Marx's Theory of Human Nature - The Sixth Thesis On Feuerbach and The Determination of Human Nature By Social Relations

The Sixth Thesis On Feuerbach and The Determination of Human Nature By Social Relations

Norman Geras claimed in Marx and Human Nature (1983) that although many Marxists denied that there was a "human nature" to be found in Marx's words, there is in fact a Marxist conception of human nature which remains, to some degree, constant throughout history and across social boundaries. The sixth of the Theses on Feuerbach provided the basics for this interpretation of Marx according to which there was no eternal human nature to be found in his works. It states:

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 reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations. Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence is hence obliged:

1. To abstract from the historical process and to define the religious sentiment regarded by itself, and to presuppose an abstract — isolated - human individual.

2. The essence therefore can by him only be regarded as ‘species’, as an inner ‘dumb’ generality which unites many individuals only in a natural way.

Thus, Marx appears to say that human nature is no more than what is made by the 'social relations'. Norman Geras's Marx and Human Nature, however, offers an extremely detailed argument against this position. In outline, Geras shows that, while the social relations are held to 'determine' the nature of people, they are not the only such determinant. In fact, Marx makes statements where he specifically refers to a human nature which is more than what is conditioned by the circumstances of one's life. In Capital, in a footnote critiquing utilitarianism, he says that utilitarians must reckon with 'human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch' . Marx is arguing against an abstract conception of human nature, offering instead an account rooted in sensuous life. While he is quite explicit that 's individuals express their life, so they are. Hence what individuals are depends on the material conditions of their production', he also believes that human nature will condition (against the background of the productive forces and relations of production) the way in which individuals express their life. History involves 'a continuous transformation of human nature', though this does not mean that every aspect of human nature is wholly variable; what is transformed need not be wholly transformed. Marx did criticise the tendency to 'transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property', a process sometimes called "reification". For this reason, he would likely have wanted to criticise certain aspects of some accounts of human nature. Some people believe, for example, that humans are naturally selfish - Kant and Hobbes, for example. (Both Hobbes and Kant thought that it was necessary to constrain our human nature in order to achieve a good society - Kant thought we should use rationality, Hobbes thought we should use the force of the state - Marx, as we shall see, thought that the good society was one which allows our human nature its full expression.) Most Marxists will argue that this view is an ideological illusion and the effect of commodity fetishism: the fact that people act selfishly is held to be a product of scarcity and capitalism, not an immutable human characteristic. For confirmation of this view, we can see how, in The Holy Family Marx argues that capitalists are not motivated by any essential viciousness, but by the drive toward the bare 'semblance of a human existence' . (Marx says 'semblance' because he believes that capitalists are as alienated from their human nature under capitalism as the proletariat, even though their basic needs are better met.)