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Karl Marx's Individualistic Conception of the Good Life

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KARL MARX’S INDIVIDUALISTIC CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD LIFE Jan Kandiyali Thesis Submitted for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy Department of Philosophy University of Sheffield January 2014 i ABSTRACT This thesis provides an interpretation and critical examination of Karl Marx’s vision of the good life, a vision that is potent but also notoriously unspecified and opaque. It makes three major interpretive claims. First, it argues that at the heart of Marx’s vision is an uncompromising commitment to ethical individualism, the view that the ultimate value and goal of human societies is the self-realisation of individuals. This individualism is explored through an examination of Marx’s critique of the division of labour (Chapter 2) and hostility to social roles (Chapter 3). Second, it argues that Marx’s ideas about the good life are not of a piece but change in crucial respects throughout his lifetime. For instance, it is argued that Marx gives different arguments in different texts as to why community is necessary for self-realisation (Chapter 3), and different arguments, too, about whether labour or leisure constitutes the true realm of self-realisation under communism (Chapter 4). Third, while Marx’s views do indeed change in crucial respects throughout his lifetime, it argues that these changes cannot be understood in terms of a break between the ‘early’ and ‘late’ Marx, as is commonly claimed. Rather, it argues that Marx oscillated between different conceptions of the good life throughout his lifetime, never fully settling on one. On top of these interpretive claims, the thesis also addresses the question of which, if any, of Marx’s visions provides the most feasible and desirable foundation for a Marxist conception of the good life today. Here, it is argued that in the concluding paragraphs of the ‘Comments on James Mill’s Éléments D’économie Politique’ (hereafter the Comments) Marx puts forward a richer and more plausible conception of the good life than that which he put forward in other texts. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS One of the nice things about finishing a PhD is having the opportunity to thank everyone who helped me write it. My first thanks must go to my mentors, Chris Bennett and Bob Stern. Chris has been brilliant. He has provided insightful comments on numerous drafts of the chapters that follow, and has been extremely generous (and unfailingly patient) with his guidance and support. It has been a real pleasure working with him. Bob’s involvement in this project goes back to his supervision of my MA thesis in 2008. In the intervening years he has remained a constant source of friendly encouragement and good ideas. I am immensely grateful to him for that. I am also grateful to Andrew Vincent whose enthusiasm for ideas and encyclopaedic knowledge of political theory were much appreciated at the outset of this project. I would also like to thank two undergraduate teachers of mine, Anthony Arblaster and Mary Vincent, whose courses prompted me to consider further graduate study and inspired an interest in the intricacies of Marxist ideas. I am also conscious of how much I owe to a number of other people who have provided invaluable comments and criticisms of my work, or discussed the themes of this thesis with me. In particular, I would like to thank Jess Begon, Andrew Chitty, Josh Forstenzer, Carl Fox, Paul Giladi, David James, Meade McCloughan, Douglas Moggach, Frederick Neuhouser, Jonathan Parry, Jeffrey Reiman, Sean Sayers and Joe Saunders. In addition, I would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for the scholarship that funded his PhD thesis. I would not have been able to undertake this research without their financial assistance. Thanks of a different sort must go to my family, friends and Hannah who have provided a different, but no less important, form of support and encouragement during the completion of this thesis. iii CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 1. THE PROBLEMS OF MARX’S VISION OF THE GOOD LIFE 6 1.1. Two Doubts 6 1.2. The Problem of Determinism 13 1.3. The Problem of Perfectionism 17 1.4. The Problem of Utopianism 22 1.5. Conclusion 28 2. ALL-ROUND DEVELOPMENT AND THE ABOLITION OF THE DIVISION OF LABOUR 30 2.1. Schiller and Marx on the Division of Labour 31 2.2. The ‘Hunt in the Morning’ Passage 37 2.3. Free Self-Realisation 44 2.4. All-Round Development and its Critics 47 2.5. All-Round Development and Division of Labour 52 2.6. Conclusion 55 3. THE ABOLITION OF SOCIAL ROLES 57 3.1. Self-Realisation and Community 58 3.2. The Abolition of Social Roles 63 3.3. Two