Abstract

In his 1933 essay “On the Philosophical Foundation of the Concept of Labor in Economics,” Marcuse seeks to develop a concept of labor that will clarify its centrality in the constitution of human experience and social theory. Motivating this effort was his view that the bourgeois and Marxist standpoints prevailing at the time proceeded from a flawed concept of labor which often suppressed entirely its philosophical-anthropological dimension. Against this mainstream, Marcuse sought to reconstruct the foundations of political economy by outlining an ontology of human experience grounded in a philosophical-anthropological account of the key concept, labor. He considered this enterprise consistent with Marx's standpoint regarding the relationship of philosophy and political economy—a standpoint which, Marcuse also believed, had been neglected by later Marxists.