4. Material Modes of Production and Alienation: Ultimately the social relationships are determined by the material modes of production, that is, the relations of labor, capital industry, technology, means of subsistence, reproduction and distribution of material goods. Consequently, any institutions or thought within a society derive their particular form and content from the underlying economic processes present. So human beings can best understand how to act through a historical understanding of changes in the modes of production, with their associated effects.
Now how does this social interpretation of human nature solve the problem of alienation? It does so by doing away with the individualistic interpretation that makes possible the claim that the freedom to acquire, hold, and dispose of private property is a fundamental right. Denial of the claim’s legitimacy then paves the way for abolition of private property and hence an end to alienation. According to Marx however we cannot conclude that an intellectual argument will change human consciousness so that people will then decide to eliminate private property. “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” (Pref, Critique of Political Economy) change in the productive forces, the material modes of production, within a society is the actual instrument that ends the alienation. Marx describes such a process this way:
At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with existing relations of production, or what is but a legal expression for the same thing, with the property relations within which they have at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic, in short ideological forms in which men become consciousness of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather than from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the socially productive forces and the relations of production. No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself (Pref, Critique of Political Economy)
Instead of alienating system of private property whereby human beings enjoy or dispose of possessions arbitrarily without regard for other persons and view others as instruments or competitors in the process of production, there will develop a human system of production whereby human beings function as species-beings and develop the full range of their potentialities. Of this human system of production, Marx says,
Let us suppose that we had produced as human beings. In that event each of us would have doubly affirmed himself and his neighbor in his production. (1) In my production I would have objectified the specific character of my individuality and for that reason I would both have enjoyed the expression of my own individual life during my activity and also in contemplating the object, I would experience my personality as an objective sensuously perceptible power beyond all shadow of doubt. (2) In your use or enjoyment of my product I would have the immediate satisfaction and knowledge that in my labor I had gratified a human need, i.e. that I had objectified human nature and hence had procured an object corresponding to the needs of another human being. (3) I would have acted for you as the mediator between you and the species, thus I would be acknowledged by you as the complement of your own being, as an essential part of yourself. I would thus know myself to be confirmed both in your thoughts and your love (4) In the individual expression of my own life I would have brought about the immediate expression of your life and so in my individual activity I would have directly confirmed and realized my authentic nature, my human, communal nature. (On James Mill)
