International Phenomenological Society

Marx and the Problem of Nihilism Author(s): David B. Myers Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Dec., 1976), pp. 193-204 Published by: International Phenomenological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2107191 . Accessed: 27/03/2014 18:30
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MARX AND THE PROBLEM OF NIHILISM In his study entitled Nihilism, Stanley Rosen argues that Marxian historicism is a form of nihilism. By historicism Rosen means the view that the good immanent in history and by nihilism he means the situation which obtains when "everything is permitted."' It seems clear that Marx holds that the good for man is realized through the historical process which gives rise to communism. However, if Rosen is correct, Marx cannot legitimately affirm the superiority of communist society over capitalist society. Marx criticizes capitalism because it alienates man, but Rosen doubts that Marxian theory can make sense of the notion of alienation. He maintains that it is impossible to construct a meaningful critique of society on the basis of what he calls a "historicist ontology."2 Such an ontology must either equate good with what happens or deny that there is any good; either way the result is nihilism. In adopting the view that man is only what he makes himself in history, Marx supposedly discredits his own concept of self-alienation; his "process" view of man seems to exclude objective (i.e., transhistorical) criteria for judging social and, economic structures. The notion that communism is somehow the ultimate realization of "man" is unintelligible within an ontology which views man as selfcreated. One can only say that man is in an absolute movement of becoming in which one phase of human becoming is different-not better or worse-than another. In Rosen's view if "becoming" is ultimate reality, then the rest must be "silence."3 Rosen argues that Marx's difficulty lies in his Hegelian heritage with its radically temporal view of man and- values. The view that history is merely the continual transformation of nature and human nature excludes a standard by which to measure human becoming. If needs and values are either biological or historical products there is no objective way of evaluating societies. Marx had despiritualized Hegel's view of nature and history; his philosophy took shape during the rebellion of the Young Hegelians, against the abstractions of Hegel; Marx, along with the Young Hegelians began by embracing militant atheism. His reading of Feuerbach encouraged him to move from atheism to socialist humanism. It is this transition which
1 Stanley Rosen, Nihilism: A Philosophy Essay. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969. p. xiii-xiv. 2 Ibid., p. 103. 3 Ibid., p. 202.

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appeared as a non sequitur to another Young Hegelian-Max Stirner. From Rosen's point of view it might be argued that Stirner discerned the essential nihilistic ingredient in secularized Hegelianism and boldly drew the consequence.4 In effect, Stirner concluded that "everything is permitted." Max Stirner's philosophy of nihilistic egoism-not Marxian humanism- may seem more consistent with an overthrow of suprahistorical values. The supremacy of the individual, a philosophy of unlimited self-assertion, rather than a philosophy of community, it may seem to follow from the death of God and transcendent norms. If values are human creations, it would seem that nothing is prohibited and everything is allowed. Marx, however, believed that his concept of man as self-created entailed communism-meaning that man must be characterized as self-alienated prior to the emergence of communist society. According to Rosen, Marx cannot consistently affirm both the notions of selfcreation and self-alienation. On Rosen's analysis Marx's philosophical anthropology involves a dilemma. If man creates himself in history, then there is no human essence from which he can be alienated. If on the other hand, man has a nature from which he can be separated, he cannot really create himself but only actualize his essence in an Aristotelian sense.5 The two horns of this dilemma can be more explicitly formulated. (1) The view that man makes himself means that there is no preconceived self from which he can be estranged. In order for man to be alienated from his true self- there would have to be a prior ideal of man, a possibility excluded by the view that man creates man. (2) If there is no transhistorical standard of humanhood, then all forms of self-manifestation are human manifestations, including the actualization of self through the acquisition of private property. In fact the Hegelian perspective in political philosophy declares that man realizes his essence through private property. At least Hegel could appeal to Geist as a sanction for his philosophical anthropology, whereas Marx can only appeal to a despiritualized history-a history which consists of events, not value judgments. Given Marx's historicist ontology no mode of self-creation can be conceived as superior to any other. One can have a notion of self-creation or a notion of self-alienation, but not both. This, at least, is the thrust of Rosen's critique of Marx.
4 Max Stirner,, The Ego and His Own, trans. S. Byington. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1971. Oddly enough Rosen only refers to Stirner once (in a footnote). Stirner, however, drew the very conclusions that Rosen believes to follow from the premises of a historicist ontology. 5 Rosen, Nihilism, p. 201.

