the ethnological notebooks of karl marx - Marxists Internet Archive

an internally antagonistic creature, alienated within the collectivities fromwhich he derives his particular social nature. The further question of thenature of human nature in the complex condition of society is therebyposited. Determinist periodization smuggles in a teleology by seeking toforetell the stage to which man must advance. That determinism does notdifferentiate between that which is brought about by the conscious interventionof man and that which takes place without the specifically humanagency. Man is part of the kingdom of nature, and as such the naturalprocesses take place upon and across his physical body; but this body hasalready been modified culturally. Therefore the natural processes inquestion take place in part mediately, in part immediately or directly uponthe human organism and through it, by means of it. But the natural processesrelate as such even less direcdy and hence both proportionately andabsolutely more mediatively in respect of the concrete and particularhuman qualities, the characteristically human works and human socialrelations.Marx distinguished between the human architect and the bee, therebyintroducing the work of the head in the role of the hand. “At the end ofthe labor process a result comes forth that was already present at itsonset in the conceptualization (Vorstellung) of the laborer. Not only doeshe bring about a change in form of the natural realm; he realizes at thesame time in the realm of nature his end, which he knows, which determinesthe manner and mode of his action as a law, and to which he mustsubordinate his will.” 109Unlike the bee, man has separated himself from nature, and has internalizedthis separation, albeit partially and incompletely, as an alienation.The non-internalized part of the separation is likewise an alienation, butit is an alienation in which we do not freely participate, for it is imposedupon us in our given human-infrahuman state. Man is conscious of boththe internalized, voluntary alienation and the alienation which is not, butthe role of the consciousness in either case is different. Man interposes,as Marx pointed out, the agencies of his labor between himself and naturein relation to an end which he has previously conceived and which he hascarried through. Since man has at no time left the natural order the sameforces continue to act upon him and through him as those which actupon and through the bee or the chimpanzee. At the same time, his brainand hand, which have set man aside within the natural order are interactivewith the natural processes. Thus the same forces which have enlargedthe brain and shaped the hand lie at once within and without thehuman being; they are not the sole forces at work upon man, but thesenatural, pre-human forces are part of the materials which -man applies inthe shaping of his peculiarly human work tools. These human processesare not determinate, nor can they be considered as part of any determinismin a precise way. First, they are subject in part to the social variations55