Karl Seldon on Karl Marx Series,
Part 2.
Seldon on the Marxian Theory of
“Self-Alienation”:
The Root Cause of Subjective Human
Self-Alienation Under Capitalism,
The Social Relation of Production
Social Praxis that [Continually
Re-]Produces Affective and Objective Social
Alienation in the Capitalist Epoch -- A ‘Psychohistorical-Materialist’
Analysis.
Dear Reader,
This new series -- “Karl Seldon on Karl Marx” -- is for the purpose of my presenting to you key excerpts from Karl Seldon’s discourses, among we of F.E.D., on the topic of the work of Karl Marx. This series continues -- in this Part 2 -- with a clarification of Marx’s lifelong and mature ‘‘‘psychohistorical’’’ analysis of human “alienation” within the integument of “the capital relation”.
[Seldon:] “Contrary to the claims of some
anti-Marxians, Marx never “abandoned” his view of the prevalence and centrality
of the «problematique» of
human-social alienation, both subjective and objective
-- that first surfaced in his early writings of the 1840s -- all the way from
those early writings to his most “mature” work on the immanent critique of the
ideology-vitiated “science” of capitalist classical political economy, in the
four [drafted] volumes of his «Das Kapital».”
“Instead, that theory of alienation became the very heart of
his critique of political economy:
self-alienation is the very essence of “the capital-relation” [Marx].”
“The beating heart of “the capital-relation” is wage-labor.”
“Wage-labor is, precisely, self-selling -- self-alienation -- a comprehensive system of
“universal prostitution” [Marx, Grundrisse], which is not restrictedly or primarily sexual prostitution, but is the prostitution of the total human person,
the giving up of ‘individual sovereignty’ and of control of one’s own
potentially creative life-activity, of ownership of one’s creations, and of the
purpose and meaning of one’s very life, to an alien will, for the better part
of one’s daily life, and for the better part of one’s entire
lifetime, in exchange for mere survival -- for the wage wherewithal to live to
work another day for that alien will, with, perhaps, enough wherewithal left
over to feed, to clothe, and to educate one’s children, e.g., to take one’s
place after one’s life has been “used-up” and thrown away.”
“Marx’s solution regarding the root cause, the economic
basis -- or, rather, the social relation of production and social praxis basis
-- of human social alienation in general, and the individual self-alienation
that resides at its causal core in particular, is sprinkled and applied
throughout his middle and final “mature”
works -- e.g., «Zur Kritik...» [A Contribution to
the Critique of Political Economy], and Capital: A Critique of Political Economy.”
“The problem has been that Marx’s more subjectivist and
‘existentialoid’ mis-interpreters have not
known how to read Marx’s frequent exhibitions of this solution in those works.”
“And, the ‘Leninoid’ would-be misleaders about Marx’s
theories have sought to suppress all understanding of the role of Marx’s theory
of alienation in his critique of capitalism, hoping that their readers will not
notice their perpetuation of that alienation in their plans, and in their
actualizations, of their perpetuation of wage-labor, in enslavement to the state -- to state-capital -- and in enslavement
to their state-bureaucratic ruling class, in their proto-state-capitalist, Orwellian dictatorships.”
“Even pre-capitalist production
for sale -- i.e., production of
commodities -- is production for alienation, for the dis-owning of
one’s products in return for money, producing products for ‘exchange-use’ -- rather
than for ‘consumption use’ by their immediate producers -- and, while it marks
progress for the development of the social-reproductive self-force of the human
species, it also already engenders a social praxis which produces and
reproduces problematic pre-capitalist forms of social alienation.”
“But daily [re]production of your self for the purpose of
daily self [re-]sale -- for daily wagéd [and salaried] labor -- is production
and reproduction of self mainly for self-alienation,
and is thus also the production and expanded reproduction of individual and social self-alienation itself; of
self-disowning; of self-estrangement.”
“And this incessant, ‘essence-ial’ social practice of
capitalism produces an alien social world, ‘a world of strangers’, a world
devoid of true human community, devoid of real human-social solidarity, and
devoid of non-monetary purpose and meaning, for most of its practitioners.”
“When we are too used to this world -- immersed in it, from
birth -- we may lose sensitivity, lose the ability to discern these tragedies,
unless or until certain healing and consciousness-inducing events engulf our
lives and our social self-identities.”
“This social praxis produces, and continually expandedly
reproduces, an alien world, a world of alienated objectifications, of
[self-]objectifications designed and owned, not by the human selves that, together, socially, produce
those [self-]objectifications; a world shaped per and owned by, not by the majority of human beings,
but, instead, designed and owned by the “logic” of capital, by capital
personified, by the ever-shrinking capitalist ruling class, an ever-tinier,
ever-more-deranged minority of “Dr. Strangeloves”, characterized by
ever-more-concentrated capital ownership, and pursuing an agenda which is
increasingly alien to, and contrary to, the interests, the needs, the
well-being of the majority, producing, class, opposed to the collective will of
that majority, and utterly and lethally subversive of the democracy that
capitalism championed in its ascendence phase.”
“The [socio-politico-]economic act of participating, per
force, in the wage-labor/capital social relation of production, and in its
social praxis, creates and daily recreates a social “base”, and a social “superstructure”,
permeated throughout its entire depth and breadth and height, from top to
bottom, by the historically-specific, capitalist brand of social alienation.”
“The root of modern self-alienation is none other than
self-selling, and self-selling is, precisely, wage-labor [and salaried labor].”
Wage-labor is the labor-side, the worker-side, the MAJORITY-side, of “the
capital-relation” as predominant “social relation of production” [Marx].”
“Self-alienation, alienated [sold] life-time, alienated
[sold] labor-time, alienated labor IS WHAT
CAPITAL IS ALL ABOUT -- it is WHAT CAPITAL IS MADE OF.”
For more information regarding
these Seldonian and Marxian
insights,
please see --
For ‘poster-ized’ visualizations of many of these Seldonian
and Marxian insights -- specimens of ‘dialectical art’ -- see:
¡ENJOY!
Regards,
Miguel Detonacciones,
Member, Foundation Encyclopedia
Dialectica [F.E.D.],
Participant, F.E.D.
Special Council for Public Liaison,
Officer, F.E.D.
Office of Public Liaison.
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