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In opposition to Rosen 1 will argue that Marx's concepts of selfcreation and self-alienation are consistent. I believe that Rosen's dilemma is a false one based upon a misunderstanding of Marx's philosophical anthropology. MARX'S PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY Marx's concept of self-alienation does not require an appeal to a transhistorical human essence; rather it is rooted in features immanent in human existence. One of these features can be summed up by the phrase "social planning"-meaning by this man's capacity to master nature and take care of basic needs through conscious cooperation with other individuals. This collective power to conquer and to shape the physical world in order to satisfy material needs is the basis for the greatest specific difference, according to Marx-namely the desire to engage in work (productive activity) beyond what is necessary for the reproduction of material existence. In fine, the capacity to cooperate in the conscious planning of economic production and consumption (as opposed to automatic or instinctual social organization) and the capacity for creative work are for Marx the main features which distinguish human life from animal existence. Thus when Marx writes about self-alienation he means that man is arbitrarily and artificially separated from his capacity to cooperate with others in shaping ,sis environment-from participating in decision making concerning economic as well as political matters- and from his capacity to creatively express his individuality in artistic activity. Though the conditions produced by capitalism are such as to make these capacities realizable, human activity is in fact limited and predetermined by the narrow categories of class society. The individual becomes a personification of an economic class rather than a self-defining individual. Alienation means that human existence is frozen into fixed social forms so that persons appear to themselves and to others to be identical with their economic roles. Labor is distributed in such a way that each worker has a particular, limiting sphere of activity, and labor is divided so that most individuals work with their hands while some work with their minds.6 This division engenders a feeling of replaceability and valuelessness in the manual workers in relation to the respectable and truly significant work of the decision makers in industry. Supposedly some individuals have the privilege of establishing their worth as human beings while
6 Karl Marx, Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, ed. and trans. Easton and Guddat. New York: Anchor Books, 1967. p. 438.

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others must accept and daily create a mindless existence. The fact that a person is not really summed up by his economic function-by one of the mechanical activities capitalist society assigns him-and the fact that he could express his personality in work and outside the factory without the limitations imposed by capitalism-namely consumption and production controlled by profit maximization-are facts repressed by the ideology of capitalism. In fine, the social and individual possibilities for creative self-expression are alienated ("yielded up") under capitalism. It might seem that Marx is arguing that capitalism prevents individuals from unlimited self-assertion by defining them in terms of class status or job instead of allowing them to define themselves. If so, Stirnerian egoism might appear to be the path to freedom. Why should the individual throw off the restrictions of capitalism only to accept the limitations of socialism? If man creates himself, why should an individual accept any limits as long as he has the skill and power to get what he wants? Granted that capitalism is oppressive of individuality, is this not also true of socialism insofar as it demands that I cooperate with others for a common good. Marx's answer seems to reside in his view of human psychology. That is, contrary to most interpretations, Marx does not have a completely relativistic view of man. Man, according to Marx, has a nature. Man not only has a capacity but he has a primary need to express his individuality in creative labor.' This need is itself social because it is tied to the desire to create for others- to be perceived by others as a significant human being. Not only does man have a need to objectify his personality, but he needs to feel that his products satisfy human needs.8 This may be summarized by saying that the fundamental need of man is to objectify himself for others as a subject-object needed for their own human completion. This is simply the desire to objectively establish one's worth for oneself and for others. Thus, the need for creative self-objectification-for actualizing one's individuality-can be fulfilled only in relations with others; man needs man in order to establish his reality and value. This is how Marx essentially connects the notion of man as maker of himself to the concept of man as a social being. The individual needs a world of unalienated products in order to be at home in external reality; in order to make the world
7 Karl Marx, "Critique of the Gotha Programme" in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected Works in One Volume. New York: International Publishers, 1969. p. 324. 8 Writings of the Young Marx, p. 287. For evidence that the later Marx still held that man has a nature see Capital. New York: Modern Library, 1957. Vol. I, p. 668.

