Zhu Chunyan and Gao Qin: A Philosophical Critique of Private Property in the "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844"
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 is the theoretical fruit of Marx’s initial study of political economy and his attempt to critique the system of national debt. Due to its "philosophical critique of political economy," it has become an "epoch-making event in the history of Marxist studies" and an important text for the study and research of Marxist theoretical disciplines. Within this text, the critique of private property serves as a key link in witnessing Marx’s critique of national economy [1] and his exploration of forming his own academic thought, demonstrating significant academic status. This is evident from the high frequency of the term "private property" in the headings of the book’s framework. However, the problem is twofold: on the one hand, Western Marxist theorists including Lukács and Marcuse focused excessively on Marx’s issues of "reification," "alienation," and "labor"; on the other hand, because Marx rarely used the terminology of "private property" in The Holy Family (completed simultaneously with Engels) or in subsequent works like The Poverty of Philosophy and Capital, various theoretical disagreements have arisen regarding the status of this concept in the development of Marx's thought. First, there is excessive focus on the theory of alienated labor in this book while the role and significance of the "private property" concept is overlooked or even underestimated. Second, some scholars, based on the fact that "private property" was originally a basic concept of national economy and that Marx was still in the initial stage of economic research, one-sidedly judge the immaturity of Marx’s thought. These problems directly led to the underestimation of Marx's concept of private property. The extended consequence is an inability to grasp the continuity of the development of Marx's thought as a whole, and the proposal of an academic periodization between the "Young Marx" and the "Mature Marx" due to an overvaluation of the theory of alienated labor.
It must be said that at this time, Marx’s economic research was still in the stage of learning and exploration. His theoretical expositions generally followed the general terminology of the national economic system, and national economy itself constructed its theory starting from the self-evident principle of "private property." Therefore, Marx’s economic research at this time revolved around the concept of "private property," which indeed possessed limitations and showed theoretical immaturity. However, one must also see that although Marx used the national economic concept of "private property," he was not confined to the theoretical level or political height of national economy. Instead, starting from a position distinctly different from or even fundamentally opposed to national economy, he regarded "private property" as a category closely related to the human essence and its realization. It is precisely this unique perspective, carrying a certain philosophical flavor, that allowed Marx to transcend the theoretical horizons of national economy—not only in his understanding of the connotation of "private property," but even in his insight into capitalist history and the problem of human development. From within its theory, he generated a new, vital, and revolutionary theory, laying an important theoretical and methodological foundation for his later creation of the New Materialism and his critique of capitalism. It can be said that this was a necessary stage in the qualitative leap of political economy from the classical to the scientific; thereafter, Marx formed his own academic assertions through a "revolution in terminology" and achieved a qualitative metamorphosis like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. Thus, examining the concept of "private property" at the beginning of the formation of Marx’s thought and revealing Marx’s understanding of the essence, movement, and path of the sublation [2] of this concept possesses relatively important theoretical and contemporary value for fully grasping the developmental process of Marx’s thought, understanding the three constituent parts of Marxist theory as a whole, and thereby highlighting the criticality and transcendence of Marx’s thought.
I. The Essence of Private Property
The appearance of the concept of "private property" in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 is thought-provoking. Although this concept appears many times in the framework headings of the book, the book does not begin with private property; although alienated labor is the most influential theory in this book, the book also does not begin with alienated labor. Notebook I first expounds on three economic categories from Adam Smith’s doctrine: wages, profit of capital, and rent of land. The "Alienated Labor and Private Property" section, which also belongs to Notebook I, is placed after the exposition of these three categories. Therefore, it is necessary to reflect on the relationship between the first three parts and this fourth part. The academic community has not paid high attention to these three parts for a long time; many studies on the 1844 Manuscripts enter directly into the study of alienated labor from the fourth part of Notebook I. But the question is: what was the impetus that prompted Marx to discuss the issue of "alienated labor and private property"? Looking at the four parts of Notebook I as a whole, the transition from the first three parts to the fourth part is a process from "stating facts" to "explaining the principle." It was precisely on the basis of expounding the first three parts that Marx raised a critique of the "wage-labor," "capital-profit," and "land-rent" relationships which national economy considered reasonable and fair. It can be said that the exposition of the first three parts of Notebook I set up the target for Marx’s critique of national economy and became the premise for his thesis in the critique of political economy.
