1

Georg Lohmann (30.11.2018)

From alienation to negations of dignity. A Critical Revision of Marx's Critique of
Alienation
(preliminary English translation of: G.Lohmann, Von der Entfremdung zur Entwürdigung.
Eine kritische Revision der Marx'schen Entfremdungskritik , in: Rüdiger Dannemann, Henry
Pickford, Hans-Ernst Schiller (Hrsg.),Der aufrechte Gang im windschiefen Kapitalismus.
Modelle kritischen Denkens. Wiesbaden: Springer-VS, 2018, S. 3-36.)

1. Introduction: Immanence and Differentiation of Critique

Driven by the discussions of the post-Hegelian philosophy, Marx has critically examined his
time in ever new approaches. At first he eagerly takes part in the overbidding competition of
the left-wing Hegelians, then he breaks with them and believes that he can overcome their
idealistic narrowness and concentration on a political criticism of religion through an
economic-social and activist expansion. (see Quante 2009, 218ff). The starting field for
Marx's "separation movement" is an excerpting and critical reading of the national economic
authors of his time and a critical revision of Hegel's philosophy. While for Hegel the
economic conditions and the bourgeois society corresponding to them were still a sphere of
intellectual morality to be "aufgehoben” (removed), Marx sees in them not only the empirical
starting fields of his critical investigations and research, but also the ultimately empirically
and normatively determining whole, the immanent critique of which his critical efforts are
concerned with.

If social relations (“Verhältnisse”1) have developed into a comprehensive ruling totality, then
the normatively justifying, national economic theories as well as the theories criticizing them
are part of this totality. External, transcendent or absolute critiques that want to invoke
(eternal) ideas or a point or fact outside the totality are, philosophically speaking, no longer
possible, appear naive or ideological. Of course, social totalities, historically speaking, are
only one totality that has become historical, and that also means that they change historically
and/or evolutionarily, that they may be changeable, but in any case they cannot be sure to
exist forever. Marx therefore tries to break this confinement into the existing conditions by
internal criticism and demonstration of self-contradictions and secondly to relativize it by

1
On Marx's special view of the concept of "Verhältnis” (relation) and thus also on the
fundamental course of his theory of "gesellschaftliche Verhältnisse” (social relations), see Lohmann,
Georg. 1991, 196 et seq.
 2

anthropological theses about the destiny of man (as early Marx said) or by evolutionist
theories of historical development.
He therefore operates in a two-track critical way: On the one hand he shows the totalizing
process of development of private property/capital formation, pursues the process of
domination of private property/capital up to global capitalism, and counteracts this process of
subsumption, the world domination of capital, with signs of internal contradiction and
instability (crises). On the other hand, he secures the agents (the united proletariat) who want
or are supposed to blow up capitalist totality from within with anthropological assumptions or
evolution-theoretical assurances of an objective philosophy of history and progress.

From this large-scale scenario of Marx's critical theories of society, I am interested in the
approach and consequences of early critique. It is mainly about a critical revision of the
approach of the alienation critique of the Parisian manuscripts (1844)2, but in the light of the
later differentiated critiques of "political economy" and capitalism (1850-1881) as they were
presented and composed by him in Das Kapital, 1st. Volume 3. I have already sketched this
process of change under the title "From the Critique of Alienation of Parisian Manuscripts to
the Critique of the Reification of Capital" (Lohmann 1991, pp. 22-26), but now, looking back
in a certain sense, I want to concentrate on early critique. Teached by deficiencies of the later
critique in the Capital Book, I want to focus on the conceptual course of the early critique of
alienation.

Although Marx criticizes capitalism in the Capital Book from different (economic, political-
legal, moral and ethical/evaluative) perspectives4, he believes that he can get by with an
economically narrowing terminology alone and tries to treat and define the normative and

2
Marx, Karl. Ökonomisch-Philosophische Manuskripte. In: Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe.
MEGA2, vol. I.2. Berlin: Akademie Verlag 1982. In the following I quote in the text the page numbers
after this edition: MEGA2, vol. I.2, without further details in brackets (xx), but add the details after
Marx-Engels Werke (MEW), Ergänzungsband 1, Berlin: Dietz Verlag 1968, the page number, thus:
(xx/yy).
3
Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1st volume (1st edition 1867, 2nd edition 1872/73, 3rd and 4th
edition, edited by F. Engels 1890), quoted after Marx Engels Werke, MEW, vol. 23, Berlin: Dietz
Verlag 1968.
4
This, at least, is what happens when one takes " with Marx, against Marx " his "critical
presentation" apart and reconstructs the different approaches of his critical remarks. I have tried this
in Lohmann 1991 and Lohmann 2018a.
 3

institutional forms of the other perspectives as merely derivable from economic conditions,
and thus as non-independent spheres. This view, which later became orthodox as the “basic-
superstructure-theorem”, has always been a point of criticism of Western critical Marxism.5
In its tradition, I will critically examine the relations between the conceptual definitions of
"alienated labor" and the legal relations of private property, as Marx explains them in the
Paris manuscripts.

The aim is also to ascertain the normative concepts with which Marx evaluates "alienation"
negatively. Here, too, a critical revision, learning from the far more differentiated critique of
the capital book, can diagnose a normative narrowing of the critique of alienation. In contrast,
the critique of capitalism in the capital book is much more ambivalent, gradual and
differentiated - especially if one doesn't believe that Marx's self-stylisations are simply true.
One should deal with Marx just as he did with his theoretical counterparts: critically, i.e. one
distinguishes the true from the false, the justifiable from the indefensible and the
unrecognizable.

The alienation critique of the early Marx is probably more an "ethical" critique, since it
implies an anthropological conception of man as the background for evaluating different
forms of life and negatively criticizes a way of life shaped by the rule of private property. But
ethical standards are also relevant for an economic critique of an inadequate and false wealth
production of capitalism (see Lohmann 1991, pp. 81-129), for a moral critique of the injustice
of capitalist conditions6, or for a legal-political critique of an inadequate democratic7 and
human rights control of capitalist economy (Lohmann 2012, pp. 11-24), since they presuppose
certain, historically variable valuations that concern the ethical valuations of concepts of a
good life. They set the ethical standard for what should be produced economically, distributed
fairly or protected legally and politically. The valuations vary from anthropological concepts
to the essence (the "nature") of man, from highly valued values such as freedom, self-
determination or self-realization to concepts of a dignified life.

5
Von Karl Korsch Marxismus und Philosophie (1923) bis Jürgen Habermas Zur
Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismus (1976). Siehe auch Anderson 1978.
6
Wildt 1986, pp. 149-173 and Lohmann 1986, pp. 174-194.
7
See e.g: Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik (ed.) 2013; Hauke Brunkhorst 2017a
and 2017. pp. 21-34.
 4

In the following, I will try to reveal the theoretical course of the alienation critique of the
Paris manuscripts by partially narrow text deconstruction8, in order to then gradually carry out
a critical revision of the ethical aspects of alienation and to sketch out continuation
possibilities at the end. After these introductory considerations (1), I will begin with an
interpretation of the immanent approach of alienation criticism (2), then present the
anthropological background and the determinations of the "appearing" labour as a (complex)
"Vergegenständlichung” (objectification) (3), in order to then expose Marx's determinations
of "Fremdheit” (strangeness)" as a negation of "des Eigenen” (one's own) (4). In this way, I
can then interpret Marx's evaluation of "hostile strangeness" as the predominance of property
claims of others (5), and critically distinguish against him a depicted and a misappropriated
meaning of "Entäußerung” (externalization/divestment), thus explicating the conceptual (not
factual!) suppression of the treatment of conflicting property claims (6).

