Congrès Marx International V - Section Etudes Marxistes – Paris-Sorbonne et Nanterre – 3/6 octobre
2007
OTANI, Teinosuke (Hosei University, Tokyo)
Labouring Individuals and Association
In this report my aim is to consider the significance that the development of human
individuals has for the development of Association.
I want to take a simple look at why Marx used the term “Association” to refer to the
new society that would be generated by capitalist society, and what is the nature of the
mode of production that constitutes the base of this new society. In addition, I want to
consider what sort of significance the development of labouring individuals has within
the development of the newly emergent Association towards its “higher phase.”
“Association” is the term that Marx employed most frequently to refer to the new
society that would be born out of capitalist society. We can discern Marx’s view of this
new society from the various descriptions that he has left us, which also allows us to
assess why he frequently used the term “Association.”
One of the aspects of the new society that Marx envisaged as differing decisively
from the various historical societies leading up to and including capitalist society is that
the new society will be a society formed through the voluntary and active combination
of free labouring individuals—in other words, it will be a society that is formed through
the conscious actions of those individuals themselves. The term “association,” in its
general usage, refers to individuals who actively and consciously join together and act,
so that the individuals act in a social manner by entering that sort of mutual relationship,
which is to say, through being associated with each other. It is in this fundamental sense
that Marx uses the term “association.”
We know of course that a capitalist society is a social system in which “the
capitalistic mode of production prevails.” (MEGA2 II/5. S. 17.) We can draw a
distinction between capitalist society as a social system and the capitalistic mode of
production that constitutes the base of that social system. Likewise, in the case of the
new society that is born from capitalist society, it is vital to grasp the mode of
production that constitutes the base of Association as a social system and which
qualitatively determines that social system.
In 1865, in the first manuscript of Book III of Capital, Marx used the term “the
mode of production of associated labour” (MEGA2 II/4.2. S. 662) to refer to the mode
of production that constitutes the base of Association. He also used the term “associated
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Congrès Marx International V - Section Etudes Marxistes – Paris-Sorbonne et Nanterre – 3/6 octobre
2007
mode of production” (MEGA2 II/4.2. S. 456) but it seems to have been an abbreviated
version of “the mode of production of associated labour.”
The term “associated labour” within the “mode of production of associated labour”
was employed the previous year, in 1864, in his “Inaugural Address of the International
Working Men’s Association” (MEGA2 I/20. S.10) and then six years later in “The Civil
war in France” (MEGA2 I/22. S. 59, 62 u. 143) which he wrote in 1871. Here we need
to consider what sort of labour this “associated labour” is.
First of all, it is the labour of labouring individuals who subjectively, actively, and
voluntarily associate with each other. This naturally means that the economic
compulsion of wage labour no longer exists. And there would no longer be a labour
market where labour-power is bought and sold.
Second, the labouring individuals are producing goods communally to satisfy their
own needs and their labour is directly social labour. Private labour would no longer
exist, so products of labour would not take the commodity form and hence money and
the market would also not exist.
Third, the total production of the labouring individuals is carried out communally in
a conscious and planned manner. Thus, for the first time the human essence of behaving
productively to consciously alter an object of nature is fully realized.
Fourth, this labour is social labour of a large number of labouring individuals that is
carried out cooperatively. The productive power of social labour is manifested, as such,
as the social productive power of labour.
Fifth, through the cooperative labour that takes nature as its universal object, this
labour is a practical act of comprehensive control of nature. In other words, it is the
conscious application of science to the production process.
Sixth, this labour is the species act or human praxis that brings about one’s own
joyousness by means of bringing the natural process under one’s own control in line
with one’s own power, in other words, by realizing one’s own objectives. This means
that for the individuals labour is not “something that has to be done,” but rather
“something one wants to do,” which is to say, it is “life’s prime want.”
Seventh, this labour is an action in which the individuals freely display and fully
develop their own individuality and capabilities. In short, this is labour in which the
individuals, within their communal social activities, at the same time fully display and
develop their own individuality, and this is precisely the decisively human essence of
associated labour.
In this way, labour sheds the alienated guise it has had as wage labour so that
human beings return their life activity to their species being. At the same time, all of
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Congrès Marx International V - Section Etudes Marxistes – Paris-Sorbonne et Nanterre – 3/6 octobre
2007
these attributes of labour make possible the high development of social productive
power, which also makes possible and ensures the production of the social products to
meet the increasingly diverse and expanding needs of individuals. The “mode of
production of associated labour” which constitutes the foundation of Association is a
mode of production in which labour has become this sort of thing.
Next I want to look at Marx’s thoughts regarding how the associated individuals
that exist within this emergent Association develop and what significance this has for
the development of Association.
