Rising above Political Economy = Communism Sample Clauses

Rising above Political Economy = Communism. In the Manuscripts, Xxxx poses two different, but perhaps commensurable, projects: that of rising above political economy and that of communism understood as the positive transcendence of private property. I will ask whether these two projects can be understood as being equivalent to each other. In the former, there is a movement to develop an immanent critique based on political economy’s premises, language and its laws. The continuity of this method with Xxxx’x later writings, such as Capital, might be presumed from its subtitle: A Critique of Political Economy. Although political economy tends to legitimise the class rule of the bourgeoisie, Xxxx recognises that it has “formulated the laws of estranged labour” [EW, p.332]. In the Manuscripts, Xxxx is critical of political economy, but accepts much of its content. He directs his criticism primarily at its philosophical pre-suppositions: for reducing man to the individual, stripped of all determinateness, and classified as a capitalist or a worker [EW, p.369]. However Xxxx also recognises that it is only through engaging with the achievements of political economy that a scientific study of the division of labour can be mounted. It is necessary to discover therefore how the project of rising above political economy is related to communism, the latter project in this equation. For Xxxx, estranged labour, as human activity within alienation, cannot be transcended merely in thought alone. The practical and concrete supersession of estranged labour requires the raising to consciousness of the social nature of labour. This social nature is expressed economically as the division of labour. Although raising the social nature of labour to consciousness is not an act of supersession in itself, it is a positive advance to have attained this consciousness, and a necessary part of the overall process of supersession [EW, p.365]. Xxxx’x critique of crude communism follows the form of a Hegelian dialectical process. It can be seen, argues Xxxx, “how the history of industry and the objective existence of industry as it has developed is the open book of the essential powers of man” [EW, p.355]. Through this open book it becomes possible to conceive of a materialist conception of the history of production. Thus Xxxx claims that, “Industry is the real historical relationship of nature, and hence of natural science, to man” [EW, p.355]. In contending that man's essential powers have an “exoteric revelation”, I would argue th...