This critical revision amounts to the question: in what sense is the alienated labor "forced
labor"?, which in the Paris manuscripts is undifferentiatedly answered as "not voluntary", but
in the light of the analyses of the capital book can and must be answered differentiated and
weighed up (7). In the sense of a perspective, I then point to revising critiques of "alienation"
that come loose from the narrowings of Marx's approach (8) and sketch an attempt at
reconstructing alienation as degradation (9). Much certainly remains only hinted at; but I hope
that the intentions and theses of this Marx-critical revision become understandable and can
also convince.

2. On the immanent approach of the alienation criticism of the Paris manuscripts

The alienation critique of the Paris manuscripts seems to be based first of all on a general,
anthropologically conceived concept of labor. But, as we will still see, " labor " is not
conceived as a simple, eternal anthropological fact, but Marx assumes " a national economic,
present fact " in which " labor " appears in a particularly determined way. If Marx therefore
says that the "realization of labor [...] in the national economic state" "appears" (italic v. Vf.)

8
I also note the multiple meanings of German words deliberately used by Marx (e.g.
"Entäußerung", "eigen"), and in particular his clear understanding of the meaning differences
between "Gegenstand", "Ding", "Sache" and accordingly between "Vergegenständlichung",
"Verdinglichung", Versachlichung". These differences are often lost in the English translations of the
Marx texts. I therefore always add the German terms accordingly.
 5

"as the de-realization of the worker [...]", then in the following he is concerned only with what
"expresses this fact" (234/510), i.e. which appearing determinations "labor" gets under these
conditions. Thus the anthropological assumptions underpinning Marx's critique are also
relativized by reference to a "present fact".

Bona fide one could say that Marx uses the general assumptions about an (anthropological)
"human destiny" that become historically visible under the rule of the relations of private
property. The general concepts of Marx are also historically indexed, have become historical,
not eternal ideas.9 What is problematic, however, is that Marx does not always adhere to this
insight, and falls behind this methodical insight both with an essentialist concept of essence
("Wesen") and with an objectivist theory of history.

But what is the "national economic fact"? Summarizing the corresponding passages in the
text, the answer is: the fact from which Marxens' analysis proceeds is the domination of the
relations ("Verhältnisse") of private property. More precisely, Marx speaks of a relationship
of relations, because the "relationship of private property [...] in itself latently "contains" the
relationship of private property as labor, as does the relationship of private property as capital
and the relationship of these two expressions to each other" (249/524). The "relationship" of
these two relations (labor and capital, which are each relations) "to each other" is a
historically developing domination relationship between the workers and the capitalists, more
abstractly conceived between labor and capital, which Marx sketches using Hegel's
contradiction logic over several stages up to the "hostile, reciprocal...(n) counterpart"
("Gegensatz"; 256f./529). (See also Theunissen, pp. 323ff.) Under the rule of the relations of
private property to be determined however, the anthropologically enlightened way of working
now gets a certain appearing "form". Marx therefore analyzes the alienating and "alienated
labor" in the form in which it appears, and therefore also follows his immanent critical
method in the Paris manuscripts. The "fact" from which his analysis proceeds is therefore the
apparent fact that "the object that labor produces, its product, [...] confronts it as a foreign
essence, as an independent power to the producer" (236/511). The obvious questions about
this initial thesis are: First, does this apply to any kind of labor or only to the way in which it
appears under the rule of private property? And second, does alienation depend on the rule of
private property, or does alienated labor determine the rule of private property?

9
See J. Habermas's comments on this problem, Habermas 1981, 2nd Vol., p. 591 et seq.
 6

In answering the last question, it can be seen that "foreign essence" and "independent power"
are characterizations of power relations, and apparently the term "object" ("Gegenstand") here
in a very general sense means everything that is opposed (“gegenüber tritt”)10 the worker
through his particular way of "producing" labor; this includes not only the immediate labor
product, but also its legal evaluation as property and the corresponding social, legal, and
political institutions (relationships) that Marx summarizes here under the title "relationship of
private property."11 Thus, at the beginning of the analysis, the "domination of the relationship
of private property", i.e. strangeness and independent, "hostile" power, must be presupposed,
but then, after carrying out the critical analysis, it must prove to be the result (product) of the
"alienated labor."12 As in Hegel's logic, what is assumed at the beginning is to be explained at
the end of the critical exposition as the result of the "relations." But we will see that this goal
of Marx's critique of alienation is not achieved.

3. Anthropological background and provisions of the "appearing" labor

In order to answer the first question, an interpretation of " labor " that does not yet appear as
alienated labor under the rule of private property will first be examined. Obviously, Marx
asserts that the working person realizes himself or his generic essence in and through his
labor. The terms "labor", "self-realization" and "generic essence” ("Gattungswesen") need to
be explained here.

Many authors content themselves with an explanation of the influence of Hegel in the analysis
of the concept of labor in the history of origin (see e.g. Quante 2009, p. 233ff), who
undoubtedly influenced Marx's definition of " labor". But Aristotle is just as fundamental and
also present throughout Marx's work. The laboring activity is already here13, without this

10
See also below.
11
Later, in the capital book, Marx speaks of "capitalist relations" or the rule of the capitalist
mode of production, see the first sentence of the capital book (Marx 1975, p. 49).
12
Towards the end of the first issue, Marx answers the above question in the sense of the last
possibility: "Private property is thus the product, the result, the necessary consequence of the
externalized ("entäußerten”) labor"). (244/520)
13
This becomes quite clear in the capital book, e.g. Marx 1975, pp. 192 f.; see also Lohmann
1991, pp. 338 ff.
 7

becoming explicitly clear, characterized by an "intertwining" of the Aristotelian terms poiesis

as a manufacturing activity and praxis as an activity for its own ends. For Aristotle, a poetic
activity is the realization of natural faculty under the direction of purpose-setting and purpose-
tracking mental faculty for the production of a purpose existing outside of activity (e.g. to
produce a shoe)14; and only practice in the narrower sense is an activity in which the
realizations of natural faculty and mental faculty themselves are the purpose of activity (e.g.
playing the harp for the sake of playing).

But for Marx (here following Hegel) the manufacturing, working activity is already an
excellent self-purpose praxis. For this purpose, of course, he must understand what would not
have made sense for Aristotle (and again determined by Hegel) the manufacturing activity as
the objectification (“Vergegenständlichung”, see below) of the human faculty of nature and
spirit, i.e. the human faculties, which objectify themselves in an object vis-à-vis the working
subject, which is then re-appropriated aesthetically through contemplation and practically
through use.15 The interpretation of being active as an objective activity, the structuring of this
objective activity (“gegenständliche Tätigkeit”) by a subject-object difference, and finally the
thesis that being active brings to a conclusion the desired end in itself of being active, quasi in
a circulatory movement of disembodiment and reappropriation, - Only these reinterpretations
and reevaluations of the Aristotelian theory of action can express Marx's anthropological
thesis that man realizes in and through his work that the goal of his work is self-realization.16
At the same time man (men) realizes his (their) destiny as a generic essence.