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his own, he must be able to perceive it as the free realization of beings like himself. Man will see himself mirrored in the world only when the world is composed of objects reflecting free, conscious activity (unalienated labor). Instead of reflecting or mirroring human creativity, the commodity world of advanced capitalism distorts it, because one does not really grasp the human in products stamped with market values and mediated by money; such articles manifest dehumanized and mechanized activity. Within capitalism, the world of human objects multiplies while appearing more and more as alien material powers which sap not only human creativity but the fertility of nature. Not only man but plants, animals, and the earth are turned into commodities which are pumped of their profit-producing potential. The Other encountered in a capitalistic world-whether it be a person, product, or natureappears in an estranged form: it appears other than it really is. The Other I confront in this society appears as an alien Other with which I have no essential bond, save the cash nexus. The Other in commercial society is a pimp for capital-a being (whether it be a commodity or a smiling merchant) disposed to seduce from me my economic essence-money.9 It is an environment of mutual suspicion, a society of calculating egoists, and in fact a "civilized" illustration of Hobbes' war of each against all. Who can be at home in this world of reciprocal manipulation and economic insecurity? Clearly, the answer is those who are most successful at the exploitation of human and natural resources, those who are financially secure through inheritance, and of course those who make a living by developing theories by which we can comprehend the complex and marvelous operations of capitalist economy. For the majority the problem of homelessness can only be solved by creating a world in which all human beings are allowed to express their lives in a relatively creative and self-managing fashion-where each has the positive aim of satisfying others as well as himself. It should now be clear that Marx's notion of "human nature" is not an a priori form, but an equivocal term embracing: (1) the teleological activity which distinguishes man from animals; (2) the palpable result of this activity: humanized nature; and (3) the need for (I) and (2), that is, the personal need for purposeful work as well as the need for a humanized world. Stanley Rosen's charge that Marxian humanism presupposes an a priori recognition of the essence of the human- that the very idea of recognizing someone or something as
9 Karl Marx, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, trans. M. Milligan. New York: International Publishers, 1965. p. 148.

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human presupposes a standard transcendent of productive activityis mistaken." There is no eternal form of Man governing Marx's judgment that an individual or a phenomenon is human or inhuman in its appearance. A Gattungswesen is for Marx a being who manifests free and creative powers and who expresses an essential need for objects produced by such powers. Marx in using the word human is trying to capture external and internal features which objectively distinguish persons from animals, much as one might try to say what distinguishes animals from plants. Marx believed that reflection on these objective characteristics would make it clear that there is a contradiction between what individuals essentially (potentially) arei.e., what they have the power to be under proper conditions-and how they exist (appear) in the given society. Marx contends that capitalism has created the potential-i.e., the conditions-for a realization of "human nature" in the three senses discussed above, while simultaneously alienating individuals from this realization. The alienation from human nature in sense (1) entails alienation from human nature in the other two senses. In failing to realize his creative potential the worker is also prevented from experiencing the world as an objectification of creative praxis-and consequently feels estranged from his own activity and the world. Marx believed that the practical creation of an objective world (e.g., roads, buildings, railways, machines, government, etc.) was sensuous evidence that man is a conscious being-an object-creating being who does not have to submit to the givenness of things, but who can make things conform to his conscious design. Moreover, Marx believed that the only way an individual could prove his humanity was to gain conscious control over his natural and social environments and significantly participate in their transformation. Marx did not believe that a creature who could not express himself in conscious, free activity was, properly speaking, a human being. This is the idealism and ideology of ethical humanism. It is an empty and reactionary humanism which declares that because a creature has the physical features of a human being, he is therefore a person. Personhood is established by free and conscious praxis. The essence of the human does not coincide with the existence of creatures with human bodies. The reduction of essence to existence was Feuerbach's conservative materialism. Marx's concern to preserve the distinction between essence and existence was not an aberration of his youthful humanism. In The German Ideology, which is considered by Louis Althusser and others as the point at which Marx "breaks" away from his concern with "human essence," Marx argues against Feuerbach's collapse of
10 Rosen, Nihilism,

p. 201.

