” ability of the human species to plan
beforehand in its mind its intended projects in the external world. Marx calls this Gattungs-Wesen
(“species-conscious being”). By contrast and in total opposition to this erroneous belief, Darwin
establishes that the survival of species is due entirely to factors wholly external to the actions and
intentions of existing species – factors such as genetic heredity and competition within and between
species, on one side, and environmental factors, on the other. Adaptation is therefore seen by
Darwin as “an external necessity”, that is, a necessity independent of the will, actions and intentions
of a species. That explains the overriding role and weight that Darwin attributes to “chance” or
“hazard” in the survival and evolution of species! In the Grundrisse, Marx fails to understand his
own theory of overpopulation engendered by capitalist accumulation as an external barrier in
terms of the unsustainable human demands this places on the ecosphere. Instead, throughout his
writings, Marx always believed, in line with the Hegelian dialectics of nature, that “the barrier to
capital is capital itself” – in other words, an “internal barrier”!
But this “hazard” or “chance” is not pure fortuitousness, sheer contingency: it is rather itself
constrained by the objective “conditions of existence” of a species which, although they do not
indicate the evolutionary process in a particular or specific direction, nevertheless delimit or
constrain the evolutionary outcomes for that species.
Les causes de l'évolution sociale ne doivent plus être cherchées ailleurs que dans les efforts quotidiens des
hommes considérés comme individus. Ces efforts ne se dirigent certes pas n'importe où ; ils dépendent,
pour chacun, du tempérament, de l'éducation, des routines, des coutumes, des préjugés, des besoins
naturels ou acquis, de l'entourage, et surtout, d'une manière générale, de la na-
ture humaine, terme qui, pour être malaisé à définir, n'est probablement pas vide de sens. Mais étant donné
la diversité presque indéfinie des individus, étant donné surtout que la nature humaine comporte entre
autres choses le pouvoir d'innover, de créer, de se dépasser soi-même, ce tissu d'efforts incohérents
produirait n'importe quoi en fait d'organisation sociale, si le hasard ne se trouvait en ce domaine limité par
les conditions d'existence auxquelles toute société doit se conformer sous peine d'être ou subjuguée ou
anéantie. Ces conditions d'existence sont le plus souvent ignorées des hommes qui s'y soumettent ; elles
agissent non pas en imposant aux efforts de chacun une direction déterminée, mais en condamnant à être
inefficaces tous les efforts dirigés dans les voies qu'elles interdisent.
In this optic, in this per-spective, from this a-spect, “nature” cannot be seen as mere ob-ject, as
passive op-position, as Gegen-stand, but rather as an active containment - indeed, says Weil, as an
inter-diction (!), a prohibitive dictation or in-junction that limits human action by con-straining and
re-straining it! It is, if you please, a barrier in guise of “un-intended con-sequences”. Human beings
illude themselves to be demi-gods who can actively determine the direction of life and the world –
to mould the cosmos in our likeness; when in fact we find that we are in the cosmos and that we
must therefore be conscious of the unintended consequences of our actions due to the restraint
and constraint – the containment – of these actions by our environ-ment, our sur-rounds, our Um-
welt, ambi-ence – “the natural milieu,” says Weil - that con-ditions, hence erects barriers, to our
activity. We pro-pose but nature dis-poses, like a divinity. Nature is the Epi-metheus (hind-sight) to
our Pro-metheus (presumed fore-sight). Nature is both a hostel for us and hostile to us: it is our
host, yet we are its hostile hostages! Nature both entertains and constrains us.
These are, precisely, the “conditions of existence” – ec-sistence, Da-sein – our being “thrown” and
de-jected in the world, in the cosmos, to which Weil refers repeatedly. And great part of these
conditions of ec-sistence is also our own human nature – by means of con-flict (a mutual in-fliction
of pain) and com-petition (a mutual craving) between and even within so-called in-dividual
(indivisible) humans.
III. Simone Weil.