In a certain sense, the concept of generic essence replaces the Aristotelian definition of man
as a "zoon politikon", a social, political being. Marx thus goes beyond Aristotle, for whom the
social nature of man still remains within the limits of a normatively predetermined nature
(physis) (Castoriadis 1981), while for Marx man, through the objectifying work, appropriates
nature in a more comprehensive and historically increasing way. Marx understands this
appropriation of nature as a historically developing and conscious realization of his generic

14
See Wolf 1979 in detail on this and the following.
15
One can, with Marx, still distinguish between "using" in the sense of consuming and
"appropriating" in the emphatic sense of reflexively appropriating, see Lohmann.1991, p. 95 et seq.
16
I have discussed the concept of self-realization in detail elsewhere and can only refer to it
here: Lohmann 2011, pp. 259-282; see also Lohmann 2017.
 8

essence and thereby takes up meanings of the term "genus" from quite different authors
(Schiller, Hegel, Feuerbach, Heß and Kant), which I cannot go into in detail.17

In contrast to the animal, man as a generic essence produces a world in which, "by behaving
towards himself as a universal, therefore free being" (239/515, italic v. Vf.), he also
"humanizes" nature itself through work (270/541). Thus "generic essence" also contain a
historical-philosophical meaning inspired by Kant, and "history itself is a real part of natural
history, of the becoming of nature into man" (272/544). On the other hand, however, despite
the later explanations on the relationship of the laboring human being to other human beings,
the social and even more political meanings of the development of a human generic essence
remain conceptually underexposed (see below).18

If one understands this conception of "labor", influenced by Aristotle and Hegel, as a

historically visible anthropological background conception, it appears under the rule of
private property with a series of further conceptual reinterpretations, which are partly to be
criticized, partly to be defended. Thus E.M. Lange, on the one hand, rightly criticized in
Marx's account of his critique of alienating labor, in particular the use of the terms
"externalization" (Entäußerung) and "objectification" (Vergegenständlichung), a "blurring of
the sense of process and result of labor" and an "inadmissible internal/external metaphor"19.
On the other hand, one can see that Marx tries with these problematic interpretations of the
theory of action to reflect the special view that the activity of labor receives under the "rule of
private property" or in the capital-determined imaginary world.

If one assumes with Marx that the capitalist self-justification of private property is determined
by John Locke's property theory, the worker (with Locke the pater familias) acquires property
initially through his own work and then subsequently through exchange. Locke understands
"work" as an activity by which the worker removes an object from the original (God-created)

17
Much more can be said about the concept of the generic essence (Gattungswesen)
"naturally". See in particular Wildt, 1987, p. 96 ff; Quante 2009, p. 262 ff; see also Lohmann 1991, p.
105 ff; Quante 2013, p. 69-88; Neuhouser 2013, p. 25-47.
18
So already the early criticism by Jürgen Habermas of this Marxens conception, see Habermas
1968, p.57 ff.
19
Lange 1980, p. 9 ff.; quotations from Lohmann 1991, p. 23; see also Wildt 1987, p. 113 ff.
and Quante 2009, p. 235 ff. on the terms "Entäußerung" and "Vergegenständlichung".
 9

"natural" common property of all "by the work of his hands" and "mixes it with his work".
Since "every man has a property in his own person," he has thus "added to it something that is
his own" (Locke 1974, p. 22), and can thus "extend the property of his own person [...] to
certain things in space that lie outside the body that is the respective man himself. (Brandt
1972, p. 431).

In contrast to tradition, which bound the acquisition of property to the consent of all others,
Locke initially asserts that work in this sense is sufficient for the acquisition of property in
external goods; it is "not bound to the explicit consent of all co-owners" (Locke 1974, p. 23,
italic v. Vf.) This thesis has been criticized by Hume with skepticism (Hume 1978, III, 2,3),
by Kant for reasons of reason20, and by Robert Nozick with mockery.21 And Locke, too, must
then secondly admit that a recognition, even if tacit, by others is necessary so that this
occupation can be regarded as legitimate possession and thus as property. For the
appropriation of property through labour is only legitimate if certain conditions are met: That
no more has been appropriated through work than can be consumed for one's own self-
preservation, and that the same chances of appropriation are open to others.22 Locke wants to
replace or at least depot the traditional view of property acquisition, but the condition later
imposed for "natural" property acquisition not distorted by money, compliance with "natural
laws", shows that it is only through this second condition that Locke can acquire other
exclusive private property to be recognized as lawful by others.

Marx, as we will still see, also ignores this second condition, and reinterprets the strange
mixing theory with the distinctions of inside/outside, subject/object, the transitions from
movement to calmness/living to dead, from possibility to reality, from capacity/ability to

20
Kant, Immanuel 1968, vol. VI, § 17; see also Brandt 1972, p. 426 ff.
21
"Why does one become an owner when one lets one's work enter into something? Perhaps
because one is the owner of one's work and thus becomes the owner of an object, which is saturated
with this property, which also absorbs it. But why does the mixing of property with non-ownership
not lead to the loss of property instead of the gain of non-ownership? If I own a can of tomato juice
and pour it into the sea so that I mix the molecules (made radioactive for inspection) evenly with
those of the sea water, then I become the owner of the sea, or have I wasted my tomato juice?",
Nozick 1983, p. 164.
22
So also R. Brandt in his excellent volume on property theories: "Thus it is ...excluded that the
right to the object of the work belongs to the act itself! The work does not endow a natural right [...];
if it is not carried out under certain conditions, it has no legal relevance", Brandt 1974, p. 83.
 10

realization23, and summarizes these reinterpretations of working with the concept of

objectification (“Vergegenständlichung”)24. But what is the meaning of
"object"/„Gegenstand“ and the further expressions "thing"/„Ding“ and "matter"/„Sache“ for
external objects? Without being able to make the Aristotelian influences explicitly clear here,
I would like to point out some differences.

If "object"/”Gegenstand” is something at all that stands opposite a contemplating and active

subject, then a natural object has properties that it has independently of the subject. As such
an "external" "thing", it has a certain natural form and is determined by various material
properties. A "thing" is defined as an "object" without reference to a subject, i.e. in particular
as a something without rights, arbitrary, even violent, usable. An object, on the other hand, is
called a "matter”/ “Sache” if its thinglike /”dingliche” (natural) material and form properties
are determined to be useful properties for a subject. According to Locke and Marx, these
useful properties are discovered through labor or produced through form and material-
changing, laboring activities. Labor is now such a productive, purposeful form and material
changing activity that turns an "opposing" external thing into a useful, usable "matter”
/”Sache”. In this sense, Marx speaks of labor "fixed in an object, made objective"/ ”sachlich
gemacht hat” (236/511). But thus the laboring activity becomes the activity of a subject,
which at the same time is dependent on an object of nature to be processed. In this respect,
Marx can stress that "the laborer cannot (can) create anything without nature" (236/512). For
Marx, labor and nature remain the true sources of all wealth.25

If one compares this conceptual definition of " labor " in the Parisian manuscripts with the
conceptual definitions that Marx later used in the capital book to describe labor - he speaks of

23
On Marx's use of the Aristotelian distinction between possibility/ability and
reality/realization, see Angehrn1986.
24
Andreas Wildt initially largely shares E.M. Lange's criticism of Marx's use of the term
"objectification", but then tries to work out two positive meanings in relation to Hegel's use of
"objectification", on the one hand "as probation and education"/„als Bewährung und Bildung“, on
the other hand, influenced here by Herrman Schmitz, "as expression and appropriation"/„als
Entäußerung und Aneignung“, see Wildt 1987, p. 104 ff. and 113 ff. The interpretation presented
here corresponds in part with Wildt's remarks. I differ from Wildt, however, probably mainly in that I
understand Marx's speech of "work as objectification and externalization”/ „Arbeit als
Vergegenständlichung und Entäußerung“ as an immanent conception, i.e. critical, of Locke's property
theory.
25
See also his remarks in Marx' Critique of the Gotha Program. (Marx 1962, p. 15)
 11

the "labor process" there - it is initially noticeable that Marx did not mention a working tool or
tool at all in the early manuscripts and systematically considered it. Work is described as a
direct activity (= realization of abilities) between subject and object, worker and object of
work. A mediating object, a means of labor, which according to general opinion is an
anthropological characteristic of human work processes, and to which one refers in most
cases, if one wants to determine a concrete type of labor (tailoring, building, ploughing,
sowing, drilling, etc.), is missing. Moreover, Marx also distinguishes here, in the capital book,
pre-capitalist from capitalist determinations of " labor ".