In Marx’s view, national economy holds a directly affirmative attitude toward "private property." Smith regarded the right to property as a relationship of "things" between people; he saw the decisive role of the emergence of property rights on human relations and believed that the protection of private property constituted a necessary condition for the growth of national wealth. Based on this, Say further pointed out, "As far as political economy is concerned, it only regards the right to property as the most powerful factor encouraging the accumulation of wealth... only in cases where property is a right and a reality can the sources of production—namely land, capital, and labor—exert their greatest productive forces." In national economy, the existence of "private property" as a necessary condition for wealth accumulation is natural and reasonable; the legitimacy of private property is a self-evident principle. Under this premise, the main task of national economy is to explore, through "scientific" analysis, how to best utilize private property—manifested as capital, labor, and land—to promote the continuous growth of social wealth.
At the same time, national economy since Smith has also revealed a fundamental principle of modern social production based on a summary of the actual development of capitalist production: "Labor is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities." Marx believed that this labor theory of value was the true theoretical contribution of classical political economy. However, Marx discovered that "Although national economy starts from the point that labor is the true soul of production, it gives nothing to labor and everything to private property," because "capital is stored-up labor." If national economy correctly summarized the scientific principle reflecting reality that "labor is the sole essence of wealth," then looking at the results, why does the production of wealth allow "private property" to dominate everything while causing the laborer to fall into a most miserable plight? At this point, Marx realized that there must be a contradiction between the legitimacy of "private property" (a necessary premise directly recognized by national economy) and "labor constituting the source of wealth" (a scientific principle of national economy), which leads the concept of "private property"—the cornerstone of the entire theoretical system of national economy—to contain immense ambiguity. Since the direct affirmation of "private property" cannot solve the contradictions that exist both in reality and in theory, one should inquire into the origin and essence of "private property." These are the two tasks Marx intended to solve at the end of Notebook I: first, "to define the general essence of private property, as it appears as a result of alienated labor, in its relation to truly human and social property"; second, "How does man come to externalize, to alienate his labor? How is this alienation rooted in the nature of human development?", which is the question of the origin of private property.
It should be noted that at this time, Marx had already to some extent completed the transition from revolutionary democracy to communism. The purpose of his academic research was to "seek a way to overthrow the existing capitalist system and achieve the emancipation of the proletariat through the anatomical and theoretical discourse of political economy." The proposal of these two tasks already demonstrated Marx’s proletarian standpoint, and he would naturally solve the problems with the same standpoint. To solve these two tasks, Marx started from the theories of national economy itself, turned to reflect on the essential definition of "labor," and interpreted it by drawing on Hegel’s dialectics. In his view, "Hegel grasps the self-creation of man as a process, objectification as loss of the object, as alienation and as the sublation of this alienation," thereby grasping the essence of labor. It is in this sense that Marx broke through the traditional economic understanding of the concept of "labor" and "understood objective man, real because he is true man, as the result of his own labor." Therefore, labor is not only the direct source of the laborer’s means of subsistence, but even more the active realization of the laborer’s individual existence. However, in capitalist production, the "objectification" of human labor—especially the labor of the broad masses of workers—directly manifests as a "loss of realization." This is reflected in the fact that the more products the worker produces, the richer his world of objects becomes, but the poorer the worker himself becomes. That is to say, the more the worker’s life-creation is manifested, the more cheapened his own existence becomes; the result is the continuous appreciation of the "world of things" and the continuous devaluation of the "world of men." This is the alienation of human labor in reality which national economy accepts as a "law." It can be seen that Marx’s four definitions of alienated labor—including the alienation of the product of labor, the alienation of the activity of labor, the alienation of man’s species-essence, and the alienation of the relationship between man and man—all revolve around private property and are intended to explain the "reasons for the separation of labor and capital, and capital and land." Clearly, at the beginning of this section, Marx already had his own answer to this.