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the essence-existence distinction on the grounds that this shows a misunderstanding of reality. The following is from hitherto missing pages of The German Ideology:
As an example of Feuerbach's acceptance and at the same time misunderstanding of existing reality, something he still shares with our opponents, we recall the passage in his Philosophy of the Future where he develops the view that the existence of a thing or a man is at the same time its essence, that the conditions of existence, the mode of life, and the activity of the animal or human individual are those in which its or his "essence" feels satisfied. Here every exception is expressly conceived as an unfortunate accident and unalterable abnormality. If millions of proletarians in no way feel contented with their conditions of life, if their "existence" does not correspond to their "essence," this is an unavoidable misfortune which must be borne quietly. The millions of proletarians and communists, however, think differently and will prove this when they bring their "existence" into harmony with their "essence" in a practical way, by means of revolution. . . . The "essence" of the fish is its "existence," water - to go no further than this one proposition. The "essence" of the freshwater fish is the water of a river. But this ceases to be the "essence" of the fish and is no longer a suitable medium of existence as soon as the river is made to serve industry, as soon as it is polluted by dyes and other waste products and navigated by steamboats, when its water is diverted into canals and the fish is deprived of its medium of existence by simple drainage. The explanation that all such contradictions are inevitable abnormalities does not essentially differ from the consolation which the Blessed Max Stirner offers to the discontented, saying that this contradiction is their own contradiction and this predicament their own predicament, and that they should relax, or keep their disgust to themselves, or revolt against it in some fantastic way.11

What Marx is resisting is the conclusion that it is an "unalterable abnormality" that industry must develop in such a way as to destroy the capacities and supporting environments of living beings. For Marx (though in the above quotation he uses the term somewhat sarcastically) the "essence" of a being is its capacity for realization within an environment appropriate to its needs and potentialities. Marx rejects the assumption that industry must advance by destructively exploiting man and nature. The process of tearing away the support system from living beings or forcing creatures to live in a polluted or unhealthy atmosphere is called by 'Marx a "contradiction." A contradiction occurs when a productive system can only create by a process which ends in destruction, i.e., when productive forces become destructive powers. The system then becomes irrational and without justification. In the case of human beings the fact that they do not have to suffer damaged health and estrangement as a result of advancing technology is a truth which can only be established by their actually bringing industry under conscious, collective control and
11 Karl

Marx, Writings of the Young Marx, pp. 436-437.

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making it an expression of their Gattungsverm5gen ("species" or social capabilities). Only then will the relation between man and man, and man and nature be rationally regulated so that economic progress positively expresses the cooperative powers of persons while avoiding the self-defeating exhaustion of natural forces."2 Given Marx's immanent and practically verifiable notion of human realization, can it be said that he avoids nihilism? If nihilism means unbridled egoism where every individual seeks to maximize his power or pleasure no matter what the consequences for other persons or nature, Marx believes that this is the meaning (or meaninglessness) of capitalist society. Moreover, he thinks he can show why this does not follow from the original atheism he embraced, along with Feuerbach and Stirner, as a Young Hegelian.To avoid nihilistic egoism, according to Marx, one need not resort to transcendent values, but only to two practical arguments, one negative and the other positive. The negative argument is a Hobbesian one; it holds that this kind of life-unbridled egoism-is self-defeating and eternally insecure; even if everyone only values his own power or pleasure, these possessions are always threatened in a "civil" war (capitalism) of each against all; those who win power are ever threatened by those out of power-so long as society is plagued by class conflict. To the emerging majority-the proletariat, according to Marx's projectionhe can argue that the struggle for wealth and political power is necessarily rigged in favor of the bourgeoisie and that, as isolated workers, they are bound to be exploited. Only in a society in which the development and freedom of each is the condition of the development and freedom of all is it possible to rid the life of the working masses of insecurity and frustration. In communism the tedious and menial jobs will be distributed so that all individuals will at one time or another do such worktherefore, labor will no longer have a class character. Since technology will become increasingly man-independent and capable of producing a superabundance of goods-both luxuries and necessities -the time allocated to material production can be reduced and the time available for free, creative activity increased. Moreover, socialist production will eliminate the basis for competition-the problem of scarcity. By making full use of all persons able to work and by fully using the potential of technology, Marx believes that the competitive struggle to acquire goods and the paradox of unemployment in the midst of exhausting labor can be eliminated. Where deprivation,
12 Karl

Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 554.

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destructive competition, and alienation are unnecessary, they become irrational and indefensible. There is a "no one loses, everyone wins" thrust to this negative argument for communism. Marx's positive argument for communism has already been discussed. Marx can answer the egoist by saying that his fulfillment as an individual can only take place in community. The individual positively needs others for self-realization in the sense described above. Self-creation is a social act and the satisfaction of the creative impulse is maximized in relations with others. Are these arguments for communism responsive to the problem of nihilism? Perhaps it will be said that the most that has been shown is that Marx can provide an answer to the radical egoist; even from an egoistic point of view-according to Marx-the most satisfying life would be in communist society, where all of man's material needs will be fulfilled and the recognition of his personal worth guaranteed. This psychological case for communism may still leave unresolved the question of whether Marx would have to concede that everything, at least in principle, is permitted. Rosen wants to argue that Marx would have to make this concession. If man creates himself, thenaccording to Rosen-he has no ideal nature to realize. Since man makes himself, it really does not matter what he does. The very notion that a way of life or a society is inhuman becomes unintelligible. If there is no normative human essence, then there is no moral standard by which individual lives or social structures may be measured, condemned, or approved. On this view, it must be conceded that everything is permissible. If all that can be said about man is that he shapes himself in various ways in the course of making history-if it is impossible to ascribe to man any a priori essence-then does it not follow that all forms of self-creation are equally human? All we have is a neutral human ontology, the theory that man is that being who transforms nature, and in doing so, continually changes his own nature. It would appear that everything which occurs in history is equally human. Within this historicist ontology can one legitimately argue that Stalinist totalitarianism is less human than worker selfmanagement? Rosen appears to argue that Marx can avoid nihilism only by lapsing into theoretical incoherence. As Rosen sees it Marx wants both to affirm and to exclude an objective and knowable "nature" according to which social reality can be measured. Marx's philosophical anthropology is alleged to be incoherent because it conceives man's nature to be both discoverable prior to human work upon nature and to be created in the process of changing the external world. Rosen states:

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On the basis of Marx's analysis, men cannot come into being, since they must first exist in order to create themselves. If, on the other hand, the human species is eternal, then man does not make himself but at best only fulfills his nature in an Aristotelian sense. The ostensibly objective, external nature out of which Marx says men create themselves, since it is in fact inaccessible, is effectively equivalent to nothingness. It is impossible for Marx to overcome the dualism or contradiction between man and nature because he does not, as he believes, end with Humanism as the conclusion of work upon nature; he begins with it. If nature is the product of human work, namely, of thought or speech, it cannot serve as the principle, standard, or objective measure of human speech.13