Under pre-capitalist conditions, however, the working process is characterized by five

moments: "purpose, mode of operation, object, means, and result" (Marx 1975, p. 56), while
in the capital-subsumed working process for the worker only the middle three remain:
"purposeful activity ..., its object and means" (Marx 1975, 193), because the moments of
purpose and use of results fall within the (controversial) sphere of determination of the
capitalist.26 I suspect that Marx does not consider the means of work in the manuscripts
because it cannot contribute to the clearly negative evaluation of the alienation process,
whereas it does play a systematic role in the differentiated and ambivalent evaluation of labor
processes under developed capitalist subsumption in the capital book, as his analysis of the
historical development from manufactory to large industry shows.27

4. Strangeness as negation of the own

Against the background of this complex (and in and for itself even more differentiated)
conception of appearing " labor ", Marx "as is well known unfolds the process of alienation in
four respects: as relationship (of the working subject) to the product of the activity, as
relationship to being active itself, as self-relationship in the sense of a relationship to one's
own generic essence, and finally as relationship to other people".28 According to Marx, these
"four perspectives stand in a relationship of succession and justification" (see also Quante
2009, p. 248ff). Already at the first step it becomes clear, of course, that it is not "the

26
See also Lohmann 1991, 338 ff.
27
See in particular Marx 1975, pp. 511 et seq.
28
Lohmann 1991, p. 23; for the explanations of these four aspects of alienation presented
here, see partly different: Wildt 1987, p. 91 et seq.; Quante 2009, p. 248 et seq.
 12

objectification of work" itself that is the circumstance by which the alienation process is
caused, but " strangeness" here still has to mean something going beyond "objectivity".

The first decisive factor is the meaning of "strange"/”fremd” with which Marx operates here.
The counter-concept to "strange" is "own"/”eigen”. Peculiarity/”Eigenheit” is assessed
positively throughout, strangeness is assessed negatively throughout. That which is peculiar to
me is not strange to me, and that which is strange to me is not peculiar to me. Because the
strange is not my own, it is evaluated negatively. The positive value, as whose negation
strangeness is evaluated negatively, is therefore peculiarity. What exactly is to be understood
by these relational determinations is to be clarified now.

In everyday language, " own " initially means a relationship of possession: Something is own
to me when I have it, when it belongs to me, is my own. But "own" also has a meaning that
goes beyond "have", possibly emphatically, according to which it means a reflexive
appropriation of something else, that it is so peculiar to me that it characterizes my peculiarity
(my "qualitative identity"). But "own" has in both meanings a relational structure, is to be
understood from the beginning as a relationship between a subject and something else, which
is own to him or can be made own, i.e. appropriated. But the starting point of Marx's
definition of "own" is Locke's property-theoretical premise that "every human being has a
property in his own person" (Locke 1974, p. 22)29. In the beginning, therefore, there is,
entirely in harmony with the immanent method of critique, a relationship of possession, a
legal, property-theoretical premise, which Marx assumes to be given with Locke's
justification of the acquisition of property through labor.

And also like Locke he connects the perception of this (derived) "natural" property right as
perception of a "natural" (created by God in Locke), negative, (created by God in Locke)
"perfect freedom" (Locke 1974, p. 5; see also p. 95) And only the unrestricted perception of
these premises creates the emotional, ethical and also social characterizations of a "not
alienated", good life, going beyond property relations, in which something else is determined
than one's own, i.e. is productively appropriated. Marx explains this peculiarity relation,

29
This thesis of Locke has a theological background with him: God created man and therefore
he is his "complete property" with the duty to preserve himself. In order to be able to fulfil this duty,
people naturally have the right to "dispose of their own life, body and means of self-preservation
which cannot be arbitrarily restricted by another human being", Brandt 1972, p. 427 et seq.
 13

which goes beyond legal relationships, through emotional and ethical characterizations: That
which is peculiar to me is familiar to me, I feel "at home", feel "affirmed", "well" and happy,
etc., i.e. these more far-reaching provisions refer to positively evaluated conceptions of a good
life. They explain what the perceptions of the actions made possible by negative freedom, i.e.
positive freedoms, lead to or serve. Their negation characterizes the more comprehensive
determinations of strangeness that the alienating labor co-"produces".

Strangeness is, according to these preparatory considerations, a relation between (at least) two
points of reference which are negatively evaluated in two respects and which are different for
each other in a certain way. First, what is strange is what in the sense of a legal ownership
relationship does not belong to the worker, but to another. And then strangeness is conceived
as the negation of a productive development of one's own, i.e. the appropriation of something
else. Here Marx, with Hegel, proceeds from the thesis that man can only develop his abilities
and, as he later says, his generic essence, if he has objectified them beforehand 30and only
then appropriates them. 31 The normative yardstick for the then negative evaluation is thus a
demanding conception of a productive, good life, which Marx tries to grasp with the concept
of (objectifying) self-realization. What is important, however, is the finding that strangeness
begins with the determination of otherness, but that otherness is not already strangeness,
because the other can also be familiar to me and my own, or can be appropriated by me.32
Otherness is therefore evaluatively neutral and it can be seen how it becomes a negatively
evaluated strangeness.

As objectified work, the working abilities deprived by the working subject initially receive
only the value-neutral character of otherness. What was previously a living ability to work
belonging to the subject ("located in the subject" implies a problematic internal/external
difference), i.e. a possibility, was, through working, a realized ability, a reality valued higher,
thus acquiring a different ontological and value status (See Angehrn 1986, p. 125ff). Marx

30
Emil Angehrn points out that with this thesis Marx also takes up a motif of the critique of
Hegel of the late Schelling, that the "negation of negation [...] is opposed by the ... positive resting on
itself" and von Feuerbach, whom Marx follows here, is formulated as follows: "Man is nothing
without object", see Angehrn 1986, p. 131.
31
Clearly for instance in the manuscripts: 292/574.
32
"I don't need to acquire that which is only my own, and I can't acquire that which is only
strange," says Theunissen 1984, p. 104.
 14

spatializes this relationship through the externalization/objectification metaphor, so that we

can distinguish two "objects"/”Gegenstände”, subject and object (an external object external
to the subject), for the work that extends over time. If the labor processes are not under the
rule of the private property relations, the subject can appropriate this other matter-of-fact
object by using the produced, useful thing for its own purposes or by reflexively appropriating
it.33

Figuratively speaking, Marx therefore thinks of a non-alienated labor as a circular process in

which the externalized working abilities have been objectified in the work product in
accordance with the intended functionalities, and then this state of otherness is "reversed" by
me by reappropriating the externalized labor, i.e. using it for one's own purposes, e.g.
satisfying one's own needs, or reflexively appropriating it in such a way that it creatively
redefines my qualitative identity. The "other" object only becomes strange when the (re-
)appropriation of the other is prevented or excluded under the rule of private property. Only
then does the work product acquire the negatively valued character of strangeness. Alienation
is, so far seen, the prevented reappropriation of the externalized by the prevailing property
conditions and therefore to be evaluated negatively. But this prevention is not a somehow
"natural" characteristic of "alienated labor" (objectification/Vergegenständlichung), but the
execution and result of ruling property relations. Let us now consider the influence of these
legal relations on the relationship of the laborer to his product of labor.

