A Study Of The Thought Of Labor In The Economic And Philosophic Manuscripts Of 1844

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 gives new meaning to the philosophical category of labor on the basis of explaining what man is and how man realizes his essence.People show their essential power through labor,but also realize the return of human essence in labor.In Marx’s vision,labor is the essential stipulation of human being,the way of human being’s existence,and also the basic explanatory principle of materialism.Through the topic of labor,Marx started his dissection of civil society and grasped the essence of the capitalist mode of production.Only by deeply understanding and grasping the thought of labor can we realize how Marx realized the revolutionary change of his philosophical thought.The first part clarifies the theoretical origin of Marx’s labor thought.Marx understood and grasped labor in his criticism of national economics and Hegel’s philosophy.National economics regards labor as the essence of wealth and raises labor as the only principle of economics.Hegel regards labor as the self-confirming essence of human being and reveals the plastic and spiritual connotation of labor.They expressed the modernity grasp of civil society through labor and found the importance of labor to civil society,but the topic of labor did not become their ideological theme,to some extent covered the injustice of capitalism,and could not really overcome the internal contradictions of civil society.Marx criticized national economists and Hegel’s defensive stance,and clarified the human and social implications of labor.The second part explains the characteristics of thinking implied by Marx’s labor thought.Marx takes people in labor activities as the ideological foothold,uses the method of subjectpredicate inversion and the logic of alienation theory to analyze civil society,reveals the separation and opposition between labor and capital,and illustrates the alienation situation of civil society.Marx’s understanding of labor surpasses the national economists’ non-historical and Hegel’s abstract understanding of labor.The intellectual thinking of national economists and the speculative thinking of Hegel are both ontological thinking modes of subject-object dualism fundamentally.The characteristic of Marx’s labor thought lies in that it transcends the metaphysical theory of labor and establishes the objective activity as the principle,thus laying the foundation for the establishment of new materialism and historical materialism.The third part expounds the value ideal of the connotation of Marx’s labor thought.Marx’s labor thought contains concern and longing for human’s freedom and emancipation.Marx’s labor thought is not only an empirical description of the conditions of workers,nor is it only an analytical framework of civil society,but contains a profound understanding of human nature and human emancipation.By criticizing the young Hegelians and the different forms of communism,Marx revealed the real meaning of emancipation,clarified the possibility of human emancipation,and advocated the realization of labor emancipation and human emancipation in the realistic movement of communism,namely the alienation of the sublation.Labor is a modern subject permeated with the spirit of The Times.Facing this important problem,national economists have made a positive description of labor from the perspective of economics,and Hegel has made a speculative understanding of labor from the height of philosophy.In Marx’s view,they stand on the same side,both are metaphysical expressions of labor.Marx reversed the labor theory of Smith,Hegel and others with the perceptual labor activities,put forward the theory of labor alienation,insight into the social structure of capitalism and its ruling form,and advocated the realization of labor liberation and human liberation in the alienation of the way of praxis.