How human am I?

The ability to create is an action that is very uniquely essential to one’s humanity. This action becomes a critical aspect of Marx’s dialectic on the estrangement of labor. To begin, Marx loosely discusses the act of creating. In class, we noted that the act of creating becomes very different from the act of producing—and how each one of these actions either distinguishes or fails to distinguish us from mere animals, as Hegel would have said. With the creation of an object (to begin literally), one has invested time and effort into this creation (imaginative thought manifested in effort, another key to the differentiation posed earlier) and can actually see and touch it, as well as potentially seeing the true value of the object (a sort of reflection idea, like that of Hegel’s two consciousnesses recognizing themselves in the other)—it is a progression of consciousness. In this object, one can see the time and effort invested into the object, and can therefore verify themselves as creative consciousness (a stipulation for being human).

Where most of Marx’s work enters is when the distinction between creation and production is introduced. Production is defined in one way as “the producing of articles having exchange value.” This “exchange value” is precisely what demeans the producer in Marx’s story of the worker. In fact, the more valuable the product is, the less the producer is recognized within that object or the more of a commodity he or she becomes. In other words, if the labor of a particular worker can be bought and sold, the worker becomes estranged from the labor/object at hand. If this is the case then, to Marx, the worker also becomes alienated from his or her species being (has lost what it means to be a human/no creation occurs and therefore there is no progression of consciousness).

So, as I’ve alluded to, it seems that the big production that Marx gives us (the story of capitalism) is the difference in creation and production.

Now, I know less about politics than the vinyl record that sits in front of me, but it seems to me that the socialist idea of communal distribution would give me less of an opportunity to create (or, in other words, less of an opportunity to be human). While I don’t necessarily think that the capitalist ways of our country is without its flaws, I do think that it, at the very least, does the best at masking (with the illusions of religion, the American Dream, etc.) the estrangement of labor that occurs every day in every office. But, on the other hand, I am admittedly growing up a product of the upper-middle class.

As Marx famously said about socialism, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” we all would, in theory, have what we need. But to what extent does that allow us to be humans? Again, this all comes down to the worth of the dollar determining the worth of a man or woman—and really, how great is that?