5. 'Hostile strangeness' as predominance of property claims of others

Based on the national economic fact, the object to be dealt with is with which the spent labor
skills are "mixed" and into which they "represent"(“vergegenständlicht”) themselves, not the
working person A's own, but private property (i.e. other exclusive property) of another person
B who does not work. Because the object to be processed is the private property of another
person, conflicting claims arise as to who is now the owner of the processed object.
According to Locke's Theory of Ownership, a worker acquires ownership of the processed
object of work through his own work. However, the owner of the object of work can claim
that his property was also originally acquired through his own work. So there are two well-

33
Angehrn identifies these differences in the ways of appropriation as the difference between
having and being, see Angehrn 1986; see also Wildt 1987, pp. 113 ff. and Lohmann 1991, pp. 93 ff.
 15

founded property claims against each other, whereby one can ask oneself whether they are
equally well-founded.34

Locke solves or defuses the problem that arises when the immediate worker A and the owner
B of the object of work are not one and the same person, starting from the figure of the pater
familias and making the immediate worker himself the private property of the B: "The peat
that my servant cut, [...] (becomes) my property, without anyone's assignment or consent".
(Locke 1974, p. 23) But since worker A in Marx, unlike in Locke's theory, is a free person,
legally equal to B, they are equal others to each other, and initially, therefore, each side could
make equal, conflicting claims to property. Therefore, what Locke tries to exclude with the
imputation of the pater familias must very well lead to a public discussion about these
conflicting claims, which can only be decided legally and politically after an argumentative
formation of opinion, and thus brings about the predominance of one side of the dispute.
Therefore an "allocation" of the title of ownership, which can find the "consent" of all
participants, is very much necessary.

Marx ignores or conceals these intersubjective, and legal-political, consequences of this

conflict, because, following the immanent view of Locke's property theory, he himself
conceives laboring as a monological process that an individual carries out with his object, and
only at the end, when the question: who rules, i.e. which property claims have prevailed? has
already been decided upon, does he look at the relationships of the working and the non-
working, at and among themselves. In the fourth respect of alienation, the "alienation of
people from people" (242/517), Marx does not, however, explicitly address this conflict of
legal property claims, but interprets the decision of this conflict or the establishment of this
relationship of power as "produced by the alienated labor" (243/519).

Marx thus also misses out on the possibility of depicting the mode of rule of the relations of
private property with its own operative concepts. These power relations are will relations in
which the will of B subordinates himself to the will of A and A also considers this
subordination to be legitimate. The labor product becomes foreign to the laborer, not because
he has objectified his abilities in an external object, but because the claim to property to be

34
The comparable justification of the capitalist destroys Marx in the capital book in the
chapter on "The so-called original accumulation", Marx 1975, p. 741 ff.; see also Lohmann 1991, p. 75
ff. and Lohmann 2018 b.
 16

raised in this way is suppressed by the predominance of the private owner's claim to property.
Therefore also the further characterization of this foreignness as "hostile" is quite appropriate:
the property claim of another suppresses one's own property claim, the product of labor thus
no longer becomes one's own, but strange, and the rulership character intensifies this
strangeness into hostile, the self-preservation of the laborer threatening, seemingly
"independent power". But only when the laborer recognizes this predominance of the
property claim of the relations of private property as legitimate, can it also seem to him as if
the object he has produced "exists independently, alien to him, and an independent power
becomes vis-à-vis him that the life he has bestowed on the object is hostile and alien to him.
(236/512).

This conflicts of different ownership claims, the recognition by the direct worker of the
predominance of the property claims of the private owners of the objects of labor, as well as
the ideological misjudgement of the real relationships, according to which the power (which
the "objects" that are produced, which according to Marx in the broad sense also include the
property relationships of private property, have) is merely bestowed, and no truly
independent, all these conflicts of public, legal and political convictions concerning the
formation of legal institutions, Marx cannot describe and grasp with appropriate operative
terms, because he believes to be able to represent them sufficiently and exclusively in the
terms of monological labor, as " Entäußerung " (externalization / divestment).

6. The depicted and misappropriated meaning of "Entäußerung”

This becomes clear when we consider the second aspect of alienation, the relationship of the
laborer to being active. Marx describes the relationship of the laborer to the process of
realizing his labor abilities as a purely monologous, alienating relationship. And here, too,
there is no conceptual response to the intersubjective, conflictual, legal property relations that
could explain how the laborer under conditions of the rule of private property "in the act of
production itself did not alienate itself? (238/514).

Here too Marx believes that, following Locke's property theory immanently, he gets by with
the consideration of the "producing activity", the "active externalization" (238/514). Then
follows a fine example of Marx's style of giving the impression, by varying the terminology,
that the first formulation already contains the further formulations or that these result from it.
 17

In reality, however, the following wording : „die Entäusserung der Thätigkeit, die Tätigkeit
der Entäusserung“ ("the externalization of activity, the activity of externalization”), designates
two completely different and distinguishable facts. "Externalization" once means that the
laborer has actualized his labour abilities and objectified them in one object (Entäusserung1 =
externalization), on the other hand it means that he has sold his labour abilities to another
(which is described and determined in the capital book as "purchase and sale of the
commodity labor") (Entäusserung2= divestment).

If one wants, one can understand the following two reformulations in this sense: The "active
externalization" is on the one hand "the activity of externalization", on the other hand it is
"divestment of activity" as the sale of the ability to work to another, and only in this way "the
externality of labour for the laborer appears in that it is not his own but that of another"
(238/514). It seems this way to the laborer and the reader because Marx here simply reduces
the complex intersubjective activities and social relations of recognition of the buying and
selling of something (in the capital book: the "ability to work" resp. the "power to work"
determined as a commodity) to a concept of divestment (=Entäusserung2), and then identifies
it with the other meaning of "externalizing", namely realization/objectification/mixing. This,
in my opinion, false, reductive identification blinds out the social legal ownership
relationships that can only justify why the laborer's labor activity and the product of his labor
are not his own, but become alien.

In the section where Marx answers the question, "What is the externalization ("Entäußerung")
of labor?" (238/514) he explains and concludes on the basis of this presumed, but false,
identification from the "externalization of labor" in the sense of activity actualization, further-
reaching, emotional, social and anthropological effects of this becoming strange. At the
beginning he expands the meaning of "external" in the sense of a contrast to "own": "the labor
(is) external to the laborer [...], i.e. (sic !) does not belong to his essence.”35 (ibid.) I only
mention the subsequent and aggravating conclusions which he draws from this "external"-
being as not-own-being: In his "external labor", as Marx later says in the text, the worker does

35
That Marx says "essence" ("Wesen") here, and not simply "doesn't belong to him", means
that he here already assumes a "generic essence" (“Gattungswesen”) of man as destiny of man.
 18

not "affirm" himself, but "negates" himself, feels "not well, but unhappy"36, he develops "no
free physical and spiritual energy ..., but" chastises his physique ... "and (ruins) his spirit.37

Marx summarizes the negative effects under the image of the worker's not being at home, and
concludes from all these further provisions that "his labor ... is therefore (in italics from Vf.)
not voluntary, but forced, forced labor" (ibid.). Although this conclusion results from the
problematic and reductive premises, it is factually incorrect and misappropriates a decisive
fact. And since the further effects diagnosed by Marx, which are described according to the
model of a reversal: instead of satisfying one's own needs as an end - means of satisfying the
needs of others, instead of self-activity - self-sacrifice and loss of one's self, instead of human
- animal, since all these diagnoses presuppose the non-voluntary nature of the externalization,
this finding, which Marx in the end summarises as negatively evaluated "self-alienation"
(239/515), is to be critically examined.

