Politic of Senses; Karl Marx

Original Article

Politics of the senses: Karl Marx andempirical subjectivity

Bryan NelsonSocial and Political Thought, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario,Canada, M3J 1P3.E-mail: [email protected]

A section of this article was presented at the Marxism and Psychology Conferenceat the University of P.E.I., 5–7 August 2010.

Abstract This article reconsiders some underlying assumptions regarding Marx’stheory of subjectivity. It contends that Marx’s early resistance to Hegel would initiate aproductive and multifaceted engagement with empiricism which would extend through-out his philosophical and economic authorship, the foundations of this empiricism drawnfrom a dynamic conception of subjectivity much closer to the tradition of Hume. Throughan examination of some of Marx’s major works, including a more detailed exegeticalanalysis of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, this article explores Marx’sempirical theory of the subject and considers the manner in which it informs hismaterialist conception of history, his dialectical procedure and his comprehension of theexperience of the subject under capitalism.Subjectivity (2011) 4, 395–412. doi:10.1057/sub.2011.19

Keywords: Marx; Hume; Deleuze; subjectivity; empiricism; senses

Introduction: Postulates for an Empirical Marx

Why does the claim that Marx is an empiricist often generate such fierceopposition? At least since Lukacs, it has become something of a custom toapproach Marx’s philosophy as Hegelian. And while there can be nodisputing Hegel’s position in the development of Marx’s thought, it isstriking that even his earliest writings dedicated to Hegel and the YoungHegelians of his own day remain so profoundly antagonistic. Unlike Kant,the rationalists and the Greeks, whose significance for Marx cannot beunderestimated, it seems that Hegel’s role may be best articulated as thefigure who Marx feels necessary to posit for himself, more than any other, asan adversary to confront and overcome. But perhaps more interesting than

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his relentless challenges to Hegel, which are now very well known, is theunequivocally empirical position to which Marx will appeal in order toestablish this criticism. Rather than the emulation of Hegel, what the early textsreveal so intelligibly is a disavowal of Hegelian philosophy for a position muchcloser to the empirical tradition (Hudelson, 1982, p. 242).

However, beyond this early critique of Hegel, there is no question that Marx’sprecise relationship with empiricism throughout his authorship remains acontroversial topic. Althusser famously demands that Marx would eventuallycome to reject his empiricism for a scientific and dialectical materialismorganised by abstract concepts (Althusser, 2005). At the same time, CharlesTaylor outlines the reasons – epistemological, methodological and ethical – whyMarxist thought remains irreconcilable with the empirical tradition, accountingfor the almost complete lack of interest in Marx’s philosophy among Anglo-American schools (Taylor, 1966).1 Nevertheless, against Althusser, who findsMarx’s empiricism and dialectical materialism mutually exclusive, subsequentlydividing his authorship into two distinct epistemological modes; and likewiseagainst Taylor, who finds at their very foundation empiricism and Marxismutterly contradictory, Marx himself would never abandon a certain fidelity toempirical thought. While his often accentuated proximity to Hegel has longovershadowed this integral dimension of his work, Marx’s empiricism remainsone of the more coherent continuities throughout his ever evolving thought.2

And yet, the more substantial discussions surrounding Marx’s empiricism willbe predominately circumscribed to the scientific nature of his investigation andthe role of his extensive inclusion of empirical research in his mature economicstudies. It is specifically in these terms that the ‘empirical’ or ‘scientific’ Marxwill tend to be identified and evaluated. But beyond this rather narrow con-ception of empiricism, Marx’s work will display a rich and multidimensionalengagement with empirical thought. An implicit empirical framework groundsnot only his earliest criticisms of Hegel, but extends throughout his cultivationof the materialist conception of history to his most developed analyses of capitaland surplus value. Marx is not a Hegelian, Marx is an empiricist. While thisthesis may illuminate many facets of Marx’s philosophical and economicproject, it is absolutely essential to the principal question which concerns thisstudy. This is the question of subjectivity in Marx’s thought.

Since the publication of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (Marx,1992), the challenge of addressing subjectivity in Marx can no longer be saidto be due to his neglect of the problem. Although the most relevant passages willpredominantly be found here in his earlier writings, Marx certainly providesenough material for a substantial meditation on his thoughts regarding theconstitution, psychology and experience of the subject. The challenge, rather,refers to the point of departure of our own analysis. Marx will indeed offersome considerable insights into his thoughts on subjectivity, but we will onlyachieve a wider theoretical appreciation of these insights if we initiate the

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question through the very empiricism that Marx’s work conveys. While clearlyforging a new theoretical model of the subject as a social and historical entity,Marx offers a conception of subjectivity which is remarkable in its consistencywith some of the most distinguishable features of empirical thought. Beforea methodological springboard for scientific inquiry, before a foundation forepistemology, empiricism, in the tradition of Hume and Deleuze, is a radicaltheory of subjectivity. It is in this context that I will attempt to situate Marx’sthoughts on the subject. It is this dimension of Marx’s empiricism that remainsleast explored.

