The Marx-Engels Reader

Essay: Alienation from Humanity, on Marx and Mill 2005-06-07 The modern age is a dangerous age, an age in which we might be alienated from that individual independence in work and in mind which defines our humanity. Confronted by this crisis, Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill offer the world diverging solutions: annihilate the existing world and march toward communism, or guard against the dangers of the existing world as we further embrace liberal democracy. Despite these divergent paths which arise from differing views on the driving force of history, both systems aim to rescue the supreme interest of our individual humanity-for Marx, this interest lies in reaching absolute prosperity for the material man, and for Mill, it lies in the search for absolute truth for the idealistic man.

With its emphasis on individuality and diversity, Mill's theory is in a sense more encompassing than Marx's. Mill's theory, however, is fundamentally flawed in comparison to Marx's because of its ignorance of property as a danger against human liberty.

Marx sees in the industrial age the death of the property-less class. This death is brought by the industrial age's five qualities: division of labor, accumulation of capital, competition, financial crisis, and monopoly. In this age, machineries and the division of labor reduce the skillful artisans to the proletariats who merely work on one monotonous element of production. The capitalists who own the machines enlarge their capital by exploiting the proletariat's labor, leaving them only with enough to eat. Competition forces capitalists to lower prices, but this is good only until each factory produces more than demanded and a financial crisis emerges. The small capitalists are reduced to the property-less as millions of workers are swept into deeper hell. Only the biggest capitalist survives, and he becomes the monopolist who can lower wages and raise prices at whim, destroying the lives of all. (Part 1, Bourgeois and Proletarians, Manifesto of the Communist Party)

The above scenario is unavoidable because the accumulation of more capital is the only end of capital. If the capitalist stops investing capital for gains he ceases to be a capitalist, and becomes a mere consumer of goods, enjoying the fruits of old exploitations. Tragically, capital can only increase when it exploits the difference of what labor costs and labor produces, as Marx writes,

"The modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few." (Marx p484)

The rich man sitting in his patio who has inherited a million pound and who lets others manage his money has not done anything to deserve profits, indeed, since he himself did not work, his profits must come from the works of others who he exploits. In the capitalistic system, there exists no pity, only keen self-interest, "all are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use..." (Marx p479)

The workers might die, but before their body ceases to be exploited, their mind is already died-capitalism has alienated them from their humanity which is defined by their creative productivity. This alienation from our humanity was Marx's greatest worry. Animals make nests and produce goods just as we do, however, as Marx writes,

"...a bee would put many a human architect to shame by the construction of its honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax... Man not only effects a change of form in the materials of nature; he also realizes his own purpose in those materials." (Chapter 7, Das Kapital)

In order to freely produce as the creativity of his mind directs him and as his productive ability allows, the material man must be endowed with control over the means of production. In the world of private property, however, the workers have turned from the master of production to the slave of the machine-they are reduced to programmed animals that produce merely for the end of survival.

The proletariat can only reassert his humanity by violent overthrowing the capitalists and through the "abolition of private property" (Marx p484). Once in communism, the workers will own the means of production and enjoy the full produces of their labor. He will be motivated to constantly transform the world into a more prosperous kingdom. As Marx writes, "In communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer." (Marx p485) The abundance of material goods will allow man to work not for survival, but for his own enjoyment. In this society, there will be no family and nor religion, everything is made for the love of all and enjoyed by all. Any vestiges of private interest would result in the return to capitalism with all its evils.

To Mill, the modern life is also threatening because the voice of the majority might alienate men from their individuality. The differentiation of society is essential for the vitality of the society, and this vitality empowers men on their search for truth.

Political debates, according to Mill, have been about striking the balance between the ruler and ruled. It is necessary for the ruled to have a ruler in order to preserve peace and law, yet the elected or unelected ruler's power must be restrained so that he does not abuse it against the ruled. In contrast to Marx's class struggle, this "struggle between liberty and authority" (p59) from Mill is more amiable. In the current era of democratic nations, however, since the ruled are also the rulers, the opposition no longer exists. People feel that all actions taken by the people's government will be good for the people, and hence they lose the old vigilance against the invasion of public power into their private spheres. The voice of the majority becomes the equivalent of the truth and justice.