7. In what sense is the alienated labor "forced labor"?

False is the conclusion that the labor is done "not voluntarily" by the worker. For an
actualization of human capabilities, according to Aristotle and Marx, only happens when man
wants them to be realized. An "own" activity is therefore one that is not determined by others,
but by me, i.e. my "self-activity." If one understands the exercise of coercion as an influence
on the situation of a freely acting person, so that his will is restricted by a restriction of
alternative actions, then it remains nevertheless a voluntary action, even if under coercion.38

Coercion is once exerted by the prevailing private property relations, i.e. by the given legal-
institutional distribution of property, because the situation of action typical and necessary for
work is pre-figured and restricted by the fact that the object of labor (and the necessary means
of labor) necessary for working does not belong to the laborer, but to the non-worker or
capitalist. And then coercion is exercised, because the laborer, if he wants to work in order to
survive, is forced to follow or submit to the will of another person while working. But also

36
Here Marx assumes a classical concept of happiness: happiness is a state in which man
affirms himself.
37
This visibly refers to Aristotle's idea of a good life, Eudaimonia.
38
This was already Aristotle's thesis in Nicomachan Ethics, E.N. 1110a; for this view of
"coercion" see also Lohmann 2018 and Lohmann 1991, p. 326ff.
 19

this compulsion is mediated by the free will of the worker. In the Parisian manuscripts, Marx
has no notions to adequately take these differentiations into account. In the capital book,
however, because he treats the analysis of the labor process (= externalization ) only after the
analysis of the purchase and sale of the commodity labor (= divestment), he can very well
determine and take into account the (wage) worker's, albeit limited, negative freedom of will.

This becomes clear when we look at the misappropriated facts in the alienation diagnosis:
divestment as the sale of work skills, as critically presented in the capital book.39 The now
"wage laborer" to be called "laborer"40 must treat his " labor capacity " himself as a divestable
commodity, i.e. as a physical "labor force" (this can be called a partial "self-reification")41,
which he offers on the labor market as a formally free and equal person for sale and whose
realization in the labor process needs his "expedient will, which expresses itself as attention"
(Marx 1975, p. 193.). Under the rule of private property (now: the capitalist relations of
production) the laborers therefore remain free persons, and their formal (negative) freedom, to
be recognized constitutively by capital, does not allow them to become the property of
another42. They do not become "servants", "slaves" or "legally minors", even if Marx
sometimes talks like that.43 Their formally guaranteed freedom as legal persons enables them
("the class of free workers", Marx 1975, p. 185) to fight precisely against the tendencies of
oppression, impoverishment and exploitation of capital rule, during and outside their working

39
I have treated this fact and Marxens presentation in detail and critically in Lohmann 1991,
pp. 310-331. In the following, I will only deal with the terms which reveal the more differentiated and
factually appropriate criticism in the capital book compared to the Paris manuscripts.
40
Marx does not use the term "wage laborer" in the Parisian manuscripts, which A. Wildt
overlooks in his interpretation, see A. Wildt 1987.
41
For the distinction between "labor capacity" and "labor force” (Arbeitsvermögen /
Arbeitskraft) see Lohmann 1991, 312 ff.
42
Bona fide one can say that Marx knew this in the manuscripts, even though he did not
explicitly formulate it conceptually and treat it systematically. Thus he writes that "the externality of
the labor" "appears" in it, "that in it he belongs ("gehört") not to himself, but affiliate ("angehört") to
another. (238/514, italic v. Vf.) That the laborer does not belong to another, but only "affiliate", at
least leaves open the possibility of understanding the coercive character of "externalized labor" as a
politically-democratically resolvable conflict of different property claims between free persons.
43
Nancy Frazer argues that capitalism needs not only formally free wage laborers "exploited",
but also the "expropriation" of legally incompetent and racially degraded workers: Frazer, Nancy
2017; see Lohmann, Georg 2018 a.
 20

hours (!), for a life corresponding to their "habits and demands for life" (ibid.).44 Depending
on the political, legal, social and cultural conditions in which the wage laborers or the
working class can resist the processes of subsumption of capital, the ways of life made
possible by necessary "self-reification" must therefore be gradually evaluated. This is one of
the reasons why the term "alienation", consistently rated negatively, is no longer used in the
capital book.

Instead, concepts become relevant that are completely absent in the theory of alienation:
"reification" and "self-reification" and the indifference or indifference relations that explicate
them.45 The "alienation" and "self-alienation" diagnosed in the critique of alienation,
undifferentiated and negatively evaluated, now become complex relationships, to be evaluated
according to the state of the arguments between capital and labor, between the necessary self-
objectification of the wage laborer and the self-realization possible for him.46 The fact that, in
my opinion, these concepts are also to be viewed critically47, and that the critical analyses and
diagnoses in the capital book are also to be differentiated critically, does not diminish the fact
that it is only in their light that it becomes clear what Marx intends to explain in the Paris
manuscripts, but what he does not succeed in doing because of these conceptual absences and
the structural one-sidedness of his operative concepts.

44
Therefore it is also wrong for Christoph Menke to write in his revision of the critique of the
law by Marx: "The acquisition of the commodity labour power means a right to rule over the
worker", Menke, Christoph.2015, p.275. Menke quite rightly works out the private-law constitution
of the right to exchange goods as the dominant right of capitalist society, but with the above
sentence he sets the course wrong for his further considerations. For he then treats the corrective
"social rights" only as a functionally necessary supplement within the framework of private law (his
unclear formulation for this is: "in the form of law"). Marx himself, however, because he ties his
historical account to the reports of the factory inspectors of the English parliament, must show in the
famous but also complicated chapter on the struggle for the length and regulation of the working day
that now capitalism is not regulated by private law, but within the framework of public law, or can be
regulated. Marx can therefore say: "Between equal rights" (of buyer and seller on the labour market)
"power (“Gewalt”) decides", Marx 1975, p. 249, but "power" here does not only mean brute military
violence (although Marx insinuates this), but also the three constitutional powers: legislative,
executive and judiciary, about which Marx then reports in the historical reflection on the struggle for
the working day. See Lohmann 2018 b.
45
For this thesis see Lohmann 1991.
46
For more details see Lohmann 1991, pp. 332-363.
47
For "reification" see my early essay: Lohmann 1983 and now Honneth 2005. For "self-
realization" see Lohmann 2011.
 21

8. Revised critiques of "alienation” as differentiating critique

After this Marx-critical revision of the approach of Marx's critique of alienation, let us look at
the provisions of alienation phenomena that go beyond purely legal relations. It should be
noted in principle that the alienating rule of the "relationship of private property" does not
"result" from characterizations of objectifying "externalizing labor", but is to be treated as an
independent sphere of conflicting legal property claims, as a discussion of justice and law.
Marx has therefore not achieved his objective of proving ownership as a product of
"externalized labor". On the contrary, he, and also the attempts at updating the critique of
alienation, would have to treat legal property relations, despite their certainly existing
determination by economic and political interests and power structures, as a relatively
independent sphere, which, in addition, in functionally differentiated societies must be put in
relation to the spheres of politics, economy and ethics/ morals, etc., All this would require a
critical reconstruction of Marx's problematic and contradictory critique of (subjective) rights
and law, which, however, must be carried out more extensively than is possible here.
I can only point here to some preliminary work on my part.48 Within this legal framework
and in the perception of subjective rights, the ethical evaluations of "alienated" and non-
alienated life are to be situated. In the following, I will confine myself to the question of
which positively evaluated conception of good life "alienation" should be defined as its
negation.

