Independent Separate Individuals example essay topic

Within the boundaries in which sale and purchase of commodities and labor-power goes on is the birthplace of the "innate rights of man" (343). For the fulfillment of their needs, humans rely on the help of others. As Marx says in The German Ideology, "there exists a materialistic connection of men with one another, which is determined by their needs and their mode of production" (157). In modern capitalism people are connected through a complex global system of trade. This system of production and consumption affects the way people view each other in general.

When one participates in the giant domain of production and consumption which generates generic products for generic individuals, she recognizes herself as just one of many like animals. The system is indifferent to her individuality in a sense that reveals the universality of her character. The economic system adds a new political dynamic to her being. One's political life is one's species life; it is one's role within the mass of all humans which is mediated by the state.

Under this system of organization, people are given equal 'rights. ' The state claims that the support or irritation that they may provide is spread evenly to all. The rights that political citizens receive are supposed to show no preference for birth, social rank, education, or occupation. This suggests that people have some universal human characteristics.

However, it presupposes that those distinctions do exist; if people were actually equal there would be no need to set their differences aside. "Far from abolishing these differences, [the state] only exists so far as [the differences] are presupposed; it is conscious of being a political state and it manifests its universality only in opposition to these elements" (33). In feudalism elements of civil life such as property, family, and occupation were raised to elements of the political life. The relation of the individual to the state, his political situation, was often set for him. For instance, if a man was born to a poor family he would remain a serf for all his life and his lack of connection to the king was a lifelong situation. His political role would forever be to plow fields for his superior and he had no rights as an individual to do otherwise.

The state evolved into a system that dissolved life into its basic elements: individuals and materials. The modern political system, "liberated the political spirit from its connection with civil life and made of it the community sphere, the general concern of the people, in principle independent of these particular elements of civil life" (45). While politics and world trade have provided people with a sense of their universality, they are also highly individualistic modes of organization. People are not necessarily connected to their origin; the individual is supposedly able to live any lifestyle if he works hard enough. The rights that people are given in this economy are directed towards independent individuals.

Every man is for himself - to survive in the world one must work hard to support one's self. Capitalism is a system of the exchange of goods based on their relative expenditure of human labor. All of human life seems spent either working to produce goods for others to buy or buying goods from others in order to meet personal wants. Exchange is truly the root of why human rights as they are known were constructed. People must be assured that they will be treated fairly when they come to sell their goods or labor.

Political rights exist only when one is a member of an exchanging community. If a family lived in the woods and grew crops it is unlikely that they would proclaim equal rights as independents. They would always work together and have their needs met. Under capitalism people have needs of which they do not have the resources to meet. They must rely on others somewhere else in the world to make and then exchange those for money (or their labor hours quantified.) According to Marx", [the individual owner of labor-power] and the owner of money meet in the market and deal with each other as on the basis of equal rights, with this difference alone, that one is a buyer, the other seller, both, therefore, equal in the eyes of the law". (337) Despite the fact that people attain different qualities of life (some struggle while others wallow in excess), the political law infers freedom and equality.

Humans are connected to most others only by means of the economy and therefore what rules seemed necessary for economic purposes have begun to appear as the natural, only way that humans interrelate. For reasons of fair economic representation, people are treated and recognize themselves as independent separate individuals. In the market (who's rules are duplicated in generic political terms), men are promised the rights of equality, liberty, property, and security. Equality is the equal right to the other rights.

Liberty is the right to do everything which does not harm others. Property is the right to enjoy one's fortune and to dispose of it at one's own will. Security is the right to equal protection of rights and property - a promise to be equally policed. Each one of these implies a right and assurance of egoism. For a man to be given liberty or protection against others it must be assumed that he stands alone apart from them and needs the aid of the state to promise that he can maintain his individual interests.

The individual's right to own, buy, or sell his property is so given "without regard to other men and independently of society" (42). Within the dualism, the egoistic separate self seems more real than the abstract political self. To be one of six billion like creatures seems disconnected to most of an individual's daily happenings. The human political universal role does not connect with the concrete reality of the person, and so instead of feeling like a simple demographic, people tend to view themselves as the independent monad's that their economic rights suggest. (This focus on separateness is obvious in the philosophy of for instance Hegel or Kant who begin systems of thought from a 'transcendental I' or a single consciousness.) In On the Jewish Question, Marx says "man identified as a member of civil society is identified with authentic man, man as distinct from citizen, because he is man in his sensuous, individual, and immediate existence, whereas political man is only abstract, artificial man, man as an allegorical, moral person" (46). The man of civil society is the man within his immediate social surroundings who still considers himself in terms of individual rights but has a more direct connection with real specific others.