Au reste la notion du travail considéré comme une valeur humaine est sans doute l'unique conquéte spirituelle qu'ait
faite la pensée humaine depuis le miracle grec ; c'était peut-étre lá la seule lacune á l'idéal de vie humaine que la
Gréce a élaboré et qu'elle a laissé aprés elle comme un héritage impérissable. Bacon est le premier qui ait fait
apparaítre cette notion. Á l'antique et désespérante malédiction de la Genése, qui faisait apparaítre le monde
comme un bagne et le travail comme la marque de l'esclavage et de l'abjection des hommes, il a substitué dans un
éclair de génie la véritable charte des rapports de l'homme avec le monde : « L'homme commande á la nature en lui
obéissant. » Cette formule si simple devrait constituer á elle seule la Bible de notre époque. Elle suffit pour définir le
travail véritable, celui qui fait les hommes libres, et cela dans la mesure méme oú il est un acte de soumission
consciente á la nécessité. (Reflections, p.80.)
There we have it, then: - final confirmation of the affinity between Weil’s view of Nature and that
first articulated centuries earlier by Francis Bacon in the Novum Organum. (We examined this
Baconian view in our Descartes’s World.) In this view, Nature is not a mere passive “tool” to be
exploited and moulded by humans as they please, without giving thought as to how Nature might
“react” – or better, with the presumption that Nature cannot possibly “react”. Such human
thoughtless Hubris, according to Bacon and Weil, takes no account of the fact that Nature is much
bigger than we are: - that it is not a “tool” for our gratification, but rather that we are a subordinate
part of it, that we are wholly reliant on Nature for the very survival of our species. If not curbed
and contained by obedience to our natural milieu, on which we are entirely dependent, our Hubris
will be fatally met by Nature’s vengeful Nemesis in the shape of those “unintended consequences”
that only now we are finally experiencing in the guise of the ecological catastrophe that we are
confronting. (Bacon invoked the myth of Proteus to describe Nature: - as an old man that changes
shape to elude all constraints and binds by means of which humans seek to restrain him. Cf. S.
Weeks, “Francis Bacon and the Art-Nature Distinction.”)
Our illusion to be able unilaterally to command Nature, to dictate to it, is curbed and nullified
invariably and fatefully by Nature in ways that often do not become evident to us until it is perhaps
too late. This is not a surrender to fatalism: Weil is not propounding the absurd notion that there
is an entity, a goddess (Nature) that actively imposes its will on humans. Instead, she is reminding
us of the need to treat Nature as sacramental by considering, first, that we are an indissoluble part
of it, and second that because of this we must always consider the “unintended consequences” of
our activities. There is no mysticism here: Weil is not saying that Nature is a conscious entity in
some kind of animistic universe. Hers is no pantheism either. Yet, we should treat Nature more
like simpler human groupings did when they depended upon it so much more than we do now at
least in terms of their immediate survival – with reverence not with disdain. This new-found
humility ought to result in our “conscious submission to necessity” – of which human living labour
is the preponderant part. Acknowledging the necessity of human labour as “obedience to nature”
rather than as “mastery and domination” over it is the fundamental distinguo that Weil introduces
against Marx’s own historical materialism and more particularly his critique of capitalist society and
theory of revolution.
It is in this specific context that Weil invites us to view some form of social oppression as being an
ineluctable component of social life – just as the necessity of work is and forever will be an
ineluctable condition of our existence:
Ces conditions d'existence sont déterminées tout d'abord, comme pour les êtres vivants, d'une part par le milieu
naturel, d'autre part par l'existence, par l'activité et particulièrement par la concurrence des autres organismes de même
espèce, c'est-à-dire en l'occurrence des autres groupements sociaux.
But beyond these two ineluctable – Darwinian – elements or components of the “conditions of
existence” that pose an ineluctable measure of social oppression for human society – beyond this
necessity – there lies a third factor that is eminently social and political, one over which human
beings can and invariably do have a say, one that gives rise to avoidable social oppression.
Mais un troisième facteur entre encore en jeu, à savoir l'aménagement du milieu naturel, l'outillage, l'armement, les
procédés de travail et de combat ; et ce facteur occupe une place à part du fait que, s'il agit sur la forme de
l'organisation sociale, il en subit à son tour la réaction. Au reste ce facteur est le seul sur lequel les membres d'une
société puissent peut-être avoir quelque prise. Cet aperçu est trop abstrait pour pouvoir guider ; mais si l'on pouvait à
partir de cette vue sommaire arriver à des analyses concrètes, il deviendrait enfin possible de poser le problème social.
(P.33)
It is to this avoidable social oppression, argues Weil, that we should turn our efforts to edify a
society worthy of human beings. This time, of course, our efforts will not be distracted or even
dissipated, as with Marxism, over the search for a “revolution” that will be the culmination of a
presumed evolutionary development of “the forces of production”, expunging the decaying
remains of bourgeois “social relations of production” that stymie the advent of socialism. (The
evolutionary socialism of Eduard Bernstein was always complementary to the revolutionary
communism of a Rosa Luxemburg and the Zusammenbruchstheorie in that both relied on a
version of Christian eschatology first laid down by Saint Augustine whereby once “social conditions
were ripe” then “the final crisis and overthrow” of capitalism would inevitably ensue. This linear
progression to socialism dependent on the linear regression of capitalism mirrors Augustine’s
account of how the corruption of the civitas terrena would precede the advent of the civitas Dei on
the occurrence of the Apocalypse and the Second Coming [Parousia], by means of the
“containment” [Greek, catechon] of Evil by Christendom, the civitas ecclesiae. [See M.Cacciari, Il
Potere Che Frena.])
Now, it may certainly be valid, as we have acknowledged already, for Weil to indict the essential
mechanicism of Marx’s historical materialism – and specifically its tendency (a) to present the
evolution of human society to communism as an automatic outcome or result (Er-folg, suc-cess or
succession) of the development of “the forces of production”; and (b) to present this evolution as
the effect of humanity’s unilateral, univocal action on an inert and passive “nature”. Yet, it is
equally undeniable that Marx’s critique of capitalism provides also the most powerful theoretical
and practical framework of analysis of how and why capitalism has led us to our present
catastrophic predicament – that is, the imminent destruction of human civilisation and of the
ecosphere with it! Once we abandon the extremes of Marx’s eschatological Hegelian (as well as
Victorian and Lamarckian!) Weltanschauung, then we find that Marx’s critique of the capitalist
mode of production contains an enlightening analysis of the aetiology of capitalism as well as of its
modus operandi and dynamic development. It provides also a most useful and penetrating guide
to the possible supersession and overthrow of this mode of production. Above all, and crucially for
Weil’s own environmentalist critique, Marx’s analysis of capitalism – namely, the enucleation of
the double character of labor power as a commodity and the exegesis of the commodity as the
estrangement of human activity from itself – offers the most valuable insight into why and how this
mode of production does and indeed must lead to the systematic and catastrophic destruction of
the ecosphere.
Let us proceed with order. Marx’s critique of capitalism and theory of its eventual supersession by
communism is predicated entirely on the incongruity between the growing portion of the working
day that goes to the creation of surplus value, from which the capitalist derives profits, and the
diminishing portion of the day that goes to necessary labour, which serves to reproduce the
proletariat. For Marx, this constitutes the ultimate barrier to capitalism itself – the fact that “at a
certain level of development of the forces of production”, the capitalist “social relations of
production” (the imposition of wage labor and the extraction of profits by capitalists) become “a
miserable and untenable basis” upon which to organize human society. As Weil rightly objects,
whilst this “incongruity” or discrepancy between necessary and surplus labour may prompt a
rebellion or revolution against bourgeois society once “the theft of labor time” becomes utterly
intolerable, nevertheless – as we saw earlier – it is an inconfutable fact that those “conditions of
existence” that Weil specified will still obtain in any form of human society, past and future,
because human needs and wants will always expand to absorb and consume all the available
“surplus” no matter how fast and easily producible. Marx’s prediction of the advent of communism
would then resemble a “bad infinite”, an ever-receding horizon. Besides, Weil justly objects (at
pg.43) that the products of labor are not what capitalists seek, but rather the social power that their
ownership yields – a point that is indeed central to Marx’s critique of capitalism. This is why Weil
insists on the fact that some form of social oppression will always exist – and therefore our aim
ought not to be to repose our hopes on a final act of revolution to overthrow bourgeois society but
rather on preparing the conditions for a more humane distribution of the burden of oppression
between members of society. More specifically, Weil lays emphasis on the nature and conditions
of human labour given the vital importance that she attributes to human living labour and its
“necessity” as the major component of human “conditions of existence”.
Peut-être cependant peut-on donner un sens à l'idéal révolutionnaire, sinon en tant que perspective possible, du moins
en tant que limite théorique des transformations sociales réalisables. Ce que nous demanderions à la révolution, c'est
l'abolition de l'oppression sociale ; mais pour que cette notion ait au moins des chances d'avoir une signification
quelconque, il faut avoir soin de distinguer entre oppression et subordination des caprices individuels à un ordre
social. Tant qu'il y aura une société, elle enfermera la vie des individus dans des limites fort étroites et leur imposera
ses règles ; mais cette contrainte inévitable ne mérite d'être nommée oppression que dans la mesure où, du fait qu’elle
provoque une séparation entre ceux qui l'exercent et ceux qui la subissent, elle met les seconds à la discrétion des
premiers et fait ainsi peser jusqu’à l'écrasement physique et moral la pression de ceux qui commandent sur ceux qui
exécutent. Même après cette distinction, rien ne permet au premier abord de supposer que la suppression de
l'oppression soit ou possible ou même seulement concevable à titre de limite. Marx a fait voir avec force, dans des
analyses dont lui-même a méconnu la portée, que le régime actuel de la production, à savoir la grande industrie, réduit
l'ouvrier à n'être qu'un rouage de la fabrique et un simple instrument aux mains de ceux qui le dirigent ; et
il est vain d'espérer que le progrès technique puisse, par une diminution progressive et continue de l'effort de la
production, alléger, jusqu'à le faire presque disparaître, le double poids sur l'homme de la nature et de la société. Le
problème est donc bien clair ; il s'agit de savoir si l'on peut concevoir une organisation de la production qui, bien
qu'impuissante à éliminer les nécessités naturelles et la contrainte sociale qui en résulte, leur permettrait du moins de
s'exercer sans écraser sous 1'oppression les esprits et les corps. À une époque comme la nôtre, avoir saisi clairement ce
problème est peut-être une condition pour pouvoir vivre en paix avec soi. Si l'on arrive à concevoir concrètement les
