Communism as a Theory of Subjectivity. Xxxx'x discussion of the notion of communism in the Manuscripts is at times both abstract and complex. Having sought to elaborate the relationship between private property and labour through the employment of his understanding of estranged labour, Xxxx then explores the relationship of private property and communism. He advances a summary critique of different attitudes towards private property, such as Xxxxxxxx, Xxxxxxx and Saint Simon [EW, p.345]. For Xxxx, the abolition of private property must be its positive supersession, not a crude levelling down. Xxxx traces out the stages of a Hegelian process of supersession, passing through what he terms ‘crude communism’ to reach higher levels [EW, p.346]. Dialectics of Labour. Xxxx posits Xxxxxxxxx'x unity of man and nature in an un-problematised fashion. Firstly, it involves the assumption that “just because man is natural, nature can be humanized through the mediation of industry” (Xxxxxx, C Dialectics of Labour (Oxford: Xxxxxxxxx, 1986), p.133). Secondly in emphasising the “affirmative character of appropriation”, there is no real recognition of the “sheer recalcitrance of nature to human use” (Xxxxxx Dialectics of Labour, p.133). Xxxxxx points out that, for man, nature is a “continually surprising interlocutor” (Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxx of Labour, p.135). He argues however that the centrality of labour in Xxxx'x analysis has already begun in the Manuscripts to destabilise this insufficiently problematised notion of the unity of man and nature. Since the term, for us, has been subsequently charged with historical meaning, it is appropriate to clarify what the notion of communism in the Manuscripts is not. Xxxx asserts that “communism is not as such the goal of human development – the form of human society” [EW, p.358].38 Interpreted literally, this appears to contradict the commonly held view of communism as the form of society which comes about as a process following the achievement of a socialist society. Communism, far from being the end of history, says Xxxx, is “a real phase, necessary for the next period of historical development, in the emancipation and recovery of mankind” [EW, p.358]. In this context, communism appears to be a point of transition to an ever higher stage of humanity. Communism, he says, is the “act of positing as the negation of the negation”, giving rise to the possibility of socialist man and socialism, as the “positive self-consciousness of man” [EW, p.357]. Is there a tension between t...