In the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx draws a distinction between the
“first phase” of Association and the “higher phase.” (MEGA2 I/25. S. 11-16.) If we read
the part where he refers to the “higher phase,” we can clearly understand that the criteria
for this distinction are the development of the manner of labour and the corresponding
development of the individuals within the society.
Marx uses the term “higher phase” to refer to the stage at which the following four
things have been achieved (MEGA2 I/25. S. 15). First, the individual is no longer
subservient to the division of labour. Second, the division between mental labour and
physical labour has ceased to exist. Third, labour is no longer simply a “means of life”
but “life’s prime want” for individuals. And fourth, along with the individual’s
comprehensive development, the productive power of these individuals, which is to say
their capacity to labour, also expands, so that all of the sources of social wealth gush
forth more abundantly.
It is clear that each of the four concern the manner of labour and the capacity of
labour. Moreover, all of them are realized through the development of human
individuals.
The first two points regarding the division of labour and split between mental and
physical labour are characteristic figures of alienated labour under capitalistic
production, and Marx repeatedly emphasized that eliminating these two aspects is an
important task for Association. In other words, the ultimate sublation (or Aufheben) of
the alienated appearance of labour.
In the case of Association, the individuals that form that society have become “fully
developed individuals…to whom the different social functions they perform are but so
many modes of giving free scope to their own natural and acquired powers,” so that the
previous “division of labour” and the “antithesis between mental and physical labour”
are completely done away with. Marx said that the “higher phase” of Association is
when the manner of labour has been completely developed in that way. This means that
the “first phase,” or “communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged
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Congrès Marx International V - Section Etudes Marxistes – Paris-Sorbonne et Nanterre – 3/6 octobre
2007
birth pangs from capitalist society,” is a period during which the labouring individuals
develop themselves towards this higher phase and bring about a change in the manner
of labour.
Regarding the third point, Marx is saying that the manner of labour will develop
until the point where labour itself becomes “life’s prime want.” Needless to say, this
change and development in the manner of labour is first brought about through the
change and development of the labouring individuals.
In Association, even its first phase, not only has wage labour been eliminated but
private labour also has disappeared so that labour is directly social labour. However, at
the first phase, the “bourgeois limits” remains where the quantity of the labour that an
individual provides to society determines the quantity of the means of consumption that
the person receives from society, so for each person one’s own labour is still something
that “must be done” to live. Association begins as a society constituted of members for
whom labour is something that “must be done.”
In contrast, at the “higher phase” labour itself has become “life’s prime want.”
Labour still remains a “means of life” in the sense that it is the associated individuals
themselves who alone provide the material wealth of Association that includes the
individual means of consumption that each person receives, but the quality and quantity
of the products that each person receives no longer has any relation to the quality and
quantity of labour that the person performs, so that labour no longer must be performed
but is done because the person wishes to labour. Marx, in discussing the primitive
accumulation of capital, says that, “the advance of capitalist production develops a
working-class, which by education, tradition, habit, looks upon the conditions of that
mode of production as self-evident laws of Nature,” and in the same sense, the
associated individuals develop to the point where, “by education, tradition, [and] habit”
they look upon the labouring in accordance with their own capabilities in line with the
needs of Association as a “self-evident law of Nature.” Furthermore, as far as the
individuals are concerned labour has become “life’s prime want” and they labour in
order to satisfy this desire.
The essence of human activity in the first place is the activity of human individuals
as subject in consciously altering an object according to play, which is to say praxis.
Human beings satisfy their own needs through achieving an objective through praxis.
And of all the practical activities carried out by human beings, labour is precisely the
most primary and fundamental type of praxis, so that labour is the primary existence
form of human beings. This means that human individuals are primarily and essentially
labouring individuals. Originally, therefore, labour to satisfy a desire by means of
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Congrès Marx International V - Section Etudes Marxistes – Paris-Sorbonne et Nanterre – 3/6 octobre
2007
achieving a goal must have been the most important source of joyousness for human
beings, and not only appealing in itself but the object of human desire.
Under capitalism, labour has become something that “must be done” as far as the
labouring individuals are concerned because labour under capital—or labour subsumed
under capital—is labour that must be done in order to live so that the idea has become
firmly established in this society that labour itself has that nature. The classic theoretical
expression of this is what Marx called “Smith’s [value] theory of sacrifice.” (MEGA2
II/1. S.501.)
Marx, in “Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Association,” says
that “hired labour is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disappear before
associated labour plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind, and a joyous heart.”
(MEGA2 I/20. S. 10.) The fact that there are people who think that this is an
outrageously optimistic “utopia” that could never be realized is because the view of
human beings and labour held by the labouring individuals in today’s society takes the
historically determined form of the upside-down view of human beings based on the
fallacy of homo economicus which arises inevitably from commodity production—in
other words, the illusion of the rational individual—and the upside-down view of labour
resulting from the alienation of labour under wage labour and alienation of human
beings.