conditions de cette organisation libératrice, il ne reste qu'à exercer, pour se diriger vers elle, toute la puissance d'action,
petite ou grande, dont on dispose ; et si l'on comprend clairement que la possibilité d'un tel mode de production n'est
pas même concevable, on y gagne du moins de pouvoir légitimement se résigner à l'oppression, et cesser de s'en croire
complice du fait qu'on ne fait rien d'efficace pour l'empêcher.
We may very well agree with Weil broadly in this regard. The conditions of work in a capitalist
society are oppressive because of capitalist social relations of production and, indeed, they are
embodied in the very “forces of production” that the capitalist utilizes to produce surplus value.
Again, as a vehement and passionate critic of capitalism and revolutionary herself, Weil does not
disagree with this conclusion (see Weil’s own great work, La Condition Ouvriere). But let us pause
an instant on an important observation Weil makes with regard to the way in which capitalism has
transformed our relationship with Nature at a broad socio-anthropological level. At first, it appears
that the current abysmal level of human conduct toward the ecosphere is a constant in human
“civilisation”. In this specific context, Weil gives a valiant and valid resume’ of how these relations
have deteriorated over the course of human history – one that is perhaps worth quoting at length:
C'est donc qu'entre une économie tout à fait primitive et les formes économiques plus développées il n'y a pas
seulement différence de degré, mais aussi de nature. Et en effet, si, du point de vue de la consommation, il n'y a que
passage à un peu plus de bien-être, la production, qui est le facteur décisif, se transforme, elle, dans son essence
même. Cette trans
formation consiste à première vue en un affranchissement progressif à l'égard de la nature. Dans les formes tout à fait
primitives de la production, chasse, pêche, cueillette, l'effort humain apparaît comme une simple réaction à la pression
inexorable continuellement exercée par la nature sur l'homme, et cela de deux manières ; tout d'abord il s'accomplit,
ou peu s'en faut, sous la contrainte immédiate, sous l'aiguillon continuellement ressenti des besoins naturels ; et par
une conséquence indirecte, l'action semble recevoir sa forme de la nature elle-même, à cause du rôle important qu'y
jouent une intuition analogue à l'instinct animal et une patiente observation des phénomènes naturels les plus
fréquents, à cause aussi de la répétition indéfinie des procédés qui ont souvent réussi sans qu'on sache pourquoi, et qui
sont sans doute regardés comme étant accueillis par la nature avec une faveur particulière. À ce stade, chaque homme
est nécessairement libre à l'égard des autres hommes, parce qu'il est en contact immédiat avec les conditions de sa
propre existence, et que rien d'humain ne s'interpose entre elles et lui ; mais en revanche, et dans la même mesure, il
est étroitement assujetti à la domination de la nature, et il le laisse bien voir en la divinisant. Aux étapes supérieures de
la production, la contrainte de la nature continue certes à s'exercer, et toujours impitoyablement, mais d'une manière
en apparence moins immédiate ; elle semble devenir de plus en plus large et laisser une marge croissante au libre
choix de l’homme, à sa faculté d'initiative et de décision. L'action n'est plus collée d'instant en instant aux exigences de
la nature ; on apprend à constituer des réserves, à longue échéance, pour des besoins non encore ressentis ; les efforts
qui ne sont susceptibles que d'une utilité indirecte se font de plus en plus nombreux ; du même coup une
coordination systématique dans le temps et dans l'espace devient possible et nécessaire, et l'importance s'en accroît
continuellement. Bref l'homme semble passer par étapes, à l'égard de la nature, de l'esclavage à la domination. En
même temps la nature perd graduellement son caractère divin, et la divinité revêt de plus en plus la forme humaine.
Par malheur, cette émancipation n'est qu'une flatteuse apparence. En réalité, à ces étapes supérieures, l'action humaine
continue, dans l'ensemble, à n'être que pure obéissance à l'aiguillon brutal d'une
nécessité immédiate ; seulement, au lieu d'être harcelé par la nature, l'homme est désormais harcelé par l'homme. Au
reste c'est bien toujours la pression de la nature qui continue à se faire sentir, quoique indirectement ; car l'oppression
s'exerce par la force, et en fin de compte, toute force a sa source dans la nature.
The interesting point here is to see how Weil insightfully characterises human civilization as an
almost linear – and thus perhaps historically inevitable – process of growing avulsion and indeed
revulsion of humanity from Nature in the direction of ever-greater captivation with and by
civilisation itself, that is to say, with other humans – to the point where human beings are so
interdependent and “connected” that they become over-socialised, to the point that they feel stifled
and smothered by the rest of humanity. As Weil puts it, “instead of being harassed by nature,
humans are now harassed by other humans”. The defect in Weil’s analysis, however, is that she
turns this into an ineluctable destiny, into a reification of human history – indeed, as she concedes,
into a “mystery”:
Il faut poser encore une fois le problème fondamental, à savoir en quoi consiste le lien qui semble jusqu'ici
unir l'oppression sociale et le progrès dans les rapports de l'homme avec la nature. Si l'on considère en gros
l'ensemble du développement humain jusqu'à nos jours, si surtout l'on oppose les peuplades primitives,
organisées presque sans inégalité, à notre civilisation actuelle, il semble que l'homme ne puisse parvenir à
alléger le joug des nécessités naturelles sans alourdir d'autant celui de l'oppression sociale, comme par le jeu
d'un mystérieux équilibre. Et même, chose plus singulière encore, on dirait que, si la collectivité humaine
s'est dans une large mesure affranchie du poids dont les forces démesurées de la nature accablent la faible
humanité, elle a en revanche pris en quelque sorte la succession de la nature au point d'écraser l'individu
d'une manière analogue. (P.51)
Weil here succumbs to the same oversight for which she chastises Marx, namely, forgetting that
perhaps the worst aspect of social oppression under the capitalist mode of production consists
precisely in the neglect and abuse with which human beings are led thereby to treat Nature! In this
context, we can turn now to analyze a crucial development in our discussion of the dialectics of
Nature, one that is perhaps implicit in Weil’s exposition and yet is not – in our view – made
sufficiently explicit. Our contention is that Marx’s critique of capitalism provides implicitly a
coherent theory as to why and how capitalism – apart from perpetuating working conditions that
are evidently oppressive – is a mode of production that fundamentally and catastrophically distorts
the relation between human beings and the ecosphere. As Weil correctly argues, and as we saw
earlier, in part because his Hegelianism led him to treat the environment as a “quarry” for
humanity to exploit, and in part also because his Victorian belief in “scientific progress” led him to
believe that human beings will overcome all “negative side effects” of technical development, Marx
never quite looked into this question in any detail. There are nonetheless two aspects of his
critique of capitalism (developed particularly in the Grundrisse) that are crucial to the explication
of why and how capitalism does and must destroy the environment. These two aspects are
overpopulation and consumerism, neither of which Weil considers in her otherwise valuable
exposition.
It is essential to note that both these aspects of the capitalist destruction of Nature are intrinsically
linked to the capitalist mode of production, that is, to the specific form of social oppression that
the bourgeoisie imposes on workers so as to extract the surplus labor that is later realised in
monetary form as profits: - the first, overpopulation, through the labor process, where capital is
valorised; and the second, consumerism, through the market process, where surplus value is
realised as profit. Weil neglects these two pernicious aspects of capitalism both in themselves and
in their intrinsic connection to the capitalist mode of production.
Ainsi … apparaît déjà le mal essentiel de l'humanité, la substitution des moyens aux fins. Tantôt la guerre. apparaît au
premier plan, tantôt la recherche de la richesse, tantôt la production ; mais le mal reste le même. Les moralistes
vulgaires se plaignent que l'homme soit mené par son intérêt personnel ; plût au ciel qu'il en fût ainsi ! L'intérêt est un
principe d'action égoïste, mais borné, raisonnable, qui ne peut engendrer des maux illimités. La loi de toutes, les
activités qui dominent l'existence sociale, c'est au contraire, exception faite pour les sociétés primitives, que chacun y
sacrifie la vie humaine, en soi et en autrui, à des choses qui ne constituent que des moyens de mieux vivre. Ce sacrifice
revêt des formes diverses, mais tout se résume dans la question du pouvoir. Le pouvoir, par définition, ne constitue
qu'un moyen ; ou pour mieux dire posséder un pouvoir, cela consiste simplement à posséder des moyens d'action qui
dépassent la force si restreinte dont un individu dispose par luimême. Mais la recherche du pouvoir, du fait même
qu'elle est essen
tiellement impuissante à se saisir de son objet, exclut toute considération de fin, et en arrive, par un renversement
inévitable, à tenir lieu de toutes les fins. C'est ce renversement du rapport entre le moyen et la fin, c'est cette folie
fondamentale qui rend compte de tout ce qu'il y a d'insensé et de sanglant tout au long de l'histoire. L'histoire humaine
n'est que l'histoire de l'asservissement qui fait des hommes, aussi bien oppresseurs qu'opprimés, le simple jouet des
instruments de domination qu'ils ont fabriqués eux-mêmes, et ravale ainsi l'humanité vivante à être la chose de choses
inertes.
It is true: the substitution of ends with the means – or more prosaically put, “the end justifying the
means” whereby human goals are relegated to the remote future while brutal exploitative means
are employed – is perhaps a chronic evil for humanity. Yet, Weil here curiously avoids, first, the
obvious fact that it is only under capitalism (as Weber sharply observed, following Marx [see his
lecture on Sozialismus]) that this substitution of ends with means comes finally to pervade the very
mode of production and reproduction of human societies in the shape of the end-less
accumulation of capital; and second, curiouser still in an essay largely dedicated to Marxism, the
fact that this realization is perhaps Marx’s greatest discovery. Or rather, Marx’s greatest discovery is
the enucleation of the process whereby the accumulation of capital becomes possible – and that is,
the social creation under capitalism of the “double character” (Doppelcharakter) of the commodity
labour-power. It is the political violence of the bourgeoisie whereby it turns human living activity
(or living labour) into a homogeneous commodity that can be measured and be given a market
price – as if it were a “quantifiable thing”, an inert object -; it is this bourgeois violence that
transmutes like alchemy human living activity into a reified bazaar of dead products, of marketable
commodities (or “goods” as bourgeois economists have re-baptized them) – an alchemy that has
come to pervade all of our lives and that, as a result, “make humans become the simple toy of the
instruments of domination that they themselves have built…and thus abases living humanity to be
the ‘thing’ of inert things”.
Weil’s macroscopic failure to remark on the essential difference between capitalism and prior
modes of production in terms of its catastrophic impact on the ecosphere through the universal
reification of human social life – from production to consumption – engendered by the
commodification of human living labour: - it is this historically specific inversion of human living
activity (the end) with the inert product of this activity (commodities or goods or dead labour – the
means) that Weil ought to have placed front and centre of her analysis of social oppression –
precisely the way Marx did.
In fairness to Weil, it is entirely plausible to construe her Reflections as an indictment of the