Because he questioned the source of private property and explored the essence of labor, Marx obtained another "fact" fundamentally different from the so-called "fact" (private property) of national economy: "the alienation and externalization of labor." Thus, private property, regarded by national economy as the necessary condition and basis of labor, is seen by Marx as the product of alienated labor, derived through "alienated life," i.e., "externalized labor." "Private property is the product, the result, the necessary consequence of externalized labor, of the external relation of the worker to nature and to himself." This explains that "alienated labor" is the relationship of man to nature (the product of labor) and to himself (the activity of production) under specific conditions of production; while private property, as the result of alienated labor, is first of all "the relation of the non-worker to labor and its product" and "the property relation of the non-worker to the worker and to labor." In short, the relationship between alienated labor and private property is "the relation of the worker to labor [which] creates the relation of the capitalist—or whatever other name one chooses to give to the master of labor—to that same labor." A specific relation of man to things (alienated labor) produces a specific relation of man to man (private property)—that is, the relationship between "the relation of man to things" and "the relation of man to man" under specific social conditions. On the one hand, a certain relation of man to things necessarily produces a certain relation of man to man—alienated labor necessarily produces private property. "Through alienated labor, man not only creates his relation to the object of production and the act of production as to powers that are alien and hostile to him; he also creates the relation in which other men stand to his production and to his product, and the relation in which he stands to these other men." That is to say, labor not only produces "things" (products) but also produces "social relations" (the antagonistic relationship between the laborer and the non-laborer); therefore, the production of social relations has its real roots and necessity. On the other hand, a certain relation of man to things can only be displayed through a certain relation of man to man—alienated labor can only and must be displayed in private property. The relationship of man to nature and to himself is social, practical, and real only through his relationship to other men. "Every self-alienation of man from himself and from nature appears in the relation in which he places himself and nature to men other than himself." On this point, the exposition by Marx and Engels in The Holy Family, written almost simultaneously—"the object as being for man, as the objective being of man, is at the same time man’s existence for others, his human relation to others, the social behavior of man to man"—can be said to be a classic elucidation of the social-relational essence of private property.
Although in his early manuscripts Marx did not directly link "private property" to social relations, we can discern his preliminary reflections on "social relations between human beings" [3] by revealing the essence of private property. At this point, the concept of "private property" already possessed certain core connotations of social relations. First, objects in reality reflect relations between people; second, these relations have a specific productive basis—a certain mode of labor production; third, social relations as a whole are the product of specific socio-historical conditions. At the same time, it must be noted that the content of social relations revealed by Marx through the concept of "private property" at this stage only roughly points toward the relation of humans to objects, the relations between humans, and the connection between the two; it is not yet a comprehensive, scientific, and systematic elaboration starting from the capitalist production process.
Furthermore, one can conclude that Marx's discourse on labor and alienated labor serves his critique of the private property theory found in national political economy [4]. The theory of alienated labor constitutes the theoretical foundation of Marx's critique of national political economy, yet it is not the ultimate goal; Marx's ultimate goal is to critique the irrationality of private property, and his discussion of labor and alienated labor serves to explain the essence and origin of private property. This is similar to how Marx’s view of labor constitutes the cornerstone of historical materialism, yet it is not the core content of historical materialism itself. The core content of historical materialism is the revelation that the movement of basic social contradictions constitutes the fundamental driving force of social development, rather than merely articulating the proposition that "labor created man himself." Even if labor and alienated labor are the core topics discussed in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, they only serve Marx’s overall critique of national political economy and the creation of his own political-economic theory, laying the foundation for his own theoretical framework. The core issue of Marx’s true concern is private property; the relationship between means and ends here is very clear. Regarding this point, Herbert Marcuse [5], also in his youth, understood Marx's original intention; in his article "The Foundation of Historical Materialism," he argued that Marx initially "deliberately divided his research into three traditional concepts of political economy, namely 'wages,' 'profit of capital,' and 'ground rent,'" and believed that Marx’s critique of these three concepts "marks a brand-new direction."