The process of revolutionary social change—moving from a capitalist society that
necessarily generates this sort of labour among labouring individuals to the “higher
phase” of Association that is formed by individuals who perceive labour to be “life’s
prime want”—is at the same time the process of the revolutionary change in labouring
individuals. Moreover, this is not a revolutionary process that can be suddenly carried
out, on a certain day or in a short period of time. This is a process that first progresses
by a consciousness being formed in those among the labouring individuals, who form
society and continually carry out reproduction, to revolutionize society, and through the
practical actions that are carried out based on this consciousness in pursuit of that
revolutionary change. Moreover, this is a revolutionary change whose pivot is the
revolutionary change and development of the individuals themselves who are the
subject of the revolutionary change of society.
Next, let’s consider the fourth point I mentioned. This point concerns how, on the
one hand, there is a development of the manner of labour, in terms of an expansion of
productive powers that is the social aggregate of the labour capacity of the individuals
in society to the point where individuals receive means of consumption that correspond
to the particular needs of each individual, while on the other hand, the human
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Congrès Marx International V - Section Etudes Marxistes – Paris-Sorbonne et Nanterre – 3/6 octobre
2007
individuals completely develop themselves to the point where that expansion of
productive powers is reached. For Marx, the development of productive powers to the
point that makes Association possible is already nothing more than the complete, overall
and universal development of human individuals.
So we have had a look at the four characteristics of what Marx calls the “higher
phase.” And as you can see, all four of them concern the development of the manner of
labour and the development of the labouring individuals. Marx, in this way, draws a
distinction between the “first phase” and the “higher phase” of Association from the
perspective of the development of labour and the development of human beings.
Thus, when Marx says, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his
needs,” which is first able to be raised as a slogan in the “higher phase,” he is not
speaking of the manner of the distribution of the individual means of consumption, but
rather that it shows that in the society of Association labour and human beings have
developed to the high point where such a slogan can be raised. In other words, this
slogan implies that labour, regardless of the manner of the distribution of the means of
consumption, has become “life’s prime want” for individuals, and so these individuals
labour in line with their own capabilities, according to their own awareness and volition,
so that they develop into complete human beings.
As I already noted, the base of Association is the mode of production of associated
labour. And so the first phase of Association must be grasped, above all, as the
formative period of the mode of production of associated labour within Association. The
“communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from
capitalist society,” by passing through this formative period, first develops into a
communist society that develops “on its own foundations” (in other words, on the basis
of the mode of production of associated labour). Therefore, the task in this formative
period, I think, is for the individuals, who have passed through the original transitional
period to at last constitute Association, to take a further step forward so as to forge and
develop themselves to the level of being individuals who can undertake the formation of
the Association on a daily basis.
In this process, the individuals—who are still operating under the distribution
principle where the individual means of consumption are allotted “to each according to
his labour,” which is an echo of bourgeois limitations—in their daily efforts to
overcome various difficulties come to the daily awareness that their own labour is
directly social labour that meets the needs of the Association; and furthermore, they
come to the awareness that labour is an action that surmounts various obstacles to bring
about freedom, an act of self-realization for the subject, an action of real freedom. And
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Congrès Marx International V - Section Etudes Marxistes – Paris-Sorbonne et Nanterre – 3/6 octobre
2007
thus they become individuals for whom labour is the “life’s prime want.”
The newly emergent Association must pass through a formative period in which it
develops to the point of being fully generated. And because Association is a society
consciously formed by associated individuals, the formative period refers to the period
during which the labouring individuals purposively raise themselves to the level of fully
developed individuals. At the same time, this is also a period during which the
alienation of labour is ultimately overcome by means of the revolutionary change in the
manner of labour. This is how Marx in the Critique of the Gotha Programme envisages
the distinction between the “first phase” and the “higher phase” of Association.
Marx’s view of the role played by the consciousness of labouring individuals in the
development of Association from 1875 in his Critique of the Gotha Programme clarifies
the fact that his grasp of society based on labour, which he established in his work
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (MEGA2 I/2. S. 187–438) through a
criticism of Hegel’s “theory of self-consciousness,” penetrates completely in his theory
of a future society as well.
For humanity today, which is now seeking to make the huge leap forward towards
Association here at the outset of a new millennium, the theories and ideas of Marx
provide an invaluable orientation. I have been involved in the editing of Volume 11 of
Section II of the MEGA, as well as in my capacity as a member of the editorial board of
the IMES and a representative of the editorial work for MEGA-volumes in Japan, but
for me the actual significance of the MEGA is not to build up some sort of mammoth,
unchanging statue of a great thinker, but rather, through the publication of his works, to
provide an even more profound and multi-layered understanding of Marx, whose
thought—as the basso continuo—has accompanied the ongoing journey of humanity
from our prehistory to the beginning of our genuine history as human beings.
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