To this end, Marx's presumed, positively evaluated definition of " own " in the sense of
"having", the negation of which is then determined to be a negative strangeness, must first be
questioned and replaced by a more appropriate conception of Good Life. Marx's immanent
critique buys a deficient conception of "one's own" as a self-relationship with Locke's
assumption of a possessive relationship to one's own body and to one's own person, which he
himself criticizes from the perspective of the critique of alienation carried out. Emil Angehrn
has worked out in an impressive essay the Marxian explication of the predominance of this

48
I have presented approaches to a critique of Marx's reductive and, in my opinion, ultimately
wrong definition of law (and human rights) in Lohmann 1991, pp. 244-289; Lohmann 1999, pp. 91-
104; Lohmann 2018 b.
 22

"sense(s) of having" (269/540). (Angehrn 1986, p. 129ff)49 This "sense", as the legal basis of
the alienation relations, determines both sides, labour as well as capital, equally, is a
normative determination for the self-relations of workers as well as capitalists set by the
social conditions50, dominates their relations among themselves and their world relations (p.
268/540) and thus prevents the development of a real, in the above sense "appropriating"
peculiarity.

Marx understands this as "all-round", "sensual appropriation of the human essence" and as
universally determined formation and realization of the positively evaluated human "generic
essence". On the one hand, Marx indirectly criticizes the abstract, immanently incorporated
conception of one's own by asserting its self-contradiction through a historical-philosophical
explication and extrapolation of its development that leads to a "hostile opposition" between
capital and labor. On the other hand, he explicitly opposes the world- and self-relations
alienated by the abstract sense of having with the ideal of the "rich all and profound human
being" (271/542), but his explicit normative justification of this ideal remains vague and
thoroughly debatable. 51 For why should this idealized conception of a good life, i.e. a
conception of how people should live, be better than any other ideal conception, e.g. that of
self-respecting serenity? The justifiable explication of the ethical ideal demanding the
abolition of alienation is lacking, firstly, the (moral) component of justice, and, secondly, the
justification of a generalizable, ethical conception of Good Life. Here, with Aristotle, Marx
relies on the normative preferability of an emphatic concept of "self-realization", which, as an
active good life with its own purpose, has "lost" its "egoistic nature" in "self-enjoyment"
(269/540), because at the same time it gains and secures its confirmation in and through social
relations of recognition.52 This can be taken up, even if many questions still remain open.

Rahel Jaeggi (Jaeggi 2005) refers to the non-legal aspects of alienation when she removes the
concept of alienation from Marx's context and, following critically on from other authors (in

49
See also the criticism of Lohmann 1991, pp. 119 et seq., of the "priority of the pursuit of
possession".
50
In addition also Macpherson 1967.
51
Under the title "Limits of the emphatic concept of wealth" I have dealt with it in Lohmann
1991, pp. 114-119.
52
Michael Quante elaborates on "recognition" as "the decisive theoretical element in the
positive counter-project" of the Paris manuscripts, see Quante 2009, p. 275 ff.
 23

particular Heidegger, Tugendhat, Charles Taylor and others), drafts a socio-philosophical and
psychological, but essentially ethical concept of "alienation" and exemplifies it in "cases"
typical of the time. Alienation is understood "as disturbed world and self-appropriation"
(Jaeggi 2005, p. 183ff), but the acquisition of the "own" is no longer understood as the
"reappropriation" of an emptied and alienated being, but as the appropriation of "one's own
preconditions" of an "open" conception of Good Life, which is determined by "self-
determination, self-realization and authenticity" (Jaeggi 2005, p. 236ff). It thus stands in the
tradition of "experimental self-realization" (Lohmann 2011) and can thus impressively
illustrate the time-diagnostic potential of alienation phenomena and experiences.

Axel Honneth (Honneth 2005) is somewhat more sceptical about the time-diagnostic access
of alienation analyses. For him, the acquisition of a non-alienated self is mediated and
determined from the outset by "recognition relationships", so that the tensions between "self-
realization and generality"53 are resolved socially from the outset. However, Honneth limits
himself to a critical revision of the concept of succession, which has replaced "alienation"
since the capital book: reification. It formulates the negatively evaluated conditions for human
ability to become commodified, fundamental for the wage laborer, but is then understood as
the expanding effect of the commercialization of all moments in life that the capitalist process
of utilization absorbs and changes. In a critical connection to Georg Lukács54, Heidegger and
Dewey , Honneth understands "reification as forgetting recognition" (cf. Honneth 2005, p.
62ff) and, on this basis, determines reification phenomena as "pathologies of the social" with
a "self-reification" that is also conceived in terms of recognition theory (Honneth 2000, p.
62ff). 11-69) Normative standards for a critical assessment of "reification" are now ethical
conceptions of a good life, first self-realization55, then a moral ideal of a "social freedom"
taken from Hegel's philosophy of law as ""being with oneself in the other", reformulated
according to the theory of recognition. (Honneth 2011, p. 85) Honneth thus connects ethical
questions with the legal sphere and, in the end, also hints at the functional differentiation of
modern societies (Honneth 2015, p. 138ff).

9. Alienation as negation of "dignity" - a proposal going beyond Marx.

53
This is the title of a relevant essay by Michael Theunissen. 1982.
54
Lukács 1968; on Lukács see Dannemann 1987.
55
So already since Honneth 1992.
 24

The critical revision of the critique of alienation that was attempted here therefore comes to
the conclusion that a direct use of the strictly negatively evaluated concept of alienation, as
Marx presented it in the manuscripts, no longer seems justifiable. Nevertheless, there are good
reasons to insure oneself of the normative content of the alienation critique in a differentiated
way within the framework of another concept. For this purpose, as indicated, the description
and evaluation of the facts that have been evaluated as alienation must be carried out in a
more differentiated way, but on the other hand the normative/evaluative evaluation must also
permit differentiations or require them of its own accord.

With regard to the first point, a critical examination of the operative concepts with which
Marx diagnoses the alienation of labor under the rule of private ownership revealed
differentiated evaluations. While the term objectification (Vergegenständlichung) in itself is
associated with positive evaluations and factualization (Versachlichung) is to be evaluated
normatively neutrally, alienation is always evaluated negatively, because it is understood as
negation of positively evaluated conceptions of "peculiarity"/"ownness"(Eigenheit). A
deconstructive interpretation of alienation from the point of view of later capital analysis
brought with the term reification a new interpretation of alienation criticism. Depending on
the context, "reification" refers to a "category error", i.e. something that is not a thing in itself
is treated or seen as a thing.

