Individual and Society in Marx and Hegel: Beyond the Communitarian Critique of Liberalism*

Marx’s concepts of individual and society have their roots in Hegel’s philosophy. Like recent communitarian philosophers, both Marx and Hegel reject the idea that the individual is an atomic entity, an idea that runs through liberal social philosophy and classical economics. Human productive activity is essentially social. However, Marx shows that the liberal concepts of individuality and society are not simply philosophical errors; they are products and expressions of the social alienation of free market conditions. Marx’s theory develops from Hegel’s account of “civil society,” and uses a framework of historical development similar to Hegel’s. However, Marx uses the concept of alienation to criticize the liberal, communitarian and Hegelian conceptions of modern society and to envisage a form of individuality and community that lies beyond them. THE TOPIC OF THIS PAPER IS MARX’S ACCOUNT of the individual and society, and its roots in Hegel’s philosophy. In outline Marx’s views on this theme are well known, and so too is their connection with the theme of alienation which I shall describe. The Hegelian roots of these ideas are less well documented. Moreover, knowledge of the Hegelian context helps to clarify the philosophical * Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Philosophy Departments of Lancaster University, University of New Hampshire, and at the Political Theory Colloquium, New York University. I am very grateful to participants in these discussions, and to David McLellan and Andy Denis for helpful comments and criticisms. INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 85 assumptions involved in Marx’s views, assumptions that Marx himself often does not make explicit. The contrast with Hegel’s outlook is also useful in bringing out what is distinctive in Marx’s approach. Recent philosophical discussion of the topic of individual and society has been dominated by the debate between liberalism and communitarianism. I will situate Hegel’s and Marx’s accounts in this context. My aim is to show that these involve a different and, I shall argue, more fruitful approach, one that raises large and important issues about the character of modern society. 1. Starting from Society Much liberal social thought starts from the assumption that the individual is an atomic entity, “unencumbered” (Sandel, 1982) by any necessary social relations. Individuals are taken to exist and to have an identity that is logically prior to and independent of any social relations. Work is treated as an individual activity to meet individual needs, which involves relations with others only contingently; society is regarded as a mere collection of such individuals interacting together. Both Marx and Hegel reject this approach. According to Hegel, There are always only two possible viewpoints in the ethical realm: either one starts from substantiality, or one proceeds atomistically and moves upward from the basis of individuality. The latter viewpoint excludes spirit, because it leads only to an aggregation, whereas spirit is not something individual, but the unity of the individual and the universal. (Hegel, 1991, §156A, 197.) Marx is equally insistent that social and economic theory must start from the social totality. “Whenever we speak of production . . . what is meant is always . . . production by social individuals” (Marx, 1973, 85). He explicitly contrasts his starting point with the atomistic approach adopted by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (1970). According to Marx, Smith begins with the assumption of an isolated individual, a Robinson Crusoe–like figure, working alone to satisfy his own needs. Only subsequently does this figure encounter others, exchange products and enter into social and economic relations (Marx, 1973, 83–5).1 1 This account of Smith (1970) is widely shared. It is also questioned; see, e.g., Denis, 1999. 86 SCIENCE & SOCIETY Marx’s objections to this approach are partly empirical. The supposition of an initial pre-social, purely individual condition — the idea of a “state of nature,” which runs through 18th-century liberal social thought — has no historical basis. The more deeply we go back into history, the more does the individual, and hence also the producing individual, appear as dependent, as belonging to a greater whole: in a still quite natural way in the family and in the family expanded into the clan [Stamm]; then later in the various forms of communal society arising out of the antitheses and fusions of clans. (Marx, 1973, 84.) However, Marx also rejects the individualistic starting point on philosophical, ontological grounds. Production should not be thought of simply as an instrumental activity to meet individual needs; it is always and necessarily a social activity. In working to create a material product, at the same time we produce and reproduce our social relations.2 Human beings are essentially social creatures. 2. Communitarian Accounts Ideas such as these are now familiar and widely held. The rejection of the idea of the atomic individual has been a fundamental aspect of the contemporary communitarian critique of liberalism (MacIntyre, 1985; Sandel, 1982; Taylor, 1985).3 This critique is also applied to liberal society. According to the liberal account, a society based on the free market, in which autonomous individuals can pursue their own interests, best accords with human needs and human nature. In criticism of this, communitarian philosophers argue that liberalism threatens communities by fragmenting them into a mass of competing individuals. Two contrasting accounts of the nature of that threat are evident among these thinkers. Some argue that in liberal society the bonds of traditional community have actually been shattered and destroyed. 2 “Definite social relations are just as much produced by men as linen, flax, etc. Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations” (Marx, 2000, 219). 3 It should be noted that none of these philosophers is happy with the “communitarian” label; nevertheless, it is standardly applied to them. INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 87 According to MacIntyre, for example, the picture of the individual and society given in liberal social theory is true: not as an account of universal human nature, but as an account of the way people have become in modern society (MacIntyre, 1985). Under the impact of the market, society has been dissolved into a mass of separate individuals, each pursuing their own independent interests. However, other communitarian writers have pointed out that this sort of account is not compatible with the social ontology of communitarianism. If we are necessarily social beings, then liberal society cannot be understood as the mere negation and loss of community. If the idea of the “unencumbered” self is a myth of liberal philosophy, it cannot at the same time give a true picture of the individual in modern society. This point is made by Walzer. Modern society cannot involve the total dissolution of community, he argues; “the deep structure even of liberal society is . . . communitarian, we are in fact persons and . . . we are in fact bound together” (Walzer, 1990, 10; see also Taylor, 1991). Walzer is right to criticize MacIntyre in this way and to insist on our social nature. However, his position takes a more questionable turn when he goes on to argue that the liberal notions of individuality and society are only superficial and mistaken appearances, and that all that is required to overcome them is a change in consciousness. For on the other side MacIntyre is right to point out that there is a basis of objective truth in the liberal account of modern fragmentation, which Walzer thus denies (see Sayers, 1999a, for further discussion). In short, there is a connection between the liberal account of the individual and society and the objective conditions of liberal society that have produced it. Though both strands of communitarianism that I have described have some awareness of this, neither gives a satisfactory account of it.