II. The Movement of Private Property
In the study of the relationship between alienated labor and private property, a representative view—represented especially by Japanese scholars such as Tadashi Oi [6], Wataru Hiromatsu, and Seiji Mochizuki—holds that Marx’s account of the relationship between the two falls into a circular argument. This view suggests that, on the one hand, Marx considers private property to be the premise and basis of alienated labor, while on the other hand, he considers private property to be the result of alienated labor. Chinese scholars such as Han Lixin, Wang Fengming, and Jiang Haibo have proposed different insights on this. As mentioned previously, we noted the two tasks Marx intended to resolve in Notebook I: to logically reveal the essence of private property and to historically reveal the origins of private property and alienated labor. In this sense, alienated labor is the logical premise leading to private property; conversely, private property is the historical premise for the emergence of alienated labor, and in the later stages of the movement of private property, the interaction between the two manifests itself. This process of interaction itself constitutes the history of the movement of private property. It is precisely in this preliminary expression of the unity of logic and history that Marx began his critique of social relations in capitalist society and directed the spearhead of his critique toward the capitalist system, surpassing previous political economy. Therefore, one cannot say that Marx’s elaboration suffers from a circular argument problem, though the fact that Marx’s critique of capitalist private ownership was not yet sufficiently clear is one reason why the "circular argument theory" emerged.
In Marx's view, national political economy examines private property from the standpoint of a certain stage of its development; it ignores the history of the generation and development of private property, treating the existence of private property under specific historical conditions as a trans-historical, general state. When the movement and development of private property reach a certain stage, the concept of "private property" appears in human consciousness as a result, thus appearing to be natural and eternal. This indicates that what was initially a logical "result" and "cause" has transformed into an objective relationship of interaction. For Marx, this theoretical development is actually the "product of the real energy and real movement of private property," the "independent movement of private property forming for-itself within consciousness." Marx grasps private property from a historical perspective of movement and generation; he does not treat private property as a static social existence but regards it as a dynamic historical existence. That is to say, it is precisely based on this historical perspective of the "movement of private property" that "private property"—as the premise and purpose of the system of national political economy—is shown to be not natural and eternal, but historical and generated. This reflects the fundamental difference between Marx and national political economy in their understanding of the concept of "private property."
Consequently, one must further inquire into the manifestations of the movement of private property, its internal dynamics, and the interaction of its constituent elements. Marx believed that although national political economy contains many categories, labor and capital are the two basic elements, and all other categories, such as competition, can be derived from these two elements and their interaction. Viewed this way, the movement of private property actually manifests in two aspects: on the one hand, the formation of "the relation of private property as labor," and on the other, the formation of "the relation of private property as capital." The movement of private property itself is the result of the interaction between these two relations. Based on the historicity of the movement of private property, labor (as the subjective essence of private property) and capital (as the objective aspect of private property) are likewise historically generated. The two are both opposed and unified, constituting the internal driving force of the movement of private property and propelling its historical development.