Mill is worried that this majority voice will obstruct man's search for truth, the attaining of which is the goal of life. Truth is not reached once and then preserved for eternity, it is an organic being with a thousand facets whose survival requires continued inputs of each person's active mind. This truth is the individual treasure of each being, fitting perfectly to his taste and preferences; yet it is also a truth for the whole community, since it is only through the struggles of different truths that humanity as a whole reaches a higher truth-a higher level for the activation of the mind. As Mill writes, "There is always need of persons not only to discover new truths and point out when what were once truths are true no longer" (p71) If the majority religion is the only religion and taste the only taste, then people will no longer think but simply follow; society will be bogged into the swamp of mediocrity with a mind that is dead. Marx also feared the death of the mind, the mind of the creative worker. Despite the differences, both philosophers are concerned about the destruction of man's defining qualities.

To counter this, Mill proclaims that the only defense for "interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection." (p68). The government must be restrained in the sphere of public affairs, and individuals shall live as free as they want to following their individual passions.

Marx and Mill both want to regain humanity. In one case, the enemy is the benumbing effects of majority rule, and man's mind for truth is debased forever into mediocrity, in the other case, the enemy comes from the benumbing effects of subjugation to the machine, and the man is turned from the master of production into the slaves of capital.

The core difference between the two theories in practical operation arises from their different views on individuality (both systems serve individuals as their ends, however, individuality, allowing people to be different, are treated differently). For Mill, we must preserve individuality to bring truth (Chapter 3, On Liberty), but for Marx, the destruction of private property is the only task. The communistic society will be a union in which man can "...hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner..." (The German Ideology). This free life of a communist in communism is all good until one day the comrade does not want to be a communist anymore-but he must be one, there is no choice. In Communism, one does not have the individual liberty to have families, nor try to build a little store of private wealth.

On the other side, if someone in Mill's world decides to be a communist, he has the full right to do so. He can even segregate himself away with his friends and enjoy the life of a commune. In another word, Marxism can not destroy Mill's democracy-it will just be one of the many ways of thinking allowed by the system-but Mill's cry for diversity will destroy Marx's world within a second.

Confronted with the above, Marx would reply like he did in the Jewish Question, that the so-called liberty and freedom of the capitalistic world are nothing other than man's desire to keep himself a self-sufficient nomad. As he writes, all the rights of man are simply "the right to enjoy one's fortune and to dispose of it as one will; without regard for other men and independently of society." (Marx, p42) Marx will say that only seeing the superficial political liberation is not to see the deeper human liberation which could only be achieved with the abolition of private property. Marx might not be completely right, but he does stand at a higher ground than Mill in this analysis of property.

Mill in On Liberty is focused solely on avoiding the abuse of power through government, but he ignores the abuses that property owners are capable of against the property-less. In an agricultural society where everyone is equal and land unlimited, the government might be the only thing capable of suppressing individual liberty, but when one sees child-labor and 12 hour work day in modern industrial society, there is no doubt that capital could be a pitiless monster. Even when one ignores the industrial age, and tries to give Mill credit for drawing the best possible life for the pre-industrial man, one still can not avoid noticing the subjugation of the slaves, the suffering of the serfs, and all the other dark stories of the property-less in all the ages previous to the industrial one which Marx gives a full account of.

Marx and Mill were faced with the same modern phenomenal, the danger of been alienated from the defining quality of humanity in the face of a new economic and a new political system. Marx might not have made the best analysis, but he did have a deep understanding of history and the problems in history. He stood at the level of the common people and tried to solve their problems caused by their material desperation. Mill did not stoop to the common people, he looked up into the sky of truth and tried to preserve the march toward truth first embarked on by Plato.

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