Under the poli tical system people have the 'right' to be whatever they want to be. They may participate in any number of religious, habitual, or lifestyle choices. This seems like a truly freeing possibility, but the circumstances have a very negative repercussion. People are so independent that no individual activity has any significance outside of the individual. A person can do anything that they want provided that they observe the political rights of others, but his / her choices matter to no one but that individual.

To the majority of others the individual is just a manifestation of the political universal human. If the person recognizes this insignificance to the world of their interests or habits it seems reasonable that they would feel depressed or alone. The individual is told she can think or feel whatever she wants but she realizes that nothing she does really matters to the world she contemplates and interacts with except for her contribution to the economy. Another type of alienation that an individual may feel is a result of the tension placed between men as a result of these independent rights. One "sees in other men [not the realization] but the limitation of his own liberty" (42). He recognizes that he is allowed to do anything he wants except in regard to others.

Others may own the things he wants or be given opportunities that he desires. Also, the rights assume that humans are antagonistic to one another and cannot be trusted to care for one another. If the individual needs security it means that he needs protection from other humans who may be willing to injure his lifestyle. "Man is far from being considered in the rights of man as a species-being; on the contrary, species -life itself -society - appears as a system which is external to the individual and as a limitation of his original independence" (43). These rights say that humans are initially, fundamentally separate even though it is obvious that they have always and will probably continue to always need one another to produce and obtain their needs.

The only mutual interest of all is that they share egoistic concerns. People have in common self-interest or a desire for personal comfort, wealth, and success. "The only force that brings [citizens] together and puts them in relation with each other is the selfishness, the gain and the private interests of each. Each looks to himself only, and no one troubles himself about the rest, and just because they do so, do they all, in accordance with the p reestablished harmony of things, or under the auspices of an all shrewd providence, work together to their mutual advantage, for the common weal and in the interest of all" (343). Humans have in common that they are all separate and are trying to attain individual needs, although there is no promise that anyone will be willing to support anyone's pursuit but their own. To Marx this dualism between one's universal aspect and their alienated individual aspect is unnatural and should be reevaluated.

He believes that people should recognize their social character and the value of human interaction. People should preserve elements of the individual - he does not say that people should lose themselves for the sake of the group, but should also recognize the necessity of community for the development and support that one needs to survive. "Human emancipation will only be complete when the real, individual man has absorbed into himself the abstract citizen; when as an individual man, in his everyday life, in his work, and in his relationships he has become a species-being; and when he has recognized and organized his own powers as social powers so that he no longer separates this social power from himself as political power". (46) Humans need a chance to recognize the immediate benefit of their work and choices on people around them in order to do this. For instance if a woman worked in a factory and she could see that her good friends were benefiting from the product she made, and at the same time she benefited from the work her friends did she might feel more connected to her social self.

She might be more likely to see that what she is is highly affected by the people in the world and that she is not just a monad participating in an abstract system. As a member of civil society (perhaps what the individual connects with most greatly through ideal communism) there is some middle ground between being one of billions and being completely alone. A person has contact with society in a more realistic and visible way. The individual's community would reflect him / her and he / she would reflect that community. It seems as though this kind of alteration of modes of self-understanding is not yet possible. As capitalism progresses (its most extreme examples being the United States and Japan) it seems that people are more and more alienated.

Products are made for people with completely independent lifestyles. Food is packaged in single servings; houses are built with separate rooms for each person. People spend a good deal of their time sitting in automobiles alone on streets listening to music made for one to hear (versus for crowds to dance to.) It is still not obvious what change would need to first take place to give people a connection with the others in their communities. Abandoning society as much as possible and starting small communes seems like a viable but difficult task, however as independent as people are even these moves by few individuals go practically unnoticed. Most people are unaware of alternative lifestyles beyond capitalism. Marx touches on this situation only slightly in On the Jewish Question.

While capitalism is supposed to be a stepping stone needed to build technology for a future socialism, it also builds a very destructive egoism. It seems unlikely or even problematic for people to join together to make changes for the improvement of life if they are only concerned with their own satisfaction. As Marx says, 'It is difficult enough to understand that a nation which has just begun to liberate itself [America], to tear down all the barriers between different sections of the people and to establish a political community should solemnly proclaim the rights of the egoistic man, separated from his fellow men and from the community, and should renew this proclamation at a moment when only the most heroic devotion can save the nation (and is therefore urgently called for), and when the sacrifice of all the interests of civil society is in question and egoism should be punished as a crime' (43). Marx seems to be calling out for people to recognize the alienation that capitalism has produced and come together to improve the way people view themselves and others.