Abstract

The philosophical enterprise is a critical inquiry into the fundamental assumptions of what is real, what can be known, what is right and just, and how we can formulate precise patterns of sound reasoning about these fields of inquiry. It is the premise of this dissertation that the work of Karl Marx makes claims in all these fields, but in fact is not as sound a pattern of reasoning as has been claimed by his many and diverse followers. ;Because Marx himself pointed out that all the categories of political economy could be evolved from the concepts of private property and alienated labor, that the division of labor and private property are identical expressions, and that alienated labor is synonymous with the labor in the division of labor, it seems reasonable to criticize his claims on the basis of his use of the concept 'division of labor'. ;Since Marx limits the development of communism to a period in which man's technological ability will provide all his necessities, and man will only have to be concerned with those products which have been added to his subsistence, it would seem unlikely that it would be possible to do away with the division of labor and maintain the level of development at the same time. In addition, since humans are biologically dependent for both subsistence and the knowledge of survival techniques, it would seem to be impossible to do away with either the individual or the cultural level of the division of labor, since it is the means of preserving such a large quantity of information for the next generation, and it cannot be preserved or taught by any one person. ;If the economic 'infrastructure' is the source of man's social relations, his perceptions of reality, and his political ideology, then workers cannot gain self-control by doing away with the division of labor which is the form of all three. A free, creative individual with no cultural history and no norms for sharing the tasks and the products of society will not have any social relations or any society, and only insofar as one has social relations can an individual survive qua human, or can humans survive as a society