First, the movement of private property is the movement of "the relation of private property as labor," namely the formation of the "private property" (alienated labor) of the laborer. What is generated in this process is the history of productive activity that is completely alien to the laborer's own consciousness and manifestation of life. Starting from Adam Smith, national political economy discovered and proposed the basic principle of modern economics that "labor is the subjective essence of private property." They affirmed the significance of the individual's for-itself activity (i.e., labor) as the subject, grasping it as the internal essence of private property; this was one of the primary theoretical achievements of national political economy. This recognition of the subjective essence of wealth (labor) did not happen overnight but underwent a process. In Mercantilism and the Monetary System, "private property" was still only embodied in objective existence; the subjective essence of wealth (labor) had not yet been discovered. In contrast, Smith no longer grasped "private property" as a state external to the human being. From this point on, the essence of private property was embodied within the human being itself (labor); by "positing the human being itself as the determination of private property," the externality of private property (i.e., wealth preserved only in an external way) was sublated. In this sense, Engels called Smith "the Luther of (national) political economy." Marx further pointed out that while this doctrine seemingly affirms the human being and recognizes human independence and autonomous activity, it is actually a false recognition and a complete negation of the human being. The result of the subjectivization of the essence of private property is precisely the negation of the human being itself, "for the human being itself no longer stands in an external relation of tension to the external essence of private property, but has itself become this tense essence of private property." What was previously private property as "externalization" (entäußerung) [7] has now become the "externalizing" of human activity, and the worker can only maintain his own survival through continuous "externalization." This survival "is the abstract existence of the human being as a mere laboring individual, who may therefore daily fall from his filled-nothingness into absolute nothingness, into his social and thus real non-existence." Consequently, national political economy, represented by Smith, only revealed the substance of wealth within the framework of private ownership.
Second, the movement of private property is the movement of "the relation of private property as capital," manifesting as the formation of the private property (universal money) of the non-laborer. What is generated in this process is the history in which human activity and its objectified results are alienated into capital. In this form of wealth, the traditional natural and social determinations of objects no longer play a decisive role. Because the human being itself is posited as the subjective essence of private property, the power of private property is no longer constrained by previous local or national conditions, "thus exerting a cosmopolitan, universal energy which breaks through every limitation and bond, so as to establish itself as the sole policy, universality, limitation, and bond in place of these determinations." The exertion of this universal power of private property is ultimately embodied in the form of universal money (the incarnation of value). Thereby, private property "loses its natural and social characteristics" and acquires an independent, material expression. Marx pointed out that the development from private property—which initially still bore the marks of natural, social, and human relations—to universal money is an inevitable process, but this process is also one of externalization and alienation. For Marx, the essence of money is "the mediating activity or movement through which human products mutually supplement one another." However, under the premise of private property, since the exchanging parties exchange not for personal life-needs but for value (valorization), the exchanged objects no longer represent the supplementation of life between individuals; the product loses its connotation as "human" property. Here, the relation of private property to private property is completely abstract; it contains neither political nor social content, nor do any "human relations" exist. The abstract relation of private property to private property is expressed solely by money (the value relation). The social connection between people (the exchange and supplementation of products) does not depend on human needs or the attributes of objects, but is determined by an abstract relation (value) that stands above humans and is beyond their own control. Therefore, universal money, as the medium of social connection, "is the self-lost, alienated essence of private property, private property externalized outside itself, the externalized mediation between human production and human production, the externalized species-activity [8] of man." Money is the "externalization of private property," the negation of the human and social bonds that belong to human beings.
Finally, the movement of private property is the developmental process of the interaction between its two aspects—labor and capital; it is a process of the unity of opposites between these two as contradictory sides. Marx emphasizes that "the antithesis between lack of property and property, so long as it is not comprehended as the antithesis of labor and capital, still remains an indifferent antithesis." This is because the opposition between having and not having property has been a common phenomenon since humanity entered class society; only by transforming the antithesis of "propertylessness and property" into that of "labor and capital," and by grasping this antithesis from the perspective of their internal relationship, can one obtain the necessary form (the internal driving force) of the "movement of private property." This active relationship—which develops from simple opposition into a "contradictory relationship" and impels the resolution of that contradiction—is precisely the focus of Marx’s investigation. This demonstrates that Marx transcended the intellectual logic of national economy [9], shifting from polar thinking to dialectical thinking. He held that "everything real contains opposite determinations within itself." By researching the "antithesis set by private property itself," he studied this object as a concrete unity of opposite determinations and how it drives the historical movement of private property’s own development. This is the very essence of Hegelian dialectics. For Marx, the contradiction between labor and capital is "rational" because he views the unity of opposites between the two as the internal driving force of the movement and development of things. Under the development of this active relationship, "private property" propels itself forward, resulting in a movement that manifests as the accumulation of wealth on one hand and the deepening of alienation on the other. In contrast, while national economy also considers the contradiction between labor and capital "rational," it displays a "hypocritical" and cynical character. This is because its theory regarding "labor as the sole essence of wealth" appears to "recognize man, his independence, and his autonomous activity," but in reality, as national economy developed from Smith to Ricardo, the antithesis between labor and capital was expressed in an increasingly obvious and sharp manner. They only discovered and acknowledged the contradiction but could not understand or transcend it; they even "always and consciously went further than their predecessors in excluding man," whereby this doctrine took on the characteristic of being "hostile to man."