apocalyptically perverse reification and commodification of human living labour – from an end in
itself to a means for realizing profits in the irrationally end-less accumulation of money-capital that
capitalism has unleashed on our sorry planet (endless because as a purely monetary cipher it has
no limit and no rational substantive human goal). Her real shortcoming, however, is the failure to
locate the modality of this apocalyptic perversion of human living activity and destruction of the
ecosphere through the twin evils of overpopulation and consumerism. It is to this modality and
twin evils that we shall turn presently.
Excursus on Overpopulation and Consumerism
We start from the universally accepted notion that the very essence of capitalism is to generate
profits for capitalists. Profit is the monetary difference between total investment and total revenue.
For a capitalist enterprise to be profitable, the products it sells must amount to more than the cost
of producing them with the cost of capital added (interest at the prevailing rate over the period of
production and sale). This means that in the process of production the inputs have been
“valorised” - their value has grown - and this is then reflected in the “realisation” of the value
through the sale process. But how can the components of production acquire value? After all,
objects (means of production - raw materials and machinery) are only inert objects and they cannot
possibly possess or acquire “value”. It is obvious that value, and the value added in the process of
production, can only be derived from living labour.
We have therefore a “double character” (Doppelcharakter) of human living labour: - on one side,
as living activity, it is the only possible source of value in the form of dead labour, as “produced
goods”: in this consists the use value of living labour to the capitalist. Yet, on the other side, the
living labour of workers can be “purchased” as labour-power through the violence of the wage
relation “on the market” like any other commodity through its exchange with the commodities or
“goods” produced earlier by the workers themselves, in other words, with “dead labour”! Thus, the
capitalist “purchases” the living labour of workers as if it were a commodity that can be exchanged
like and with any other commodity or exchange value. It follows that value-as-capital can never be a
“fixed” quantity – a “thing” - but must be instead a social relation in constant circulation from
production in the workplace to sale in the market!
Two things follow from this conclusion: the first is that the value of a particular commodity cannot
be determined until after it is actually sold on the market - until its potential value is realised. And
the second is that this value, once it is realized as money capital, is determined ultimately by the
ability “to purchase” labour-power on the market as if it were a commodity or exchange value like
any other. But this means that the supreme task of the capitalist, which is to maximize profit and
therefore to optimize the accumulation of capital, must be, first, to reduce the labor time that
workers need to reproduce themselves (necessary labour), and second, to expand thereby the
labor time that workers take to produce the surplus value that will ultimately be realized in the
market as profit by the capitalist. It follows that as the capitalist successfully reduces the necessary
labour time for the workers to reproduce themselves, then, given that a worker can only work so
many hours in a day, the capitalist must increase the number of workers employed in order to
increase the amount of potential surplus value and profit realizable in the market. Marx himself
reached this conclusion in the Grundrisse:
Capital tends both to render human labour (relatively) superfluous and also to push it beyond all
boundaries. Value is nothing other than objectified labour, and surplus value (the valourisation of capital) is
nothing other than the excess of objectified labour on the amount necessary for the reproduction of the
labour force. But living labour is and remains the fundamental requisite of objectified labour and of surplus
value, while surplus labour [disposable labour] exists only in relation to necessary labour, and therefore only
to the extent that there still is necessary labour. Capital must therefore incessantly create more necessary
labour [in absolute terms] to create surplus labour [and therefore surplus value]. It has to multiply surplus
labour (by means of simultaneous working days [by means of more individual workers]) in order to multiply
surplus value. At the same time, capital has to suppress necessary labour so as to turn it into surplus
labour…It is for this reason that the capitalist seeks the increase of the working population. And it is the
actual process of reduction of necessary labour that enables the capitalist to employ new living labour [new
workers] (and therefore create surplus labour [that is, surplus value]). (In other words, the production of
workers becomes “cheaper”; and therefore it is possible to produce more workers in the same measure as
the time for necessary labour decreases or the time needed for the reproduction of the labour force
decreases....) – K.Marx, Grundrisse, 3.2.25)
Profit in capitalist enterprise, and therefore surplus value, makes absolutely no sense at all unless it
is seen as value that can be (a) increased through the process of production or “valorisation”, and
(b) “realised” through the process of market sale. But once this profit or surplus value is “realised”
through the sale of produced commodities, this profit realised by capitalists in its monetary form
can have absolutely no meaning unless it can be expressed as purchasing power over fresh living
labour! This means that the process of realisation of profit can have meaning only through the
exertion of capitalist command over fresh living labour, over an ever-expanding population of
workers.
Money, to the extent that it exists already as capital, is therefore simply a policy [a legal claim] on future (new) labour.
Objectively it exists only as money. Surplus value, the added objectified labour, in itself is money; but money now
exists as capital, and as such it is a policy on future labour. Here capital enters a relationship no longer with existing
labour, but also with future labour. It also presents itself no longer as consisting merely of its simple elements in the
process of production, but also as money; but no longer as money that is simply the abstract form of social wealth, but
again as a policy [as a claim] on the real possibility of general wealth – on the labour-force, or better on the labour-
force in actu. In this form as a policy or claim on potential labour-force, its material existence as money is irrelevant
and may be substituted by any other claim on the labour-force. Just as with public credit, each capitalist possesses, in
the value already appropriated [as product or objectified labour, or as money capital], a claim on the future labour-
force; by appropriating living labour in its present form as objectified labour, the capitalist has already appropriated a
claim on future labour-power…. Here is already revealed the ability of capital to exist as a social power separate from
its objective material existence. Here is already implicit the existence of capital as credit. Its accumulation in the form
of money therefore is not at all an accumulation of the material conditions of labour [of the means of production], but
rather of the legal claim to living labour [on workers]. This means posing future labour as wage labour, as use value for
capital. For the new [objectified] labour created [the product] there exists no equivalent [that is, no existing exchange
value]; its possibility [to be valourised through new expanded production] exists only in a new labour force. (K. Marx,
Grundrisse, 3.2.21)
This conclusion is certainly devastatingly simple – but its implications for our ecosphere are much
more devastating, as we are about to see! What it entails is not only that to maximise profit and its
accumulation capital must seek to exploit its existing workers to the very utmost, but also that it
must increase the number of workers it can exploit to the limit of available social resources! And
that is far from all. Capitalists also need the presence of a reserve army of unemployed workers
that (a) provides competitive tension on employed workers to drive down wages, and (b) provides a
repository of further investment for capitalists to expand their command over society so that there
may be what is called “capitalist accumulation”. In other words, capitalist accumulation through
surplus value and its monetary equivalent, profit, is nothing other than the expansion of political
claims over excess labour-power through overpopulation. But overpopulation is only one pillar of
capitalist accumulation and, therefore, of the systematic destruction of the ecosphere. As we
indicated earlier, the other aspect is consumerism.
The reason why we use the term “overpopulation” to indicate the first of the “twin evils” of
capitalism is that capitalism pushes population increase to the limit of sustainability so far as human
and natural resources are concerned. As we have shown, it is impelled to do so by that end-less
accumulation of capital that is its essential goal, it’s raison d’etre. The intrinsic and imprescindible
goal of capitalism is not the achievement of a particular human level of well-being, but rather the
never-ending numerical or accounting task of maximizing the return on investment – profit.
Needless to say, overpopulation has an automatic reflex therefore in “overconsumption” because,
if the working population and the reserve army of the unemployed exceed what is sustainable, it
must follow that the level of consumption is also unsustainable. Just on its own, the
overconsumption needed to satisfy the reproductive needs of overpopulation will push humanity
toward ecological catastrophe.
But that is not enough. Overconsumption is only one intrinsic aspect of overpopulation which, in
turn, is an intrinsic aspect of capitalism. There is a separate reason why capitalism pushes us
toward the destruction of our ecosphere: this aspect we can call consumerism. Consumerism is
distinct from overconsumption in that the latter is tied more strictly to the process of the extraction
of surplus value from workers – hence of the accumulation of capital and finally of overpopulation.
Consumerism is quite distinct from overpopulation and overconsumption because whereas these
are merely factual aspects of the operation of capitalism, requisite operational aspects of capitalist
industry and accumulation, consumerism is instead the very ideology of capitalism in that it serves
not so much an organic purpose in capitalist production but much rather a propagandistic role in
the subjugation and exploitation of workers. In many languages, the word propaganda was used
earlier especially after World War Two until it was replaced with the far less pejorative word
“advertising”.
Consumerism is, as it were, the sugar-coating that allows workers and the proletariat at large to
swallow the bitter pill of capitalist exploitation and lack of real participatory democracy in liberal
parliamentary bourgeois regimes. How so?
The wage relation is one of violence in that workers would never accept to sell their living activity
in exchange for the product of their labour - that is surely an “exchange” that amounts to fraud (if
unwitting) or violence (if workers are aware of it). But, second, it is also true that workers could not
preserve their “formal freedom” under the law if they rebelled against this violent coercive
transaction - one based on “the need to work”, “to put food on the table” - and the very fact that
workers are willing to work for “a fair wage” means that the capitalist mode of production does
have a minimum of legitimacy (Weber).
Nevertheless, legitimacy does not mean absence of conflict: capitalist society is founded on social
antagonism between capitalists and workers - and specifically on the antagonism of the wage
relation. The question then arises of why the antagonism of the wage relation has not exploded
into open social conflict - into civil war in many advanced industrial capitalist societies. The answer
has to do with capitalist growth and development. Let us see how this works.
The “specificity” of a capitalist society consists in the ability of capitalists to dominate living labour,
workers, not just through explicit coercion but rather through a complex set of institutions that
force workers to exchange their living labour for the objects that they themselves have produced,
with “dead labour” - again, not through direct coercion from a particular capitalist toward particular
workers because the capitalist does not “own” the workers as is the case with slavery or with feudal
relations where the “serfs” are tied to the land, the feud or glebe. One of the fundamental
institutional pillars of capitalism – as against feudalism and slavery, for instance – is that workers
are “formally free” in the sense that their employer (the capitalist) does not “own” them the way
feudal lords and ancient masters did. Because capitalists have no ownership of workers but simply
purchase their labour-power on the “free market”, it follows that capitalists compete with one
another for workers’ labour-power. Part of this competition consists of a simple paradox to which
the bourgeoisie is exposed: although each individual capitalist wants to pay his workers as little as
possible, the same capitalist wants other employers to pay their workers as much as possible so that
they may spend their income on the goods he produces! This is a variant (the converse, if you like)
of the “paradox of thrift” first illustrated by Marx in Capital and then adopted by Keynes.
The result is that workers’ consumption is distorted in two very nefarious ways, deleterious to
society and to the environment. The first aspect is that capitalists cannot produce goods that
emancipate workers from wage labor – this occurs indirectly through wage-push inflation and
demand-pull as well. The second aspect is that capitalists must employ marketing to persuade
workers to spend their wages on the repressive goods they force them to produce! This obviously
results in the most horrendous irrational waste!
The third aspect is the ideological component of consumerism – “marketing” is a pervasive
bombardment of workers through “consumer choice”!
Profit and Uneven Development
Thus, if we wish to understand why the global population keeps growing to the point where it is
becoming unsustainable for the ecosphere - then we have only the capitalist mode of production to
blame. But, the objection will be promptly moved, if that is so, why is it that the most advanced
capitalist countries are beginning to experience stable or stagnant or even declining populations?
The answer is relatively simple: as capitalist accumulation grows, the process runs against political
and environmental limits as capitalist ruling classes attempt, first, to keep their own national
populations pacified through rising living standards relative to other nations (!) - but then, second,
this first condition requires the presence of other nations (especially if under the control of
authoritarian dictatorships) where populations of potential workers can absorb the profits
accumulated in the more advanced industrial capitalist countries. This model of international
capitalist division of social labour is premised therefore on the “uneven development” of national
economies -not just in terms of industrial development but also in terms of the adaptation of
national institutions to the industrial requisites of the bourgeoisie. As nations become more
advanced from an industrial viewpoint, they also are left with no choice but to emancipate their
own working classes. Yet at the same time, these more advanced capitalist nations need to find less
advanced nations whose working populations they can exploit and expand through higher rates of
fertility! It goes without saying that this process of “uneven development” gives rise to tremendous
conflicts between the more advanced and the less advanced capitalist countries - in all sorts of
directions from migration pressures, to international tensions as each nation seeks to unload its
domestic wage antagonism on other countries.
The Military Apocalypse
Perhaps the greatest immediate threat of this irrational process of capitalist accumulation is that
capitalism needs the existence of national boundaries and of authoritarian and despotic nation-
states to be able to ensure the constant process of overpopulation in the less developed despotic
nation-states – “the periphery” -, and of consumerism in the parliamentary nation-states that
capitalists use as a refuge in case of conflict with the exploited nations – we call these advanced
capitalist nation-states “the metropole” as opposed to the newly-exploited states of “the periphery”.
Hence, we have a clear contradiction between the process of capitalist “globalization” and the
simultaneous rise of international conflict that threatens to lead any moment now to a new world
war!
Simone Weil and the Concept of Freedom
Ainsi … apparaît déjà le mal essentiel de l'humanité, la substitution des moyens aux fins. Tantôt la guerre. apparaît au
premier plan, tantôt la recherche de la richesse, tantôt la production ; mais le mal reste le même. (S.Weil, Reflexions,
p.46)
In the Second Book of The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer takes aim once
more at Kant’s misconception of metaphysics. By relegating the question of Being to the realm of
“things-in-themselves”, Kant effectively removes it from all human attempts to know its essence:
the thing-in-itself is impenetrable because all we can know is what we can perceive, and that is the
world of mere appearances or phenomena. Yet, objects Schopenhauer, if all we can know are
mere appearances (blosse Erscheinungen), then not only what we purport to be “knowledge” is a
mere morphology – a sterile listing and classification – of phenomena, of empirical observations
wholly deprived of any aetiological meaning as to the ultimate causes of these appearances or
phenomena; but also we must renounce what is clearly the only certainty that we have in life and
the world – our “experience” of the world, our very intuition (Anschauung) of existence! For
Schopenhauer, Kant’s distinction between noumena and phenomena is genial in that it perfects the
Platonic chorismos or separation of reality from appearance – and therefore poses correctly the
problem of our awareness of Being. But then, in a bizarre and unjustified twist, Kant abandons the
true quest of meta-physics as the prima philosophia to locate the essence of reality, of Being, to
concentrate instead on the ordo et connexio rerum et idearum, that is, on the human faculties –
the intellect or Understanding - that link scientifically what are the epiphenomenal and hence
ephemeral representations of that Reality. At best, Kant can provide an epistemology, a science of
knowledge – again, a morphology or classification, an anatomy -, but he has abandoned ab initio
and indeed a priori any attempt by human beings to go beyond the evanescence of physics – to
inquire into meta-physics.
If we were to follow Kant, we would be “locked out” of reality – this would seal our alienation and
estrangement from life; and instead we would be “locked in” or imprisoned within the fictitious
realm of shadows: in short, we would abandon the quest for finality (the aitia, the aetiology, the
ultimate nature and causes of reality) and be relegated to the circuitous, nominalist and ultimately
arbitrary netherworld of empeiria. (As Massimo Cacciari observed, in Krisis, Lukacs’s notion of
reification – itself an elaboration of Marx’s Entfremdung and Weber’s Entzauberung - is
unthinkable without the “screen” of Schopenhauer’s critique of Kant. Similarly, Heidegger’s
denunciation of the Western “oblivion of Being” leading to inauthenticity [cf. Sartre] must then be
viewed as an oblique riposte to Lukacs’s History and Class Consciousness – L. Goldmann, Lukacs
et Heidegger.)
Reality would thereby be reduced to a sterile juxtaposition of empirical observations, to a surface

