KARL MARX

PARIS
103
for his own use the whole realm of inorganic nature. It was true that
animals also produced - but only what was immediately necessary for
them. It was man's nature, on the other hand, to produce universally and
freely: he was able 'to produce according to the measure of every species
and knows everywhere how to apply its inherent standard to the object;
thus man also fashions things according to the laws of beauty'. 136
Marx then completed his picture by drawing a fourth characteristic of
alienation out of the first three: every man was alienated from his fellow
men.
In general, the statement that man is alienated from his species-being
means that one man is alienated from another as each of them is
alienated from the human essence. The alienation of man and generally
of every relationship in which he stands is first realized and expressed
in the relationship in which man stands to other men. Thus in the
situation of alienated labour each man measures his relationship to
other men by the relationship in which he finds himself placed as a
worker. 137
The fact that both the product of man's labour and the activity of
production had become alien to him meant that another man had to
control his product and his activity.
Every self-alienation of man from himself and nature appears in the
relationship in which he places himself and nature to other men distinct
from himself. Therefore religious self-alienation necessarily appears in
the relationship of layman to priest, or, because here we are dealing
with a spiritual world, to a mediator, etc. In the practical, real world, the
self-alienation can only appear through the practical, real relationship to
other men. 138
Marx went on to point to practical consequences as regards private
property and wages, which followed from his conclusion that social labour
was the source of all value and thus of the distribution of wealth. He
used his conclusion to resolve two contemporary problems. The first was
the utter rejection of any system that involved the paying of wages. Wages
only served to reinforce the notion of private property and thus even the
proposal of Proudhon that all wages should be equal was quite misconceived.
Secondly, Marx considered - extremely optimistically - that universal
human emancipation could be achieved through the emancipation
of the working class, since 'the whole of human slavery is involved in the
relationship of the worker to his product'. 139
He next planned to extend the entire discussion to all aspects of
classical economics - barter, competition, capital, money - and also to a