is ordinarily attributed to it. It is not merely a
matter of political revolution:
it is a question of a
total
revolution.
Suppressing private property,
it
will suppress the alienation of work and restore to
man his true personality.
This victorious proletarian
revolution will cut in half the history of humanity.
It will change the relations between man and the
world. What was before private property will be-
come property which is "truly human and social."
And it is only when man is freed of alienation and
capitalist servitude that he will be capable of un-
folding his truly human qualities.
In the course of these reflections, Marx outlines an
anthropology
of vast scope. He presents a picture
of man and of socialist society which, despite its
fragmentary character,
is of the highest importance
because it represents the original stage of the Marx-
ist conception! of culture.
Marx thus defines
the
complete man:
he is the man who in his relations
with the world is capable of developing all his senses.
Marx understands by this term not merely the five
senses, but all the faculties which man manifests in
his relations with beings or with the inanimate world.
In this connection,
thought,
will, activity, love are
senses. In the condition of alienation in which cap-
italist society has placed him, man is unable to un-
furl all the richness of his senses. The only relation
which he has with the external world is the relation
of possession or of the desire for possession.
"Private property," says Marx, "has made us so
stupid and so limited that an object does not become
ours unless we own it."
In contrast,
the relations between socialist man
and the external world are infinitely richer and more
diverse, for he can be united to it through all of his
senses. He "appropriates his multiple existence in a
multiple manner,
that is, like a compl1ete man."
Among the relations between man and the world,
the relation of ownership occupies a very secondary
position.
It is replaced by the free activity of all
human forms, that is, by the senses. This activity is
realized by free labor in all its forms. It is in this
sense that Marx still speaks of richness, richness of
the socialist individual and of socialist society. The
more various the relations of man with his kind and
with the material world, the richer he is. The new
society produces, to return to Marx's words, "as a
continual reality, man in all the richness of his be-
ing, the complete man, perfectly realizing all his
senses."
l\tlarx presents us here with a succinct outline, but
of masterful
conception,
of communist culture. He
depicts, if you will, the socialist "ideal." But it must
be observed-and it is necessary to particularly em-
phasize this point in view of the many false idealistic
interpretations of Marx-that
even in this realm,
where it is not a matter of economic aspects, Marx
remains a pure dialectical materialist.
He does not
project
abstract
virtues into the new man, but
14
permits him to develop the qualities which he has
received from nature, that is to say, his senses. His-
torical progress consists in the fact that man can
now be a
natural man,
not in the development
of a
superior "ethic." What idealism calls an ethic cannot
constitute a problem of Marxist
philosophy,
since
the "ethical" attitude towards others flows naturally
from socialism and has no need of any norm.
The method here followed by Marx, particularly
in the matter of anthropology,
can serve as a model
for a purely materialistic method of treating extra-
economic problems,
the problems of the super-
structure. It can, let it be said in passing, serve as an
example for many good Marxists,
who are prevent-
ed by a holy respect from touching cultural questions
for fear of falling into idealism.
But the image of socialist man supplied by Marx
has still another importance.
In all pre-Marxist
philosophy,
the ideal type of man was the contem-
plative man. Neither the middle ages nor the modern
epoch was able to detach itself entirely from the
ideal of the Stoa. Even Goethe, whose death ( 183
2 )
took place but twelve years before the composition
of the
Manuscripts,
had incarnated in his personality
the contemplative sage; his human ideal was es-
sentially of an "ethical" nature, in the true sense of
the word: a receptive "perception" of the universe.
To this Marx opposed his new type of man. Man is
man through his work. To be a man means to work,
and to work means to transform nature in the image
of man, to make nature human at the same time that
it makes man natural.
Man is no longer static, but
dynamic. He is no longer defined by his qualities, but
by his activity. This is a tremendous revolution in
the history of philosophy.
Thanks to Marx,
work-
me,aning free and conscious work-is
for the first
time placed upon the throne of history.
A revolu-
tionary principle, even had Marx himself failed to
draw the political implications.
For man, visualized
as an active being transforming the world, ought
necessarily to transform also the social world.
Such are, briefly outlined, some of the· principal
problems dealt with in the
Manuscripts.
It is pos-
sible to see here how large is the base upon which
Marxism is founded and how limited it would be to
see in it nothing but a purely economic doctrine.
Marxism can rightfully claim to be called an
integral
philosophy:
not only does it point out the practical
road of social liberation,
it also recreates man and
his image of the world. Marx often termed his doc-
trine "realistic humanism." Man and his liberation
constitute the center to which his thought
during
his entire life ever returned. The Cyclopean labor of
Capital,
the doctrine of revolution and proletarian
dictatorship,
all these were intended to forge the
weapons of steel with which the worker would free
himself from the trap of capitalism in order to
achieve at last, after centuries of alienation, his true
human dignity. Regarded from this height, does not
OCTOBER,
1936