Models of Marxian Community 63 3.4. Marx, Hegel and Mill Compared 71 3.5. The Communitarian Critique of Marx 80 3.6. Conclusion 85 4. FREEDOM AND NECESSITY IN MARX’S VISION OF THE GOOD LIFE 87 4.1. The Debate So Far 88 4.2. Freedom and Necessity in Capital III 90 4.3. Freedom and Necessity in the Comments 95 4.4. An Oscillation Rather than a Shift 98 4.5. Situating the Oscillation Historically 101 4.6. Some Problems with Marx’s Two Models of the Good Life 106 4.7. Conclusion 109 5. ‘LET US IMAGINE THAT WE HAD CARRIED OUT OUR PRODUCTION AS HUMAN BEINGS’ 111 5.1. Review of Previous Chapters 111 5.2. ‘Production as human beings’ 114 5.3. The Distinctiveness of the Comments 123 iv 5.4. The Attractiveness of the Comments 127 5.5. Conclusion 140 CONCLUSION 142 BIBLIOGRAPHY 146 1 INTRODUCTION This thesis is about Karl Marx’s vision of the good life, a vision that is potent but also notoriously unspecified and opaque. It aims to provide an interpretation and critical examination of its central features. While each chapter engages in a number of textual disputes, in what follows I make three major interpretive claims. First, I argue that Marx’s vision of the good life contains an uncompromising commitment to ethical individualism, the view that the ultimate value and goal of human societies is the self-realisation of individuals.1 Thus, in Chapter 2, I show that Marx’s critique of the division of labour is based on the individualistic view that the enrichment of the powers and capacities of society cannot come at the expense of the powers and capacities of the individual. Likewise, in Chapter 3, I show how Marx rejects the communitarian idea that the only way to overcome alienation is to accept the duties that flow from one’s social role; on Marx’s view, by contrast, really free activity is unconstrained by roles altogether. The individualistic side of Marx’s thought has not received much attention in the literature.2 By focusing on this side in some detail in the chapters the follow I hope to bring Marx’s individualism out of the shadows. Second, I argue that while Marx’s commitment to individualism is unwavering, his ideas about how individuals achieve self-realisation change in crucial respects throughout his lifetime. For instance, in Chapter 3 I argue that while Marx is always committed to the view that community is necessary for self-realisation, he gives different arguments in different writings as to why this is so. Likewise, in Chapter 4, I argue that while Marx is always committed to the view that self- realisation consists in creative activity, he changes his mind about whether necessary 1 Jon Elster, Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p.8. Note that I do not take a stand on whether Marx is committed to other forms of individualism (e.g. methodological individualism). 2 To be sure, the individualistic themes I pick up here have been noticed and emphasised by commentators before me, yet there is no full-length treatment of them, and overly communitarian interpretations of communism still tend to be advanced in the literature. More will be said about these communitarian interpretations in Chapter 3, where I shall examine Marx’s idea of a reconciliation of self-realisation and community under communism. For other individualistic interpretations of Marx’s ideas about the good life, see Elster, Making Sense of Marx, pp.521-528; G.A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: An Interpretation and Defence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), pp.129-133; and Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), Chapter 6. 2 labour or leisure constitutes the ‘realm’ within which future individuals will realise the inherent creativity of their nature. In this way, I argue that Marx’s ideas about the good life under communism are not of a piece but change in crucial respects throughout his lifetime. The third and final major interpretive claim concerns the much-debated issue of Marx’s intellectual development. The claims of the previous paragraph – that Marx’s views change during the course of his lifetime – are not new. In fact, it is common for commentators to argue that there is a shift, or even a ‘break’,3 between the writings of the ‘early’ Marx and ‘late’ Marx. With regards to his ideas about the good life, Marx’s ideas are generally thought to become more pessimistic as time wore on. Thus, according to what we might call the ‘standard story’, while Marx’s early writings are buoyantly optimistic that alienated labour will be overcome under communism, his later writings acquiesce in the permanence of alienated labour in all forms of human society. Consequently, Marx is said to look to leisure rather than labour as the sphere of life best suited for human self-realisation.
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