of events lacking any ontological and existential depth – and therefore wholly mute about the
ultimate ends or goal or telos of human existence. Metaphysics – the human attempt to go beyond
“the kingdom of shadows”, the superficial connection of empirical observations, and to seek the
ultimate substratum of reality and of Being, its aitia (ultimate cause or causa causans) and physis (its
genesis and evolution) – represents the imperishable human attempt to evade “the false prison”
(Wittgenstein) of the mundane, of worldly everyday-ness (Heidegger’s Alltaglichkeit, Lefebvre’s
quotidiannete’), of human commonplace and conventional signification (Nietzsche’s “semiotics”),
in order to penetrate the very core of reality, in order to trans-scend the world and illuminate its
essence – an essence understood not as “presence”, Anwesen, as “facticity”, as a “thing” but rather
as living experience, as living spirit (cf. Heidegger’s doctoral thesis on Duns Scotus, discussed in
Gadamer’s Les Chemins de Heidegger).
Hence, human beings are wedged between these two extreme poles of objective necessity that is,
however precariously and tentatively, open to scientific formulation; and subjective freedom, which
is ineffable and unfathomable (Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: “That of which we cannot speak, we must
pass over in silence”). Even in Schopenhauer’s pessimist conception, the introspection that leads to
the awareness of the Will-to-Life transcends the necessity of the physical world: the depth of Being
is intuitable yet not knowable through the Will-to-Life – but it is not a “thing”. Contrary to Kant,
the true noumenon, the reality opposed to the meretricious screen of appearances, the “thing-in-
itself” is not the Object, the world external to human intuition, reflection and introspection and
unreachable to them: it is rather this intuition itself! The Subject is ultimately unknowable and
unquantifiable and unclassifiable, whereas the Object – which is the world of perceived
phenomena – is clearly knowable in this nomothetic sense, at least in principle, within the limits of
the human intellect (Verstand as opposed to Vernunft, the Understanding as opposed to Reason)
and of its scientific enterprise. Only the intuition and awareness of existence constitutes an
unfathomable abyss that can alert us to the reality of Being. Kant’s “obscure veil” drawn over
existence – the relegation of ontology to mere epistemology by “the cunning theologian” - is only a
subterfuge to substitute philosophy with theology in the guise of Pure Reason. (The subsequent
critiques of German Classical Idealism moved by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are already
foreshadowed by the “Schopenhauer as Educator” of the Untimely Meditations. On all this, vedi
K. Lowith, From Hegel to Nietzsche.)
This trans-scendental reduction (Husserl) is quite evidently a process whereby human beings seek
to unburden themselves from the bonds of necessity that tie them bodily, physically to the world to
attain the ideal goal of freedom. Even for Schopenhauer the body is “the objectification of the
Will”. And Nietzsche turned Descartes inside out with his “Vivo ergo cogito”. The quest of
Western metaphysics is to dis-cover freedom as the truth (a-letheia, un-veiling) and final goal
(intended even as summum bonum) of existence: - to reach beyond the means of existence to its
ultimate meaning, telos and goal – freedom. But, once again, the prime mover of this freedom, its
initial spark and repository is precisely the activity of reflection, the faculty of thought, whereby
humans project a course of action that may or may not eventuate and succeed.
Et pourtant rien au monde ne peut empêcher l'homme de se sentir né pour la liberté. Jamais, quoi qu'il advienne, il ne
peut accepter la servitude ; car il pense. Il n'a jamais cessé de rêver une liberté sans limites, soit comme un bonheur
passé dont un châtiment l'aurait privé, soit comme un bonheur à venir qui lui serait dû par une sorte de pacte avec une
providence mystérieuse. Le communisme imaginé par Marx est la forme la plus récente de ce rêve. Ce rêve est
toujours demeuré vain, comme tous les rêves, ou, s'il a pu consoler, ce n'est que comme un opium ; il est temps de
renoncer a rêver la liberté, et de se décider à la concevoir. (S. Weil, Reflexions, p.57)
This is the new Cartesian meditation, then: I live, hence it is possible for me to think. It is first and
foremost because I live that I can think. It is not the case that “I think because I live” – because
Life is greater than thought. I think, therefore I am free because freedom is the abyss of thought as
reflection (cogito cogitatum). If I am part of Life through my awareness of thought, then Life is
greater than my thinking and must precede my thinking. Indeed, Life itself is not to be confused
with Being, which we may call the Life-world.
Within the Life-world, my existence can only be contingency – Dasein. Initium. Auctoritas.
Contingency and thought can mean only existential freedom: I am condemned to be free (Sartre,
Being and Nothingness). Between these two abysses of the Life-world to which I am subjected and
the contingency of thought that makes me free – in this enigma - lies the problem of how I am to
conduct my life in the world. I am thrown into the Life-world – in this consists my necessity, my
destiny. I cannot know my destiny but thought allows me to decide, whence arises my freedom as
contingency or finitude and decision (Heidegger’s “freedom toward death”). Between the
unknowable past and the unpredictable future lie the possibilities of thoughtful action, of
thoughtful living activity - activity that is author-ship, a beginning. Saint Augustine: Initium ut esset,
homo creatus est. It was so that there may be a beginning that man was created. We do not create
ourselves; we are within the Life-world, and not with-out it. This action is constrained, bounded by
the Lifeworld – nature on one side (as physis) and other human beings on the other: - society and
State.
Hannah Arendt contends [in HC at p.313] that “Marx and Nietzsche…equate Life and Being” .
Had her targets been Hegel and Schopenhauer, we may have agreed wholeheartedly. There can be
little doubt that, in any case, all four philosophers approach Being from this “active” side, from the
side of the Subject – much in the tradition of Vico’s verum ipsum factum. This is a perspective to
which we are very much sympathetic, as is obvious from our foregoing analysis. For it is difficult to
imagine, in the aftermath of the rapid and formidable rise of capitalist industry and of secularism
and the even speedier decline of Christianity and absolutism that have so conditioned our present,
how radical critics of bourgeois society had much choice except to retreat into introspective
reflection so as to rescue human historical agency from the commodification and reification of
every aspect of social life under capitalism – what Arendt labels, perhaps too loosely, “secularism”.
It is a fact that the near entirety of Western philosophy in the bourgeois or “secular” era retreats to
introspection as the ultimate foundation of reality. It is a Schopenhauerian Welt-flucht (flight or
retreat from the world), albeit not necessarily an Entsagung (renunciation) of the world. To be
sure, even Arendt’s lifelong philosophical trajectory gravitates around this “phenomenological”
sphere – so it is hard to see what her remedy for this condition would be, despite her
recriminations. Here is how Arendt elaborates this point:
The victory of the animal laborans would never have been complete had not the process of secularization, the modern
loss of faith inevitably arising from Cartesian doubt, deprived individual life of its immortality, or at least of the
certainty of immortality. Individual life again became mortal, as mortal as it had been in antiquity, and the world was
even less stable, less permanent, and hence less to be relied upon than it had been during the Christian era. Modern
man, when he lost the certainty of a world to come, was thrown back upon himself and not upon this world; far from
believing that the world might be potentially immortal, he was not even sure that it was real. And in so far as he was to
assume that it was real in the uncritical and apparently unbothered optimism of a steadily progressing science, he had
removed himself from the earth to a much more distant point than any Christian otherworldliness had ever removed
him. Whatever the word "secular" is meant to signify in current usage, historically it cannot possibly be equated with
worldliness; modern man at any rate did not gain this world when he lost the other world, and he did not gain life,
strictly speaking, either; he was thrust back upon it, thrown into the closed inwardness of introspection, where the
highest he could experience were the empty processes of reckoning of the mind, its play with itself….[320]
The corrective for this consists not so much in reversing course but rather in re-emphasising the
subordinate role of humanity in Life and of Life in Being – without thereby incurring the
diametrically opposed error of reducing human reality to “natural processes”. As we saw earlier,
despite his fundamental, formative Hegelian historicism, Marx himself reduced Being to Process
by substituting means to ends in an attempt to present his critique of capitalism as “scientific” as
Weil herself argued in connection with his misinterpretation of Darwin’s work and consequent
scientization of revolutionary theory. Arendt makes a similar point:
…The only thing that could now be potentially immortal, as immortal as the body politic in antiquity and as individual
life during the Middle Ages, was life itself, that is, the possibly everlasting life process of the species man-kind. We saw
before that in the rise of society it was ultimately the life of the species which asserted itself. Theoretically, the turning
point from the earlier modern age's insistence on the "egoistic" life of the individual to its later emphasis on "social" life
and "socialized man" (Marx) came when Marx transformed the cruder notion of classical economy—that all men, in so
far as they act at all, act for reasons of self-interest—into forces of interest which inform, move, and direct the classes of
society, and through their conflicts direct society as a whole. Socialized mankind is that state of society where only one
interest rules, and the subject of this interest is either classes or man-kind, but neither man nor men. The point is that
now even the last trace of action in what men were doing, the motive implied in self-interest, disappeared. What was
left was a "natural force," the force of the life process itself, to which all men and all human activities were equally
submitted ("the thought process itself is a natural process" – Marx wrote in a letter to Kugelmann) and whose only aim,
if it had an aim at all, was survival of the animal species man. None of the higher capacities of man was any longer
necessary to connect individual life with the life of the species; individual life became part of the life process, and to
labor, to assure the continuity of one's own life and the life of his family, was all that was needed. What was not
needed, not necessitated by life's metabolism with nature, was either superfluous or could be justified only in terms of
a peculiarity of human as distinguished from other animal life—so that Milton was considered to have written his
Paradise Lost for the same reasons and out of similar urges that compel the silkworm to produce silk. (HC, pp.320-1.)
To recapitulate, within the Life-world, we initiate action, we are a beginning. We are born free
(Rousseau) because we think (Heidegger). But we are con-ditioned by our physis (Nature) and our
social institutions (Rousseau, Marx, Weil). These institutions determine our inter-est: Inter
homines esse (being among other humans)– and hence the problem of the Political. Two types of
opponents we must fight: Those who wish to freeze freedom into an inalterable state, and so to
reify existence and society through scientism; and those who instead seek to hypostatise the
Political into political theology and the State into the descendant of God. Both these tendencies
relegate freedom either to a nonexistent fantasy or else to an unreachable ever-receding utopian
dream. We shall examine these matters more closely next.
The Domain of Freedom – Between Nature and Society (Weil, Arendt and Marxism)
To act, in its most general sense, means to take an initiative, to begin (as the Greek word archein, "to begin," "to lead,"
and eventually "to rule," indicates), to set something into motion (which is the original meaning of the Latin agere).
Because they are initium, newcomers and beginners by virtue of birth, men take initiative, are prompted into action.
[Initium] ergo ut esset, creatus est homo, ante quem nullus fuit ("that there be a beginning, man was created before
whom there was nobody"), said Augustine in his political philosophy.2 This beginning is not the same as the beginning
of the world;3 it is not the beginning of something but of somebody, who is a beginner himself. With the creation of
man, the principle of beginning came into the world itself, which, of course, is only another way of saying that the
principle of freedom was created when man was created but not before. (H. Arendt, Human Condition, p.177)
Just as Freedom is the abyss of Thought, so Thought is the abyss of Being – and hence also of
Life. Thought is the only human activity whose content we cannot detect – and therefore can
neither evade nor control without eliminating it altogether. Thought is the arche’ , the “origin” that
was the quest of the earliest philosophers, the pre-Socratics. We can observe all kinds of human
actions, but it is impossible for us to observe what someone is thinking. The peculiarity of thought
is that it is an activity that initiates spontaneously, that is, in a manner that is not traceable to a
material origin other than itself. The origin and source and content of thought are inscrutable and