To this point, the movement of private property reveals the historical conditions, social characteristics, and generative mechanisms of a specific set of social relations (private property relations). The historical condition of real social relations is real social production—"the production of human activity" and "the production of the object of human activity." Real "production of human activity" is the production of alienated labor and the generation of the subjective essence of private property; real "production of the object of human activity" is the production of money-capital and the generation of the objective existence of private property. The social characteristic of real social relations (private property relations) is the actual negation of the true human being and the human essence—social connection. The generative mechanism of real social relations lies in the active relationship between labor and capital; it is the inevitable result of the continuous resolution of this contradiction.
III. The Sublation of Private Property
In the opening sections of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx followed the general discursive system of national economy, examining national wealth (income) by dividing it into three parts: "wages, profit of capital, and rent of land." This examination consisted primarily of excerpts of relevant arguments from political economic works. However, as Marx's research deepened, he absorbed and transformed Hegel’s dialectic of labor and Feuerbach’s theory of sensibility, proposing his own logic of alienated labor and elucidating the essence of private property. On this basis, he revealed that the internal driving force of the movement of private property is in fact the contradictory relationship between labor and capital. Consequently, Marx transformed the traditional political economic "trinity" of wealth sources—capital, labor, and land—into the contradictory movement of labor and capital, noting that "the antithesis between labor and capital, once it reaches the extreme, is necessarily the peak, the highest stage, and the downfall of the whole relationship." Here, private property relations are explicitly grasped as a historical existence that will inevitably be transcended.
In fact, one of the purposes of Marx’s comprehensive critique of the concept of "private property" was to replace the "accidental connection" between things with the "necessary relationship" between movements. National economy derives various "facts" by observing "the material process through which private property passes in reality"; they place these facts into general, abstract formulas and سپس fix these formulas as "laws." Marx’s approach, however, was to view existing "facts" as the result of a historical development with specific causes, and by questioning the relationship between these "facts" (already regarded as principles) and other facts, to discover the "interconnection of the movement." For example, Marx considered later history (such as competition, freedom of craft, and the subdivision of landed property) to be the "necessary, inevitable, and natural consequence" of prior history (such as monopoly, the guild system, and large-scale landed property under feudal ownership), whereas national economy treated it only as an "accidental, intentional, and forced result." Because they did not understand the "interconnection of the movement," the only thing they were certain of was the absolute "superiority" of the existing economic system and various innate human natures and inclinations (such as exchange). However, just as money necessarily replaces other forms of private property, "the result of the actual developmental process... is the necessary victory of the capitalist over the landowner—that is to say, the victory of developed private property over undeveloped, incomplete private property." What Marx intended to emphasize was precisely the necessary correlation between various historical categories.
