Letter: Marx in error? (2005)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx in error?

Dear Editors,

I note that you, in the September issue, favourably quote part of Marx’s sixth Thesis on Ludwig Feuerbach:

“Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man. But the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations”.

I would like to point out that Marx was in error on this point, and that in fact Feuerbach did not abstract from social relations. Here is the man himself:

“The natural viewpoint of man, the viewpoint of the distinction between I and thou, subject and object, is the true and absolute viewpoint; consequently, it is also the viewpoint of philosophy. The single man for himself possesses the essence of man neither in himself as a moral being nor in himself as a thinking being. The essence of man is contained only in the community and unity of man with man; it is a unity, however, which rests only on the reality of the distinction between I and thou. Solitude is finiteness and limitation; community is freedom and infinity. Man for himself is man (in the ordinary sense); man with man – the unity of I and thou – is God” (Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1844), p 70-71)

A bit fluffy and abstract perhaps, but it is clear, just as it is clear in his Essence of Christianity, that his analysis was based upon social relations.

R. Cumming (by email)