ineffable. It is impossible to trace the origin of thought because thought is accessible only by
thought – and that through introspection and reflection. Reflection is not the direct object of
thought; but thought is inconceivable without its own ability for introspection and reflection.
Thought is reflexive in itself. It is impossible to conceive of thought except as an inner dialogue of
thought with itself – whence arises the delusion of “self”. As it was said of Seneca, “never was he
less alone than when he was alone”. Cruel was the god Apollo that enjoined all who consulted it at
Delphi “to know thyself” – because the god must have known that thought cannot have a self, an
ego, an I. Just as it does not have an origin outside itself, Thought does not individuate because it is
inclusive and universal – whence the experience of empathy (or Schopenahuer’s “sym-pathy” [Mit-
leid]). Above all else, thought is volition, it is a commencement, a beginning – it is the faculty that
decides where the de-cision is literally a “cut”, an in-cision in the flow of time.
(This section is an excerpt from “The Philosophy of the Flesh”.)
The decision the will arrives at can never be derived from the mechanics of desire or the deliberations of the intellect
that may precede it. The will is either an organ of free spontaneity that interrupts all causal chains of motivation that
would bind it or it is nothing but an illusion. In respect to desire, on one hand, and to reason, on the other, the will
acts like "a kind of coup d'etat," as Bergson once said, and this implies, of course, that "free acts are exceptional":
"although we are free whenever we are willing to get back into ourselves, it seldom happens that we are willing." In
other words, it is impossible to deal with the willing activity without touching on the problem of freedom. (Arendt,
Lectures, p.4)
Arendt is magnificently right. The bourgeoisie is always torn between promulgating the scientific
necessity of capitalism with its “economic laws” and, in contradiction, championing the “freedom”
that this objectively necessary system bestows on all of society. We have thus an authoritarian
economy and a liberal society. How social freedom can be guaranteed objectively, that is, in the
absence of participatory democracy, is the great Arcanum of liberal-capitalist society. Thus, the
bourgeoisie always totters between the necessity of the allocation of social resources to production
and distribution according to capitalist laws – and the “freedom” of consumer choice that
supposedly drives production. But as Arendt reminds us, it is the irreducibility of the
communicability of human thought – even when thought is supposedly the innermost and most
“ineffable” element of human existence – that is the insuperable obstacle of scientism. Thought is
intrinsically communicable not because we can relate our experiences to “others” – indeed, Arendt
is wrong in presuming that any human experience is “communicable” in her sense, because, as
Nietzsche stressed, all human concepts are mere signs. But what is “communicable” about human
thought is precisely the fact that all thoughts are inconceivable without a “dia-logue”, a splitting up,
of the thinker into a dialogue with its own “self”. The “self” therefore can no longer be seen as
“one” but involves an ineluctable duality. This is consistent with Merleau-Ponty’s “phenomenology
of perception” on which Arendt based her Life of the Mind.
It is surprising and a little disappointing therefore that Arendt failed to go deeper than Kant in her
amplification of the great philosopher’s notion of sensus communis as ontogenetic instead of
phylogenetic – as is amply revealed in this quotation from her editor:
In the present context, the most important section of Kant's work is § 40 of the Critique of
Judgment, entitled "Taste as a kind of sensus communis." Kant writes that
by the name of sensus communis is to be understood the idea of a public sense, i.e., a critical faculty which in its
reflective act takes account (a priori) of the mode of representation of everyone else, in order, as it were, to weigh its
judgment with the collective reason of mankind.... This is accomplished by weighing the judgment, not so much with
actual, as rather
122 PART TWO
with the merely possible, judgments of others, and by putting ourselves in the position of everyone else, as the result of
a mere abstraction from the limitations which contingently affect our own estimate.
Kant specifies three "maxims of common human understanding," which are: (1) Think for oneself;
(2) Think from the standpoint of everyone else; and (3) Always think consistently. It is the second
of these, which Kant refers to as the maxim of enlarged thought, that concerns us here, for it is the
one that, according to Kant, belongs to judgment (the first and third apply to understanding and
reason, respectively). Kant observes that we designate someone as a "man of enlarged mind ... if he
detaches himself from the subjective personal conditions of his judgment, which cramp the minds
of so many others, and reflects upon his own judgment from a universal standpoint (which he can
only determine by shifting his ground to the standpoint of others)." Kant concludes that we can
rightfully refer to aesthetic judgment and taste as a sensus communis, or "public sense." This
particular discussion issues in the definition of taste as "the faculty of estimating what makes our
feeling in a given representation universally communicable without the mediation of a concept."
(pp.121-2)
Again, Arendt seemed to go along with Kant’s definition of sensus communis or “enlarged
thought” as what a human does “if he detaches himself from the subjective personal conditions of
his judgment”. But this is precisely the point! That “judgement” does not pertain to “the subjective
personal conditions” of a single human being but rather judgement is the one condition that is
essential to the very conception of a human being – because judgement (thinking) is the very
essence of being human! The expression of a judgement may well be subjective and personal – but
that is not what is important about the faculty of judgement. What is quintessential about
judgement is precisely its being the human faculty kat esochen, par excellence! Thinking is judging:
the voice of conscience, the vox interioris, is the most public voice of all. Just how little even the
insightful Arendt penetrated this reality is shown in the Lectures – and in the Postscript by her
editor:
But what renders this concept of considerably wider application is the idea that thinking in public can be constitutive of
thinking as such. This insight runs counter to widespread assumptions about the nature of thinking, according to which
thought can operate privately no less well than publicly. (p.122)
No. Not “thinking in public” can be “constitutive of thinking as such”. It is in fact the other way
around: thinking as such is in reality constitutive of thinking in public! Arendt and Kant start from
the false premise that thinking is “private”, in fact the most private reality of all! But it is not!
Thinking is ineluctably “public” in embryo and in nuce. Failure to capture this phylogenetic
element of human experience leads to the dead end of Kantian “sociability” (Geselligkeit) – a
bourgeois concept if ever there was one – which is why Colletti (From Rousseau to Kant) correctly
paused on Kant’s description of bourgeois society as ungesellige Geselligkeit (unsociable
sociability) to highlight his inveterate liberalism. Communicability is central to thought. All thought,
qua thought, is communicable. Thus, freedom is not to be understood as vapid decisionism, as a
“spiritual” entity, but as the most materialistic, immanent aspect of human being, of being human.
The emancipation of human society must be based on this fundamental realization:
And this is of some relevance to a whole set of problems by which modern thought is haunted, especially to the
problem of theory and practice and to all attempts to arrive at a halfway plausible theory of ethics. Since Hegel and
Marx, these questions have been treated in the perspective of History and on the as-
Postscriptum to Thinking 5
sumption that there is such a thing as Progress of the human race. Finally we shall be left with the only alternative there
is in these matters. Either we can say with Hegel: Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht, leaving the ultimate judgment
to Success, or we can maintain with Kant the autonomy of the minds of men and their possible independence of things
as they are or as they have come into being. (Arendt, op.cit., pp.4-5)
As with Schopenhauer and predestination, for the bourgeoisie success or the accumulation of
capital is its own justification. Even Marx, in seeking to historicise social antagonism, came close to
turning his critique of capitalist society into a teleology or indeed (as Bobbio [Da Hobbes a Marx]
says about the Paris Manuscripts) even into an eschatology, just like Hegel’s (again, Arendt’s
judgement in the Lectures on Kant is impeccable, as is her reference there to Kojeve’s famous
study on the Phenomenology).
Thought is not opposed to matter. Thought is material, but not in the same manner that rocks are
material. We conceive of thought immanently. (For a full exposition of this immanentist approach,
see our “The Philosophy of the Flesh”.) The opposition of thought and matter – this chorismos
(separation) that has plagued Western civilization from its inception, can arise only in a human
community where humans view their Life-world, and thence Nature, as an Object, as a hostile
environment to be used and abused for human consumption. Capitalism is the civilization of labor
and consumption, where consumption serves (a) to perpetuate human living activity as labour-
power (by reproducing the working class) and (b) to expand the necessity of labour-power through
the overpopulation of the proletariat (which includes the working class and the reserve army of the
unemployed), - which expansion is required for the purpose of end-less capitalist accumulation
(that is, power over human living activity reduced to labour-power). Hence, the end or goal of work
as living activity which was to emancipate human beings from the necessity of labor-as-
reproduction has been turned by capitalism into a means – the end-less (aimless) accumulation of
capital as power over living labor through the endless expansion of labour-power (the proletariat’s
overpopulation) requiring ever-greater consumption of un-necessary “goods”. This endless
accumulation is the ne-cessity (no turning back) of capital.
This vital distinction between production for reproduction and production for accumulation of
capital, and thence for expanded consumption is one of the key points on which Hannah Arendt
improves on the reflections of Simone Weil. It seems evident that – sadly without
acknowledgement – Arendt based her exceptional work on The Human Condition on her further
reflections and considerations over the earlier work by the French social theoretician. Arendt
advances on Weil’s reflections by distinguishing between “labor” and “work”. Whereas “work” is
the human activity of objectification whereby human beings exercise the freedom inherent in the
act of thinking by putting into action the projects and judgements formed through thought, labor is
the reduction of work to the mere objective of consumption. In this case, the original end of work,
which was to expand and give material shape to human freedom becomes a mere means without
end in view because consumption becomes an end in itself. And once consumption becomes an
endless process, it loses all meaning, purpose and worth.
Truly, then, capitalism is “the civilization of labor” and in this regard alone it poses the greatest
danger to humanity – the crushing of the domain of freedom that lies between the necessities
imposed by nature at one pole and by society at the other. Arendt gives due credit to Marx for
piercing through the delusional capitalist promise of a future of “leisure” for humanity under its
search for profits:
The danger that the modern age's emancipation of labor will not only fail to usher in an age of freedom for all but will
result, on the contrary, in forcing all mankind for the first time under the yoke of necessity, was already clearly
perceived by Marx when he insisted that the aim of a revolution could not possibly be the already-accomplished
emancipation of the laboring classes, but must consist in the emancipation of man from labor. (P.130)
This transformation of a means – “labor” – into an end in itself at the expense of “work” is, as it
were, a transliteration of Marx’s distinction between living labor and labour-power, between the use
value of human work whereby it is possible for the capitalist to extract surplus value and then
realise it as profit, and the exchange value that the capitalist pays to the worker in wages for labour-
power. Of course, Marx did distinguish between living labor and its capitalist commodification and
reification as dead labor or labour-power through the alienation of the worker from the means of
production. So much so, that the reflection on alienation and reification has become the biggest
focus of Western Marxism from Lukacs to the Frankfurt School. Yet, it is possible to agree with
Arendt on the rebuke that Marx did not sufficiently stress the difference between living labour as
objectification for the purpose of production-for-consumption and the idea of work as the
objectification of human freedom! (In an interesting parallel, Marx’s main criticism of Hegel was
that he confused objectification with alienation. And Lukacs himself confessed that his own con-
fusion of Marx’s notion of alienation [Ent-fremdung] with Weber’s Ent-zauberung [dis-
enchantment] was the gravest error in his elaboration of the concept of reification [Ent-ausserung].
Arendt too, in The Human Condition, adopted the unwise habit of using the word “reification” to
refer to objectification!)