Evidently, as a developing historical existence, private property is neither natural nor eternal; it can be said that it will inevitably be transcended in its own historical development. Therefore, a question Marx had to face was: what exactly does the transcendence of private property, or the sublation [10] of private property, mean? Prior to Marx, some socialists had proposed their own views on how to transcend private property; Proudhon, a contemporary of Marx, had also put forward related ideas. If national economy accepted the antithesis between labor and capital as an unavoidable condition, then petty-bourgeois socialists proposed the idea of transcending private ownership on another limited basis—for instance, Proudhon viewed the reduction of interest on money as the sublation of capital. Regarding this, Marx pointed out that, in fact, this was the submission of "prodigal wealth" to "working capital," and a historical process of the transformation of all private property into industrial capital. What Proudhon regarded here as the sublation of private property was actually private property "proceeding along the path of victory, namely the victory of industrial capital." Therefore, those movements which Proudhon considered to be the movement of labor against capital "are nothing but the movement of labor—possessing the determination of capital, i.e., industrial capital—against capital which is not consumed as capital, i.e., in an industrial manner."
In Marx's view, the initial form of the sublation of private property manifests precisely as the generalization and completion of private property relations. As the "positive expression of sublated private property," communism first appears as universal private property. In this form, the dominating power of material property remains decisive; the sole aim of this sublation is the direct possession of the material world. It "wants to destroy everything which is not capable of being possessed by all as private property." In effect, it extends the category of "worker" to all people. Marx calls the sublation of private property in this sense "crude communism." Like private property, it embodies the negation of human personality, and thus is "only a consummation of private property." Crude communism, as the envy and the urge toward leveling-down, is still based on private property and reflects its totalization and generalization.
From Marx’s critique of Proudhon and crude communism, it is clear that within the realm of the alienation of private property, consciousness easily mistakes the development of private property itself for a symptom of communism. This misrecognition is also manifested when incomplete communism attempts to "detach individual moments from the movement" and seeks proof that communism once appeared or existed in history within various social forms that appear to stand in opposition to private property. This confirmation of its own existence actually points erroneously to the past rather than the future. Here, Marx puts forward a assertion of great value, showing the germ of his new philosophy (new materialism): "the entire movement of history... is, for its thinking consciousness, the comprehended and known movement of its becoming." However, the vast majority of the historical movement is inconsistent with its "assertion." When private property completes its rule over man and acts as a universal world-historical force, it is more often the case that "the two sides of the relationship are raised to an imagined universality: labor as a vocation for everyone, and capital as the acknowledged universality and power of the community."
Unlike the aforementioned views on the sublation of private property, in Marx’s view, since the essence of private property lies in the alienation of human species-life, and the movement of private property is a dual process of wealth accumulation and human alienation, the positive sublation of private property is not a question of the possession of things, but a question related to the liberation of the human species-essence. The positive sublation of private property (i.e., communism) should not be understood merely as the expansion of the possession and enjoyment of things, but rather as the "sensuous" appropriation of the human essence and of the objective world as the manifestation of human life, through human historical action and for the sake of man himself. Sublation in this sense is the positive sublation of all forms of alienation that have ever appeared in history, and the return of man to his own true "social" existence. Under the premise of the positive sublation of private property, the objects that directly embody human personality are the existence of the individual for others, and simultaneously the existence of others for this individual. In this situation, the relationship connected through production and objects between people is human and social in essence. It can be said that man "produces" others in a truly "social" sense; thus "the sublation of private property is the complete emancipation of all human senses and qualities; but it is this emancipation precisely because these senses and qualities have become human, both subjectively and objectively."
Through his exploration of the essence of private property and his identification of the movement of private property, Marx defined the connotation of the "positive sublation of private property." As the "material, sensuous expression of alienated human life," private property is man’s self-alienation; therefore, the true sublation of private property is the positive sublation of man’s self-alienation. That is to say, returning the objective world of man to man himself means to "fundamentally eliminate the alienation of labor, thoroughly sublate the reified private property, and enable the worker to re-appropriate his own labor essence; this is the humanism and communism of the proletarian revolution." At the same time, this sublation is a historical sublation based on "human reality," a real revolutionary process unfolding on the basis of the communist movement. "To sublate the thought of private property, the thought of communism is quite sufficient. To sublate real private property, however, requires real communist action. History will bring this communist action, and the movement which we already recognize in thought as sublating itself will, in reality, undergo a very difficult and protracted process." All revolutions should not become utopias; to become reality, they must be grasped as a social and historical practice, the foundation of which is in turn the development of history itself. Thus, in the activities of actively participating in the workers' movement and conducting theoretical and practical struggles, Marx found the real basis for transcending private property and sublating human self-alienation, noting that "the entire revolutionary movement necessarily finds both its empirical and its theoretical basis in the movement of private property—that is, in the economy."
