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The Alienation of Intercourse in Comments on James Mill: The Turning Point of Marx

An Interpretation of Comments on James Mill. Part II

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Studies of the Paris Manuscripts

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Abstract

One of Marx’s most salient acomplishments during his big year of economics in 1844, Comments on James Mill did not receive the attention it deserved for a long time. For most scholars of the Paris Manuscripts, Comments on James Mill is either seen as an irrelevance or a mere “appendix”. Considering its theoretical and documentary value, however, Comments on James Mill fully qualifies on the level of the Manuscripts and occupies an exceedingly vital position in studies of the Paris Manuscripts and the development of Marxism as a whole.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Except few scholars like Yibing Zhang, most have hardly paid attention to Comments on James Mill in this sense and undertaken systematic study thereof. Though the author cannot agree with Yibing Zhang’s determination of the writing sequence of the Paris Manuscripts, his Back to Marx is beyond all doubt one of the most salient studies of Comments on James Mill in China, providing the author with crucial inspiration and motivation.

  2. 2.

    Lixin Han, The Philological Studies of the Paris Manuscripts and its Significance, in: Marxism & Reality, no. 1, 2007. The main part of this essay is incorporated in Chap. IV.

  3. 3.

    Wataru Hiromatsu, The Evolution of Marxism, in: Collected Works of Wataru Hiromatsu, vol. 8, Iwanami Shoten, 1997, p. 588 (translated into English by K.H.).

  4. 4.

    Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 5: Marx and Engels: 1845–1847, Progress Publishers, 1976, p. 4.

  5. 5.

    Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 3: Marx and Engels: 1843–1844, Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 274 f.

  6. 6.

    Ibid., p. 271 f.

  7. 7.

    Ibid., p. 277.

  8. 8.

    Ibid.

  9. 9.

    Zhengdong Tang also holds that Marx “actually cannot go further” at the end of the First Manuscript (Zhengdong Tang, From Smith to Marx. A Historical Interpretation of the Economic-philosophical Method, Jiangsu People’s Publishing, 2009, p. 279 (translated into English by K.H.)). Yet the reason this brings him to this conclusion is not exactly the same as given here, insofar as he imputes it to the fact that Marx had not read the works of Ricardo et al. by then.

  10. 10.

    Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 3: Marx and Engels: 1843–1844, Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 279.

  11. 11.

    Ibid. p. 281.

  12. 12.

    Ibid.

  13. 13.

    Seiji Mochizuki, A Study of Marx’s Historical Theory, trans. by Lixin Han, Beijing Normal University Publishing Group, 2009, p. 75 (translated into English by K.H.).

  14. 14.

    Marx, Comments on James Mill, Élémens d’économie politique, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 3: Marx and Engels: 1843–1844, Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 216 f.

  15. 15.

    Ibid., p. 212.

  16. 16.

    Ibid., p. 217.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., p. 227.

  18. 18.

    Particularly enlightening are Dun Zhang’s essays on the relation between the recognition theory in Hegel’s Phänomenologie and the alienation of intercourse theory. See Dun Zhang, The Problem of “Recognition” from the Vantage Point of the Marxian Practical Philosophy (Marxism & Reality, no. 1, 2007), Alienation of Intercourse. The Problem of “Recognition” in Marx’s Comments on James Mill (Modern Philosophy, no. 5, 2007).

  19. 19.

    Marx, Comments on James Mill, Élémens d’économie politique, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 3: Marx and Engels: 1843–1844, Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 217.

  20. 20.

    Lixin Han, The Civil Society Concept in Die Deutsche Ideologie. Part I, in: Marxism & Reality, no. 4, 2006.

  21. 21.

    Marx, Comments on James Mill, Élémens d’économie politique, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 3: Marx and Engels: 1843–1844, Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 218.

  22. 22.

    Ibid., p. 213.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., p. 212.

  24. 24.

    Ibid.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., p. 215.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., p. 215.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., p. 214.

  28. 28.

    Ibid., p. 215.

  29. 29.

    Ibid., p. 220.

  30. 30.

    Ibid., p. 226 f.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., p. 227.

  32. 32.

    Ibid.

  33. 33.