Marx’s grave error of omission was to think that all human living activity is ultimately for the
purpose of the reproduction of society, and therefore for consumption; and that consequently
capitalism’s mortal sin is simply its failure to distribute equitably the products of human living
activity reduced to mechanical labour-power (the “theft of labour time”). Arendt is right to assail
this biologism implicit in all Western social theory, especially so in economic theory:
It is surprising at first glance, however, that the modern age— with its reversal of all traditions, the traditional rank of
action and contemplation no less than the traditional hierarchy within the vita activa itself, with its glorification of labor
as the source of all values and its elevation of the animal laborans to the position traditionally held by the animal
rationale—should not have brought forth a single theory in which animal laborans and homo faber, "the labour of our
body and the work of our hands," are clearly distinguished. Instead, we find first the distinction between productive
and unproductive labor, then somewhat later the differentiation between skilled and unskilled work, and, finally,
outranking both because seemingly of more elementary significance, the division of all activities into manual and
intellectual labor. 14
By insisting on the identification of human freedom with “emancipation from necessary labor
intended as toil” – an emancipation that both Simone Weil and Hannah Arendt correctly insist is
not possible! –, Marx relegated his “communism” to the utopian status of an “opium of the
people”, - indeed, of an eschatology. For if we accept that human beings will never “free”
themselves from Nature, as if Nature were a yoke to be discarded and jettisoned, then it becomes
immediately evident that the liberation from the yoke of capitalism must not be confused with or
reduced to liberation from the ineluctable necessity of Nature.
Once again, this novel yet formidable approach to the critique of capitalism – the transformation of
means into ends and the necessity of work as part of “the human condition” – is too close to
Simone Weil’s own critique to absolve Arendt from the imputation that she ought to have
acknowledged the source of this reflection in Weil’s work:
Productivity and creativity, which were to become the highest ideals and even the idols of the modern age in its initial
stages, are inherent standards of homo faber, of man as a builder and fabricator. However, there is another and
perhaps even more significant element noticeable in the modern version of these faculties. The shift from the "why"
and "what" to the "how" [cf. our emphasis on the change from “knowing” to “doing” in the rise of European science, in
our “Descartes’s World”] implies that the actual objects of knowledge can no longer be things or eternal motions but
must be processes…. Nature, because it could be known only in processes which human ingenuity, the ingeniousness
of homo faber, could repeat and remake in the experiment, became a process,61 and all particular natural things
derived their significance and meaning solely from their functions in the overall process. In the place of the concept of
Being we now find the concept of Process… Here, from the standpoint of homo faber, it was as though the means, the
production process or development, was more important than the end, the finished product…. The full significance of
this reversal of means and ends remained latent as long as the mechanistic world view, the world view of homo faber
par excellence, was predominant. (Passim, at par.42.)
Indeed, and furthermore, we could be entirely justified in reproaching Arendt also for her failure
to look more closely, as Weil certainly did – especially in La Condition Ouvriere – not just at the
overall sociological transformation of the nature of work to mere “labour” under capitalism but
also and above all else at the effect this has had on workers themselves in terms of the existential
meaning of work and their outright alienation from their living activity. (We shall examine this
aspect of Weil’s work in the next section.) The actual experience of work by workers is paid very
scant attention by Arendt in her overriding preoccupation to dissect the broader philosophical,
phenomenological aspects of work in capitalist industry and society. It may seem harsh, but this
failure vitiates Arendt’s critical work, turning it once again – as was the case also generally for Weil
– into a generic “cri de coeur” against the evils of “modern society”.
Nevertheless, Arendt’s own enucleation of these concepts constitutes a huge step forward not just
with respect to Weil’s earlier analysis, but also in the critique of capitalism in that (a) it historicizes
the critique by focusing on concrete capitalist social relations of production rather than on a vague
trans-historical “human condition” as does Weil; and (b) by improving even on Marx through the
valuable distinction between “work” and “labour” and thus, (c), by placing appropriate emphasis
on the capitalist reification of human living activity and forced abandonment of the essential goal of
turning work as much as possible into an expansion of the sphere of human freedom. It is the very
hypnotic mirage and delusion fostered by capitalism of the attainability of the earthly Eden of
effortless end-less consumption that serves to entrench and perpetuate on an expanded scale the
triumph of work-as-labor in the pursuit of production-for-consumption and, tragically, the
depletion of the ecosphere.
As both Arendt and Weil quite correctly impetrate upon us in the works we are reviewing, the
incontrovertible and undeniable reality remains that human beings will never emancipate
themselves from the necessity of working for their reproduction (“labour”). Nor will they be ever
be able to eliminate the constraints on freedom posed by the very existence of society – by the
inter homines esse. So that what Marx was proposing as the eventual emancipation of humans
from the necessity of work-as-labor leads merely to the end-less accumulation of products for
consumption and thereby to the reduction or compression of all human living activity (“work”) to
labour-power (“labour”), of “Being into Process” – the reduction of homo faber to the animal
laborans. Unless human beings come to recognize the necessity of work for sustainable
reproduction, the Marxist and bourgeois-capitalist utopia of the total emancipation from “labor”
will lead to the destruction of the ecosphere, of Nature, through the wasteful exasperation of
overpopulation and consumption!
It is indeed the mark of all laboring that it leaves nothing behind, that the result of its effort is almost as quickly
consumed as the effort is spent. And yet this effort, despite its futility, is born of a great urgency and motivated by a
more powerful drive than anything else, because life itself depends upon it. The modern age in general and Karl Marx
in particular, overwhelmed, as it were, by the unprecedented actual productivity of Western mankind, had an almost
irresistible tendency to look upon all labor as work and to speak of the animal laborans in terms much more fitting for
homo faber, hoping all the time that only one more step was needed to eliminate labor and necessity altogether .17
Once again, Arendt is right to state that Marx “looked upon all labor as work” (and not “upon all
work as labor”) because labor (the part of work necessary for reproduction) is not “work” (which
encompasses all human living activity): it is this Marxian reduction of all “useful” human activity to
“productive labor” by confusing the two concepts of work and labor and, much worse, by
promoting labor as necessity as “productive” and that part of “work” that is not labor because it is
dedicated to free not-necessary activity as “unproductive” that is almost unforgivable in the thinker
who most comprehensively and critically penetrated the workings and contradictions of capitalist
industry and society. In contrast, this critical insight into a fatal contradiction in Marx’s critique of
capitalism, buried in a work of vast intellectual acuity highlights the unjust neglect that Arendt’s
socio-theoretical work has received.
As we saw earlier in connection with Weil’s critique of Marx, the great thinker most certainly fell
into the delusion that the end-less expansion and extension of human production for consumption
was not only possible without depleting and destroying the ecosphere, but would also lead to the
abolition of human necessity in the communist utopia (“hoping all the time that only one more step was
needed to eliminate labor and necessity altogether ”). What Marx neglected was that this utopia was
founded on the degradation of human ends (freedom as we are defining it here) to means, to end-
less production for consumption and, therefore, of all living activity to thoughtless, unfree labour-
power or “productive labour” – which, ironically and tragically, is the identical “goal” of capitalist
accumulation!
This all-important distinction is made more explicit in Arendt’s elaboration of the notions of
productive and unproductive labour that were and are essential in political economy and indeed in
all economic theory:
Moreover, both Smith and Marx were in agreement with modern public opinion when they despised unproductive
labor as parasitical, actually a kind of perversion of labor, as though nothing were worthy of this name which did not
enrich the world. Marx certainly shared Smith's contempt for the "menial servants" who like "idle guests . . . leave
nothing behind them in return for their consumption."16 Yet it was precisely these menial servants, these household
inmates, oiketai or familiares, laboring for sheer subsistence and needed for effortless consumption rather than for
pro- [ 86 ] duction, whom all ages prior to the modern had in mind when they identified the laboring condition with
slavery. What they left behind them in return for their consumption was nothing more or less than their masters'
freedom or, in modern language, their masters' potential productivity. In other words, the distinction between
productive and unproductive labor contains, albeit in a prejudicial manner, the more fundamental distinction between
work and labor.16
Let us pause here for an instant to consider the momentous implications of Arendt’s contention –
one that we believe is both valid and of paramount importance. What Arendt is saying, in her
convoluted way – and perhaps due partly to the fact that she herself who had little or no training in
economic theory, did not entirely understand the full import and implications of her critique of
Classical Political Economy. Both Smith and Marx, though they differed on the definition and
content of the labour theory of value and of capital, believed that the labour that does not end up
yielding a profit for the capitalist is “unproductive” whereas the labour that does so is “productive”.
The reason for this is that for both Marx and Smith capitalism was, whether one sees it as
exploitative (Marx) or market efficient (Smith), the most efficient economic system known to
humanity to date for maximizing the accumulation of capital (Marx) or “the wealth of nations”
(Smith). It follows that for both thinkers only productive labour was socially “efficient” because, for
Smith, it maximized national wealth, and for Marx because it could sustain the greatest
“reproduction of society on an expanded scale” through the heightened production of “surplus
value”.
So far, so good. But the problem for Marx immediately arises because, given that productive
labour maximises the accumulation of capital, and therefore the exploitative power of the capitalist
vis-à-vis the worker, then it is not clear how such “productive” labour could be any better than
“unproductive” labour, at least from the point of view of the proletariat so dear to Marx! Arendt’s
objection does more than show up a mere contradiction in Marx’s labour theory of value and of
surplus value: it goes right to the heart of the nature of the “exploitation” that Marx intended to
denounce! Indeed, as Arendt remarks with admirable acuity and perspicuity, if only the labour that
increases capitalist accumulation and exploitation is “productive”, then it goes without saying that
this labour, however “productive” it might be in terms of value, will only lead to even greater
worker exploitation! By contrast, it is extremely difficult to see, where it is not impossible, how
such “productive” labour could ever lead to the emancipation of workers from the yoke of
capitalists! In other words, Marx’s analysis and prescriptions for capitalist society will lead us to the
paradoxical situation where we may well prefer “unproductive freedom” to “productive slavery”!
These certainly are minor points if compared with the fundamental contradiction which runs like a red thread through
the whole of Marx's thought, and is present no less in the third volume of Capital than in the writings of the young
Marx. Marx's attitude toward labor, and that is toward the very center of his thought, has never ceased to be
equivocal.48 While it was an "eternal necessity imposed by nature" and the most human and productive of man's
activities, the revolution, according to Marx, has not the task of emancipating the laboring classes but of emancipating
man from labor; only when labor is abolished can the "realm of freedom" supplant the "realm of necessity." For "the
realm of freedom begins only where labor determined through want and external utility ceases, where "the rule of
immediate physical needs" ends.49 Such fundamental and flagrant contradictions rarely occur [ 104 ] in second-rate
writers; in the work of the great authors they lead into the very center of their work. In the case of Marx, whose loyalty
and integrity in describing phenomena as they presented themselves to his view cannot be doubted, the important
discrepancies in his work, noted by all Marx scholars, can neither be blamed upon the difference "between the
scientific point of view of the historian and the moral point of view of the prophet"60 nor on a dialectical movement