With the explication of "divestment" as "buying and selling the commodity labour force" it
became clear that the alienation process is to be determined from the point of view of capital
as "reification" and from the point of view of the worker/wage worker as “self-reification”.
For this reason alone there are differences in evaluation: When I treat someone else's abilities
like a thing, I do something different than when I treat my own abilities like a thing. In the
first case, I may violate the normative claims, moral duties, or even rights that arise from the
value character and peculiarity of human abilities to others; for example, they cannot be
treated only as a means to my ends without the consent of the respective subject. In the
second case, I may be in breach of my duties or behave inappropriately towards myself. The
judgments and criticisms or justifications of such actions would have to be different and
gradual.
 25

Also for this reason, with regard to the second point of view, the evaluation of reification and
self-reification seems to depend on the respective situational circumstances, their manner, the
evaluation of the purposes from which they are carried out, and the results to which they lead.
Decisive for this are the relations of indifference associated with the reification and self-
reification of becoming the commodity, which make clear what it means to treat or determine
as a thing something that is not a thing in itself.56 Things are what they are, indifferent to all
kinds of valuations and norms57; therefore if something that is "in itself" connected with
valuations and norms or is not at all what it is, without internal reference to certain valuations
and norms, is treated and determined as a thing or like a thing, then corresponding
indifference relations or indifferences are assumed and/or established. The processes of
objectification and comparison are, depending on the context, to be evaluated gradually and
ambivalently and therefore require the respective indication of a critical normative scale and a
precise determination of the respective relation. Therefore, if we want to evaluate the working
and living conditions reformulated with the paradigm of reification, we must look for a
differentiated normative standard that also permits a differentiated, context-dependent
evaluation.

Marx used, in order to denote the manifold negative phenomena of extended alienation, in
some places rather casual formulations that denote negations of "dignity".58 Marx, like many
19th century authors (e.g. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche), is on the one hand sceptical about an
idealistic, positive concept of dignity; on the other hand, as a young man, he uses extensively
a certain concept of dignity conventionally related to the honour of the ancient male hero and
later, almost continuously, orients himself on the ideal of bravery of the ancient war hero
when he speaks of dignity and degradation.59 One cannot, therefore, directly tie in with

56
I did that in Lohmann 1991, pp. 332 - 359.
57
So Marx writes: " Commodities are things and therefore without resistance against man. If
they are not willing, he may need violence, in other words, he may take them", Marx 1975, p. 99.
58
"The alienation of the worker in his object is expressed [...] in such a way that [...] the more
values he creates, the more worthless he becomes, the more undignified he becomes" (245/513); "A
violent increase in the wage," criticizes Marx Proudhon's demand to combat or abolish alienation,
"[...] neither the worker nor the work would have conquered its human destiny and dignity"
(245/520f.).
59
Fritz Raddatz points out in his Marx biography, which is still worth reading, that the "most
frequently used noun" in Marx's Abitur essay "Reflections of a young man in the choice of a
vocation”/ “Betrachtungen eines Jünglings bei der Wahl eines Berufes" ( Marx 1968, p. 591-594) is
 26

Marx's use of a concept of dignity if in the following the attempt to explicate alienation as
negations of "dignity"is to be sketched.

In "On the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law. Introduction” 60 of 1843/44 Marx let "the
critique of religion" end with the "doctrine" that "man is the highest essence for man, thus
with the categorical imperative to overturn all circumstances in which man is a humiliated, a
subjugated, an abandoned, a contemptible being.” ("ein erniedrigtes, ein geknechtetes, ein
verlassenes, ein verächtliches Wesen ist“61. One can understand his criticism of the alienation
of the Paris manuscripts as a theoretical explication of this imperative. But it is not only an
activist demand, but a normative imperative to be justified. The conditions are to be
overturned, and the concretizing explanations: Humiliation, subjugation, abandonment and
contempt indicate the normative reasons why the corresponding conditions are to be
overturned, i.e. revolutionized.

In the explications of the expanded concept of ethical alienation, Marx uses descriptions that
can be assigned to these four concretisations of content. All in all, I understand them as
violations of a concept of dignity still to be determined, so that the categorical imperative can
also be understood as turning against alienation as negations of dignity. Without wanting to
substantiate these text relationships in detail here, I would like to explain the four
concretisations in the direction of degradation and dignity violations. From a methodological
point of view, Marx does not begin with a positive concept of dignity, but develops via
negationis from descriptions and evaluations of experiences of degradation a conceptual
definition of "dignified life", from which only then can something like a positive concept of
"dignity" be derived. I will therefore first, in an explanation of the above "categorical
imperative", take up the different aspects of degradation (Entwürdigung) experiences (a), in

"dignity”, e.g., "the most frequently used noun": "Dignity is that which most elevates the man, which
lends a higher nobility to his actions, to all his aspirations, which makes him untouched, admired by
the crowd and above them to stand", op.cit., p. 593.
60
I quote and translate from the german text: „Zur Kritik der Hegelschen
Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung", Marx 1972, p.378-391.
61
He adds: "Conditions that cannot be better described than by the exclamation of a
Frenchman at a projected dog tax: Poor dogs! They want to treat you like humans" (Marx 1972, p.
385) and with this comparison to the animal he makes clear the implicit degradation.
 27

order then, but here only looking ahead, to propose a concept of dignity with which one could
reformulate Marx's intentions of his critique of alienation (b).

Ad a: Social conditions in which people are humiliated (“erniedrigt“) discriminate by

disregarding the justified value and elevated status of human beings and treating them e.g.
like an animal or like a lawless thing. They are social humiliations, which can happen in
different ways, through disregarding devaluation as well as through withholding necessary
food, impoverishment and absolute poverty. All this can be understood as a concretisation of
a negation of dignity. Conditions in which people are subjugated (“geknechtet“) are not only
unjust domination conditions, but they produce degrading unfreedom, violate the self-esteem
of a basically free person and depot them in their self-respect, thus leading to their
degradation as disregard for their freedom and degradation of their self-respect.

Social conditions in which people are abandoned beings (“verlassene Wesen“) expose them to
negative isolation, exclude them from their communities and leave them indifferent to their
fate. These are also experiences of degradation, because the experiences of self-esteem and
self-esteem necessary for a life in dignity are constitutively dependent on social relationships,
more precisely on recognition relationships by other people. Conditions in which people are
treated as disrespectful beings (“verächtliche Wesen”) hold the same respect and esteem in
store for them that is due to all people in the same way. Contempt in this sense produces
"primary discrimination" (Tugendhat 1993, p. 375f) and at the same time expresses disregard
for the same legal status that all human beings can claim according to their "dignity".

Ad b: The last explications of the concretizations of the above "categorical imperative"

already aimed at a concept of dignity that can only be found in rudiments in Marx and in the
socialist labor movement (Lohmann 2014, p. 126-134). It is basically no longer a special,
social or a general ethical or theological conception, but a human rights conception62
formulated in the context of legal human rights, which was only gradually developed after the
Second World War within the framework of the newly conceived international law, with the
founding of the United Nations (1945), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948),
the many international and regional human rights treaties, and the newly established national
constitutions.

62
For the distinction between these three types of conceptions of "dignity" and more detailed
information on the following brief characteristics, see Lohmann 2015, pp. 15-39.
 28

From a formal point of view, it is a conception of "dignity" that is ascribed politically,

formulated legally, and morally justifiable to all human beings simply because they are
human beings. In terms of content, this (newly defined) "human dignity" refers to the same
value and the same legal status of all human beings (equality), to their abilities to self-
determination (freedom), and to their claims to an appropriate (dignified) life (being able to
live). It demands that the bearers of human rights are also their (co-)authors, and thus justifies
having human rights.

In relation to this third, newly and differentiated conception of human dignity, one could now
reconstruct the different aspects of Marx's extended ethical diagnosis of alienation as different
ways of neations of dignity. This approach would have the advantage that it would allow the
ethical and moral aspects of alienation to be combined with the legal and political aspects
from the outset and, depending on the context, would lead to different assessments. At the
open end of this contribution, I can only refer to a text in which I have attempted to do so.
(Lohmann 2013, pp. 67-77)

Georg.Lohmann@ovgu.de

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