    Ibid., p. 219.

  34. 34.

    Cf. ibid., p. 227 f.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., p. 217.

  36. 36.

    Cf. Seiji Mochizuki, A Study of Marx’s Historical Theory, trans. by Lixin Han, Beijing Normal University Publishing Group, 2009, p. 87 f.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., p. 218.

  38. 38.

    Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. by H. B. Nisbet, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 229.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., p. 221.

  40. 40.

    Marx, Comments on James Mill, Élémens d’économie politique, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 3: Marx and Engels: 1843–1844, Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 217.

  41. 41.

    Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 3: Marx and Engels: 1843–1844, Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 317.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., p. 298.

  43. 43.

    Considering the Paris Manuscripts in its entirety, Marx does undergo the process of alienated labor → civil society → labor and society. This, on the one hand, shows that Marx was gradually approaching the historical materialist standpoint, and, on the other hand, bolsters the philological speculation of Lapin, Rojahn and other Japanese scholars over the writing sequence of the Paris Manuscripts, namely the First Manuscript → Comments on James Mill → the Second Manuscript → the Third Manuscript.

  44. 44.

    Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 3: Marx and Engels: 1843–1844, Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 273.

  45. 45.

    David Rosenberg, A Summary of the Development of Marx and Engels’s Economics Theories in the 1840s, trans. by Fang Gang et al., SDX Joint Publishing Company, 1958.

  46. 46.

    Marx, On the Jewish Question, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 3: Marx and Engels: 1843–1844, Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 172.

  47. 47.

    David Mclellan, The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx, Frederick A. Praeger, 1969, p. 155.

  48. 48.

    Cai Hou, The Development of the Thought of the Young Hegelians and Early Marx, China Social Sciences Press, Beijing, 1994, p. 152, 157 (translated into English by K.H.). The third and fourth chapter of this book, i.e. Marx and Hess’s Socialism. Part 1 and Part 2, expound at length the relation between Hess and Feuerbach and between Hess and Marx. Both are salient texts for the studies of the relation between Hess and Marx in China.

  49. 49.

    Wataru Hiromatsu, The Evolution of Marxism, in: Collected Works of Wataru Hiromatsu, vol. 6, San-Ichi Shobo, 1997, p. 299 (translated into English by K.H.). In this famous work of his early period, Hiromatsu dedicates an article to Hess’s significance for the formation of early Marx’s thought and even interprets Marx’s Manuscripts with Hess’s thought, degrading the Manuscripts to the plane of Hess’s Über das Geldwesen and Philosophie der Tat. This reading would be more understandable if we consider Hiromatsu’s underlying framework, namely the “leap from alienation theory to reification theory”: That Marx has already surpassed the level of Hess and himself in the period of Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher is not a favorable conclusion for him who construes Ideologie as the turning point where Marx’s “leap” occurs. Therefore, he must put the Manuscripts under Hess’s shadow. In his late period, however, Hiromatsu reflected on his early standpoint, admitting to having overrated Hess back then (Wataru Hiromatsu, The Evolution of Marxism. Postscript to the Edition of Collected Works, in: Collected Works of Wataru Hiromatsu, vol. 6, San-Ichi Shobo, 1997, p. 588)

  50. 50.

    Cai Hou, The Development of the Thought of the Young Hegelians and Early Marx, China Social Sciences Press, 1994, p. 177.

  51. 51.

    Moses Hess, Über das Geldwesen, in: Moses Hess. Philosophische und sozialistische Schriften 1837–1850, Akademie Verlag, 1961, S. 344 (translated into English by K.H.).

  52. 52.

    Ibid., S. 339.

  53. 53.

    Ibid., S. 345.

  54. 54.

    Ibid., S. 342 f.

  55. 55.

    Yasishi Yamanouchi, The Gaze of the Sufferer, Seidosha, 2004, p. 260 (translated into English by K.H.).

  56. 56.

    Marx, On the Jewish Question, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 3: Marx and Engels: 1843–1844, Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 173.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Lixin Han

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Han, L. (2020). The Alienation of Intercourse in Comments on James Mill: The Turning Point of Marx. In: Studies of the Paris Manuscripts. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9618-3_10

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