which needs the negative, or evil, to produce the positive, or good. The fact remains that in all stages of his work he
defines man as an animal laborans and then leads him into a society in which this greatest and most human power is
no longer necessary. We are left with the rather distressing alternative between productive slavery and unproductive
freedom.
Finally for this section, let us recapitulate with what is perhaps the best summary we could find for
this complex jumble of ideas in Arendt’s own words:
The endlessness of the laboring process is guaranteed by the ever-recurrent needs of consumption; the endlessness of
production can be assured only if its products lose their use character and become more and more objects of
consumption, or if, to put it in another way, the rate of use is so tremendously accelerated that the objective difference
between use and consumption, between the relative durability of use objects and the swift coming and going of
consumer goods, dwindles to insignificance. In our need for more and more rapid replacement of the worldly [125]
things around us, we can no longer afford to use them, to respect and preserve their inherent durability; we must
consume, devour, as it were, our houses and furniture and cars as though they were the "good things" of nature which
spoil uselessly if they are not drawn swiftly into the never-ending cycle of man's metabolism with nature. It is as though
we had forced open the distinguishing boundaries which protected the world, the human artifice, from nature, the
biological process which goes on in its very midst as well as the natural cyclical processes which surround it, deliver- ing
and abandoning to them the always threatened stability of a human world. The ideals of homo faber, the fabricator of
the world, which are permanence, stability, and durability, have been sacrificed to abundance, the ideal of the animal
laborans. We live in a laborers' society because only laboring, with its inherent fertility, is likely to bring about
abundance; and we have changed work into laboring, broken it up into its minute particles until it has lent itself to
division where the common denominator of the simplest performance is reached in order to eliminate from the path
of human labor power —which is part of nature and perhaps even the most powerful of all natural forces—the obstacle
of the "unnatural" and purely worldly stability of the human artifice.
This degradation of human existence to an unending struggle and toil in order to consume, and
therefore “to earn a living” under the yoke of “labor” – and the consequent loss of the scope for
the freedom and creativity of “work” in capitalist society, is duly highlighted by Arendt:
The point is not that for the first time in history laborers were admitted and given equal rights in the public realm, but
that we have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities
of life and providing for their abundance. Whatever we do, we are supposed to do for the sake of "making a living";
such is the verdict of society, and the number of people, especially in the professions who might challenge it, has
decreased rapidly. The only exception society is willing to grant is the artist, who, strictly speaking, is the only "worker"
left in a laboring society. The same trend to level down all serious activities to the status of making a living is manifest
in present-day labor theories, which almost unanimously define labor as the opposite of play. As a result, all serious
activities, irrespective of their fruits, are called labor, and every activity which is not necessary either for the life of the
individual or for the life process of society is subsumed under playfulness.75 In these theories, [ 128 ] which by
echoing the current estimate of a laboring society on the theoretical level sharpen it and drive it into its inherent
extreme, not even the "work" of the artist is left; it is dissolved into play and has lost its worldly meaning. The
playfulness of the artist is felt to fulfil the same function in the laboring life process of society as the playing of tennis or
the pursuit of a hobby fulfils in the life of the individual. The emancipation of labor has not resulted in an equality of
this activity with the other activities of the vita activa, but in its almost undisputed predominance. From the standpoint
of "making a living," every activity unconnected with labor becomes a "hobby."76
The materiality of thought is confirmed by its imaginative limitations, including logic, and by its
dependence on action for the enactment of its content or projects. It follows that freedom is not
the ability to satisfy a desire – because that desire may not have been prompted “freely” or
spontaneously; it may have been induced compulsively from without. In the latter case, such
consequent actions are “thoughtless” or mechanical precisely because the being that enacts them is
not thinking reflectively, is not objectifying its own thoughts into action.
On peut entendre par liberté autre chose que la possibilité d'obtenir sans effort ce qui plaît. Il existe une conception
bien différente de la liberté, une conception héroïque qui est celle de la sagesse commune. La liberté véritable ne se
définit pas par un rapport entre le désir et la satisfaction, mais par un rapport entre la pensée et l'action ; serait tout à
fait libre l'homme dont toutes les actions procéderaient d'un jugement préalable concernant la fin qu'il se propose et
l'enchaînement des moyens propres à amener cette fin. Peu importe que les actions en elles-mêmes soient aisées ou
douloureuses, et peu importe même qu'elles soient couronnées de succès ; la douleur et l'échec peuvent rendre
l'homme malheureux, mais ne peuvent pas l'humilier aussi longtemps que c'est lui-même qui dispose de sa propre
faculté d'agir. (p.60)
Human freedom is therefore bounded, on one side, by natural necessity, and on the other, by
political limits involving the wills of other human beings. It follows that freedom is necessarily a
political notion in that all human activities, including thought, are materially political actions. The
boundaries to human freedom set by our ability to put our thoughts into action are immediately
and necessarily political because they affect the lives, thoughts and actions of other humans: our
being human is a human inter-est, inter homines esse, a being among humans, and therefore
political.
Because thought is material, Freedom – which is the essence of thought - is by no means the
absence of necessity. Human existence would have no meaning without freedom and freedom
would have no meaning without being bounded by necessity,
as Weil explains:
Si l'on devait entendre par liberté la simple absence de toute nécessité, ce mot serait vide de toute signification
concrète ; mais il ne représenterait pas alors pour nous ce dont la privation ôte à la vie sa valeur.
Mais le fait même de ne pouvoir rien obtenir sans avoir mis en action, pour le conquérir, toutes les puissances de la
pensée et du corps, permettrait à l'homme de s'arracher sans retour à l'emprise aveugle des passions. Une vue claire du
possible et de l'impossible, du facile et du difficile, des peines qui séparent le projet de l'accomplissement efface seule
les désirs insatiables et les craintes vaines ; de là et non d'ailleurs procèdent la tempérance
et le courage, vertus sans lesquelles la vie n'est qu'un honteux délire.
The restraint and constraint of human freedom involves judgements as to our ability to carry out
our thoughts into action:
Tout jugement porte sur une situation objective, et par suite sur un tissu de nécessités. L'homme vivant ne peut en
aucun cas cesser d'être enserré de toutes parts par une nécessité absolument inflexible ; mais comme il pense, il a le
choix entre céder aveuglément à l'aiguillon par lequel elle le pousse de l'extérieur, ou bien se conformer à la
représentation intérieure qu'il s'en forge ; et c'est en quoi consiste l'opposition entre servitude et liberté. Les deux
termes de cette opposition ne sont au reste que des limites idéales entre lesquelles se meut la vie humaine sans
pouvoir jamais en atteindre aucune, sous peine de n'être plus la vie.
Un homme serait complètement esclave si tous ses gestes procédaient d'une autre source que sa pensée, à savoir ou
bien les réactions irrai-
sonnées du corps, ou bien la pensée d'autrui ; l'homme primitif affamé dont tous les bonds sont provoqués par les
spasmes qui tordent ses entrailles, l'esclave romain perpétuellement tendu vers les ordres d'un surveillant armé d'un
fouet, l'ouvrier moderne qui travaille à la chaîne, approchent de cette condition misérable. (Pp.60-1)
Et disposer de ses propres actions ne signifie nullement agir arbitrairement ; les actions arbitraires ne procèdent
d'aucun jugement, et ne peuvent à proprement parler être appelées libres.
How do we know when a thought and the action it prompts are “free” or “spontaneous” instead of
induced or even “irrational”? That is a political problem (not friend and foe).
Quant à la liberté complète, on peut en trouver un modèle abstrait dans un problème d'arithmétique ou de géométrie
bien résolu ; car dans un problème tous les éléments de la solution sont donnés, et l'homme ne peut attendre de
secours que de son propre jugement, seul capable d'établir entre ces éléments le rapport qui constitue par lui-même la
solution cherchée. Les efforts et les victoires de la mathématique ne dépassent pas le cadre de la feuille de papier,
royaume des signes et des dessins ; une vie entièrement libre serait celle où toutes les difficultés réelles se
présenteraient comme des sortes de problèmes, où toutes les victoires seraient comme des solutions mises en action.
Tous les éléments du succès seraient alors donnés, c'est-à-dire connus et maniables comme sont les signes du
mathématicien ; pour obtenir le résultat voulu, à suffirait de mettre ces éléments en rapport grâce à la direction
méthodique qu'imprimerait la pensée non plus à de simples traits de plume, mais à des mouvements effectifs et qui
laisseraient leur marque dans le monde. Pour mieux dire, l'accomplissement de n'importe quel ouvrage consisterait en
une combinaison d'efforts aussi consciente et aussi méthodique que peut l'être la combinaison de chiffres par laquelle
s'opère la solution d'un problème lorsqu'elle procède de la réflexion. L'homme aurait alors constamment son propre
sort en mains ; il forgerait à chaque moment les conditions de sa propre existence par un acte de la pensée. Le simple
désir, il est vrai, ne le mènerait à rien ; il ne recevrait rien gratuitement ; et même les possibilités d'effort efficace
seraient pour lui étroitement limitées. Mais le fait même de ne pouvoir rien obtenir sans avoir mis en action, pour le
conquérir, toutes les puissances de la pensée et du corps, permettrait à l'homme de s'arracher sans retour à l'emprise
aveugle des passions. Une vue claire du possible et de l'impossible, du facile et du difficile, des peines qui séparent le
projet de l'accomplissement efface seule les désirs insatiables et les craintes vaines ; de là et non d'ailleurs procèdent la
tempérance
et le courage, vertus sans lesquelles la vie n'est qu'un honteux délire. Au reste toute espèce de vertu a sa source dans la
rencontre qui heurte la pensée humaine à une matière sans indulgence et sans perfidie.
On ne peut rien concevoir de plus grand pour l'homme qu'un sort qui le mette directement aux prises avec la nécessité
nue, sans qu'il ait rien à attendre que de soi, et tel que sa vie soit une perpétuelle création de lui-même par lui-même.
L'homme est un être borné à qui il n'est pas donné d'être, comme le Dieu des théologiens, l'auteur direct de sa propre
existence ; mais l'homme posséderait l'équivalent humain de cette puissance divine si les conditions matérielles qui lui
permettent d'exister étaient exclusivement l'œuvre de sa pensée dirigeant l'effort de ses muscles. Telle serait la liberté
véritable.
Historically, political theorists from the seventeenth century onward were confronted with a
hitherto unheard-of process of growing wealth, growing property, growing acquisition. In the at-
tempt to account for this steady growth, their attention was natu- rally drawn to the phenomenon of
a progressing process itself, so that, for reasons we shall have to discuss later,61 the concept of
process became the very key term of the new age as well as the sciences, historical and natural,
developed by it. From its beginning, this process, because of its apparent endlessness, was under-
stood as a natural process and more specifically in the image of the life process itself. The crudest
superstition of the modern age— that "money begets money"—as well as its sharpest political in-
sight—that power generates power—owes its plausibility to the underlying metaphor of the natural
fertility of life. Of all human activities, only labor, and neither action nor work, is unending,
50. The formulation is Edmund Wilson's in To the Finland Station (Anchor ed., 1953), but this
criticism is familiar in Marxian literature. 51. See ch. vi, § 42, below. [ 10* ]
The Human Condition progressing automatically in accordance with life itself and outside the
range of wilful decisions or humanly meaningful purposes.

The Concept of Freedom

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The Concept of Freedom

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Marx n'explique jamais pourquoi les forces productives tendraient à s'accroître ; en admettant sans preuve cette

III. Simone Weil.

In fairness to Weil, it is entirely plausible to construe her Reflections as an indictment of the

Excursus on Overpopulation and Consumerism

Profit and Uneven Development

The Military Apocalypse

Simone Weil and the Concept of Freedom

Reality would thereby be reduced to a sterile juxtaposition of empirical observations, to a surface

(This section is an excerpt from “The Philosophy of the Flesh”.)

122 PART TWO

et le courage, vertus sans lesquelles la vie n'est qu'un honteux délire.

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