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Three Marxian Approaches to Recognition

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Abstract

If it seems fully legitimate to introduce Marx in the contemporary discussion about recognition, it is more disputable to attribute to Marx an unified conception of recognition. There is no doubt that Marx hasn’t provided any systematic account of recognition, but he has tackled the issue of recognition from various points of view. Could these various points of view be unified in a general conception of recognition? This article claims that this is not the case since three accounts of recognition should be distinguished that are hardly compatible one with the other: one Feuerbachian account of recognition of the species being in the other, one account of recognition related to the dynamics of disrespect as social experience, and one account of recognition through social roles.

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Notes

  1. In a non alienated society, my product is “a completion of your own essential nature [eine Ergänzung deines eignen Wesens]” (CJM 228/463) while in an alienated society “our complementing each other is likewise a mere semblance [unsere wechselseitige Ergänzung ist ebenfalls ein blosser Schein (CJM 226/460).

  2. Cf. Andrew Chitty, “Recognition and Property in Hegel and the Early Marx”, in this volume, p. …

  3. Cf. Moses Hess, The Essence of Money, § 1: “Life is exchange of productive life-activity. (…) The atmosphere of the Earth, the inalienable medium of the exchange of earthly productions, is the element of earthly life; the sphere in which men exchange their social life-activity with each other—namely intercourse in society—is the inalienable element of social life. (…) They can as little live if separated from the medium of their social life than they can live bodily if separated from the medium of their bodily life-activity—than if their life-air is taken from them. They behave with regard to the whole social body in the same way that the individual members and organs behave with regard to the body of a single individual. They die if they are separated from each other. Their real life consists only in collaboration, only in connexion with the whole social body” (quote from Kovesi 1998: 184).

  4. About the Bauerian and Hessian elements of Marx’s notion of alienation, that are as important as its Hegelian and Feuerbachian elements, see Wittmann (2008).

  5. See also the still Hessian formulations of The German Ideology: “The production of life, both of one’s own in labour and of fresh life in procreation, now appears as a double relationship: on the one hand as a natural, on the other as a social relationship. By social we understand the cooperation of several individuals, no matter under what conditions, in what manner and to what end”; and “The social power, i.e., the multiplied productive force, which arises through the co-operation of different individuals as it is determined by the division of labour, appears to these individuals, since their co-operation is not voluntary but has come about naturally, not as their own united power, but as an alien force existing outside them” (GI, 43 and 48/29-30 and 34).

  6. Here, I am using “moral” in the wide sense of anything having to do with people’s sense of pride, honour, shame, humiliation, whether or not a formal moral code is involved.

  7. See for instance his Critique of the Gotha’s Programme.

  8. C 92/16: “individuals are dealt with here only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories, the bearers of particular class-relations and interests. My standpoint from which the development of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less then any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he remains, socially speaking, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them”

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  1. ENS de Lyon, UMR 5037, 15 Parvis Réné Descartes, 69366, Lyon Cedex 07, France

    Emmanuel Renault

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Renault, E. Three Marxian Approaches to Recognition. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 16, 699–711 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-013-9413-8

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