Rosen's charge of incoherence is, I think, based upon a misinterpretation of Marx's concept of man-what I have previously characterized as Marx's attempt to specify a complex of potentialities and needs which objectively and subjectively distinguish human beings from other animals. Marxian alienation is not alienation from the Human taken in some abstract sense, but alienation from the capacity to satisfy material needs through social cooperation and from the capacity to creatively objectify one's personality in work upon nature. Marx's claims-( 1) that the economy can be cooperatively and rationally planned, (2) that man has a basic need to objectify himself in work, and (3) that alienated work can be abolished-are not confirmed by looking at history or at contemporary social reality; rather they are claims to be established by a revolutionary experiment, the building of a communist society. When Marx writes of man making himself, he refers to his belief that individuals are how they objectify themselves in work upon nature. As George Kline views Marx's philosophic anthropology: "To exist, for Marx-even the young Marx-is not enough. To be human, or rather to become human, one must make, must produce-which means that one must objectify, impose an enduring human shape on what is nonhuman.""4 But Kline's interpretation remains incomplete, for Marx's notion of human self-creation does not reduce to the mere process of self-objectification in productive labor. Animals produce and make things, but according to Marx, only man has the capacity to make the world conform to his conscious design-to conceive a plan and realize it in nature. Only when objectification in nature is the product of thoughtful and self-determined work is the labor distinctively human. According to Marx, work which is merely mechanical, involving little use of mind and cooperative planning, does not
13 Rosen, Nihilism, p. 201.

14George Kline, "The Existentialist Rediscovery of Hegel and Marx" in Sartre: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. M. Warnock. New York: Anchor Books, 1971. p. 308.

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constitute human self-creation. The compatibility of the concepts of self-alienation and self-creation should now be clear. Alienation is alienation from self-objectification in cooperative and premeditated work. There is human self-creation only when the individual is making maximum use of his intellectual and cooperative capacities. Human self-creation so conceived is achieved by only a minority in capitalist society. It is, however, only with the emergence of capitalism that the great waste of human potential has become unnecessary. Private ownership of the means of production artificially prevents the universal human realization made possible by advances in technology. In precapitalistic periods only a minority of the human species could realize its distinctively human nature because there was a real scarcity of material goods and because most individuals had to spend their lives struggling to make a living. With the development of productive forces by capitalism the only reason for the lack of human development-due to alienating work, unemployment, or poverty-is capitalism's arbitrary concentration of wealth (and the means for producing and distributing goods) in the hands of a few. For Marx the special form of dehumanization which capitalism creates is the path to a real humanism. The human possibilities, however, can be released only by the revolution which overthrows capitalism. Conclusion Marx's aim was to show that man's need for value could be satis-' fied without transcending history. To maintain that the good is immanent in history is not equivalent to asserting that it is identical with history. Marx was not a historicist-as Rosen uses the term-for he did not equate the good with "what happens." Rosen believes that Marx must hold that everything which happens in history is permissible. Marx's standard is the human, but not all acts in history qualify as human in Marx's special sense. In fact throughout history most individuals have objectified themselves in an inhuman way. This is why Marx describes the precommunist period as 'prehistory,' for it has been a time in which social existence has been an unconscious product of human activity. Only when individuals consciously determine their own lives and bring the material world under cooperative control does 'history' in the proper sense begin. Far from opening the door to the "everything is permissible" dictum, Marx's criteria were in fact restrictive. What happens in history is good (i.e., human) (1) only if it involves the "self-liberation""5 of a hitherto oppressed
15See Marx's "General Rules of the International Working Men's Association" in Karl Marx: On the First International, ed. and trans. Saul Padover (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), p. 13.

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class and (2) only it this class creates a classless society in which no one is allowed to develop his personality and satisfy his material needs in such a way as to prevent the human development of other individuals. Given these standards for a communist revolution, Marx's critique of alienation can be directed not only at capitalist societies but-as Svetozar Stojanovic has pointed out-it also serves as a critique of socialism in its Stalinist forms."6If nihilism is the situation which obtains when "everythng is permitted," Marxism, as conceived by Marx, is not nihilism. DAVID B. MYERS.
H EAD STATE U NIVERS11Y,. MOOR

16 Svetozar Stojanovic, Between Ideals and Reality: A Critique of Socialism and IIs Future, trans. George Sher. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. pp. 3-16.

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