The fundamental prerequisite for the true transcendence of private property is the movement of private property itself. On the level of actual history, this movement manifests as the entire history of human production and consumption within the scope of alienation; this sensuous [11] display of the movement of production is human reality, as well as the "realization of man." Within the process of the material movement of private property, all the sensuous materials required for the "object" to truly become "human" are generated; it is here that revolution finds its actual and theoretical foundation. On this basis, Marx's philosophical critique of "private property" is integrated with revolutionary communist thought. For him, "man rich in the beauty of his comprehensive and profound senses" constitutes the reality of a brand-new society, and "through the movement of private property, of its wealth as well as its poverty—of its material and spiritual wealth and poverty—the budding society finds at hand all the material for this development." Herein lies the historical necessity of private property. Both the "material of labor" and "man as the subject" are simultaneously the result and the starting point of the movement of private property. Consequently, "the whole of history is a preparation for 'man' to become the object of sensuous consciousness, and for the needs of 'man as man' to become [natural, human] needs." Viewed from the perspective of communism, the universal essence of private property is the "civilizing" dimension of capital.
IV. Conclusion
The critique of private property in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 is a "positive" rather than a "moral" critique. This critique explains the factual structural foundation of national economy [12], while simultaneously pointing out its actual defects and errors. As a direct reflection of the economic structure of capitalist society at the theoretical level, national economy is unable to resolve the fundamental opposition between labor and capital contained within its own theory because it shares an isomorphism with actual capitalist production. In contrast, Marx proceeds from a completely different standpoint, explaining the essence of private property through the logic of alienated labor, and revealing the actual foundation for the historical sublation [13] of private property through an interpretation of its movement. If the focus of national economy always lies in the "rationality" of private property itself, Marx's focus from the very beginning lies in man and human society itself.
Marx's concept of "private property" takes the alienation of the human species-essence and its historical sublation as its core. Before Marx, private property was generally understood as a "relationship of things" external to man. Marx, however, linked "private property" to the "human essence," advancing the existence of private property from a "relationship of things" to a "human relationship." As he noted, "this new formulation of the question already contains its solution." This is a philosophical vision that transcends the purely economic horizon; it is precisely this philosophical vision that enabled Marx’s economic and philosophical research, beginning in 1844, to develop into a historical, revolutionary, and practical theory. Herbert Marcuse was justified in regarding the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 as the initial "material" with which Marx founded historical materialism.
For Marx, the reason national economy became an "object of critique" is that it justifies and conceals the comprehensive alienation of human reality as manifested in capitalist society; it is a "science" that posits man as a "non-being" as its object of study. In this sense, the thorough critique of national economy acquires a significance vital to the "human essence." As Marcuse argued, within this critique, the thought of political economy undergoes a radical transformation: "it becomes a science of the necessary conditions for the communist revolution. This revolution itself has nothing to do with economic cataclysm; it signifies a revolution in the whole of human history, a revolution in the definition of man as a being."
Marx's philosophical critique of traditional economics, using "private property" as an entry point, reveals that capitalist society problematizes the existence of "man as man" and "human reality." For the Marx of this period, this constituted the legitimate grounds for the thorough revolution of the proletariat. Because the content of political economy is fundamentally unified with the human essence and its historical realization, economic theory manifests as a revolutionary theory; simultaneously, revolutionary theory finds its economic, actual, and material foundation. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx attempted to unify philosophy, economics, and revolutionary theory. Thus, Marx's initial research into political economy already exhibited the characteristics of a "practical theory."