Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Socialism introduces a new way of thinking about human fulfillment. Private property renders people subject to the alien power of money, constantly infusing them with new desires even as the value of their money decreases. A vicious cycle ensues where a person spends all their money on luxuries, making them desperate to earn more money which they then fritter away once more. Private property cannot satisfy genuine human wants, especially for sociability, in large part because it degrades the person to the point where they are locked in an endless struggle with everyone else for financial advantage. They will readily flatter, deceive, threaten, and debase themselves as long as it retains the prospect of making money. Capitalism has alienated human beings from one another, and even from nature itself, trapping them in factories or overcrowded apartments, or else being kicked out into filthy city streets. Such people are worse off than even animals, unable to enjoy even basic sensory pleasures as they subsist on substandard food. According to the capitalist, they have simplified human life to the need for money and the consequent performance of a rote mechanical task. The more someone debases themselves, the more capitalism rewards them as the ideal worker and punishes anyone who seeks out more. On the other side are those who keep production going to satisfy their ever-expanding need for luxury, which renders them indolent. As both the wealthy and the poor have lost connection with genuine human wants, the differences between them are surprisingly marginal.

The supposed “virtue” of thrift demands moral behavior from the worker while depriving them of the basic human qualities that inform moral behavior. To follow the laws of modern political economy is to reject any meaningful ethical prescription, including selling one’s friend into slavery. Political economy even seeks to control the act of procreation, since it sees an excess of workers as deleterious to its profit margins. Since all needs have become degraded under capitalism, the average worker’s need for cheap drink and entertainment is more authentic than all the luxuries of the rich.

Communism will achieve political equality, enhanced self-consciousness, and a return to real, practical needs. Communism postulates the need for the abolition of property, and all that remains is for humans to carry it out—admittedly a difficult task, but it helps to have the goal defined. The very act of workers associating helps to illustrate the theoretical principle of human brotherhood toward which they are striving. In the past, one could acquire a horse and sword and earn a degree of freedom concerning mobility and self-defense. Under the rule of money, the worker is never truly at home, constantly at the mercy of strangers. While the wealthy flaunt their luxuries, the worker knows themselves to be hollow, having sacrificed themselves to something which itself has no intrinsic worth but serves only to satisfy momentary whims. The cupidity of the capitalist will bring most of them to ruin as increased production lowers interest rates. The only true winners will be those whose investments generate enough profits to offset the costs of their pleasures since the accumulation of money is for them the truest of all pleasures.

Marx then returns to familiar ground, predicting the imminent fall of the landowners at the hands of industrial capital, how the division of labor has isolated the individual from themselves and the community, and the triumph of private property as the accumulation of labor into the hands of owners rather than laborers. He then turns to extended quotations from Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, followed by his commentary. Smith admits that an increasingly complicated economy forces the individual to expand their capacities in line with market demands. Mill admits, quite explicitly, that the production of commodities requires the isolation of human beings into mechanical functions and that the greatest good is to create as many products at the lowest possible unit cost. For both, the human being is explicitly subjugated to the needs of profit, and the diversity of humanity is celebrated only to the extent that it can satisfy a range of economically viable tasks.