Establishing Marx’s Empiricism

It should not be particularly contentious to postulate that a young Marx’sfrustration with Hegel’s speculative philosophy would bring him inadvertentlyto adopt a critical perspective infused with empirical tenets. For empiricismoffers a compelling refutation of transcendental reason, universal categories andteleological orientations. In the Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’, Marxwill repeatedly charge Hegel’s logic as a grand mystification, one which con-sequently sacrifices empirical existence to the abstract autonomy of the Idea:

For as Hegel’s task is not to discover the truth of empirical existence but todiscover the empirical existence of the truth, it is very easy to fasten onwhat lies nearest to hand and prove that it is an actual moment of the Idea.(Marx, 1992, p. 98)

In many respects, Marx begins to think as an empiricist when he discovers itproblematic that with Hegel the empirical remains a category to be transgressedand superseded. What Marx exhibits so vividly in these early writings is a con-cern that Hegel functions to position what exists empirically in relation to theIdea which logically precedes it, so that the empirical is that which is granted thetask of fulfilling the Idea, of facilitating its actuality and its material mediation.From the beginning, Marx seems to resist the notion that the empiricalrepresents a moment of the non-empirical Idea and accordingly, that empiricismmerely represents a moment or stage of philosophical thinking. Quite adversely,in the afterword to the second edition of Capital written many years later,Marx will clearly articulate the foundations of his own approach which, contraHegel, will remain prominently organised around an unmistakably empiricalconception of thought:

My dialectic method is, in its foundations, not only different from theHegelian, but exactly opposite to it. For Hegel, the process of thinking,which he even transforms into an independent subject, under the name of

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‘the Idea’, is the creator of the real world, and the real world is only theexternal appearance of the Idea. With me the reverse is true: the ideal isnothing but the material world reflected in the mind of man, and trans-lated into forms of thought. (Marx, 1990, p. 102, my emphasis)

What Marx wants to underscore here is clear enough: his method is not themethod of Hegel. Of course, what exactly constitutes a working method forHegel and how exactly Marx understands that method remains a difficult que-stion in its own right. Obviously with Marx, it is not simply a matter ofreturning the dialectic to its feet. But what is more significant is how he drawsthe distinction. Marx clearly identifies his method as dialectical, but is entirelyunwilling to follow Hegel in the elevation of thinking to the status of an a prioricategory, so that the Idea remains independent and privileged in a dialecticalrelation. Rather, for Marx, as we see here, the ideal must be understood in twoways, or more accurately, as two moments. First, it is perception, the materialworld reflected in the mind of man, a materialist expression of what would haveto be rendered in Hume’s terms as impressions in all their immediacy andvivacity. But equally important, the ideal is that which is translated or activelytransformed from what is simply given in the mind into something distinctlyother: concepts or forms of thought. As we shall see, empiricism is nothingwithout these two moments. While this passage intends to demonstrate hismethodological distance from Hegel, what Marx reveals here is a refusal toabstract the process of thinking from the activity of a subject. By denyingthe independence of the Idea, its logic and priority, Marx does not so muchmaterialise what remains ideal in Hegel as restore it to the conditions ofempirical subjectivity. Marx’s own approach must follow from these premisesaccordingly.

This problem deserves more attention. Rather than initiate his thought ina vacuous sphere of abstraction, Marx will always proceed from real empiricalphenomena (Wilson, 1991, p. 127). As early as 1844 Marx will insist that:‘Sense perception [y] must be the basis of all science. Only when science startsout from sense perception [y] – i.e. only when science starts from nature – isit real science’ (Marx, 1992, p. 355). There is no question that for Marxall knowledge begins with sense perception. If we wish to speak of origins itcan have no other. But there is a danger in overstating the point. For it is all toocommon that empiricism will be reduced to such elementary axioms withoutqualification or explanation. This leads to misconceptions. Empiricism is oftenstigmatised as an epistemology which offers the senses as the solution to theproblem of knowledge. This is in no way Marx’s position, nor Hume’s beforehim. This corresponds to an empty, static image of empiricism, one whichoffers no account of the dynamic capacities which define the empirical subject.All that can be said about the senses in this respect is that they provide what isgiven in the mind, in a similar way that the passions provide its orientation and

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direction.3 Therefore, it is precisely the task of empiricism to explain how asubject can generate and organise, from what is simply given as perceptions,something with enough coherence and stability to be considered understandingor legitimate belief. Consider the concept for example. Following Deleuze, in sofar as empiricism grounds its investigative point of departure in sense per-ception, it necessitates the most radical theory of conceptual constructivismphilosophy has ever seen: a building, testing and refining of concepts as thebasic tools for thought (Deleuze, 1994, pp. xx–xxi). Like Marxism, empiricismis a theory of production. Concepts are never handed down ready-made, theyare given neither by the senses nor by events; they never precede the activityof thinking itself. The Grundrisse will repeat this sentiment. Here, Marx dis-tinguishes between thought or thinking on the one hand, concepts on the other.Not only is the process of thinking entirely distinct from observation andperception, thinking is that which generates or works-up concepts from what isperceived and observed (Marx, 1973, p. 101).4 Concepts embody a certainconcretion of their own; they must be forged and are only as reliable as theirmode of construction. For Marx, our concepts are never simply mental copies ofthe material world, but the result of a vital cognitive productivity indicative ofa creative, engineering subjectivity. It is in this light that we should read theafterword from the second edition of Capital quoted above: the ideal is notmerely what is reflected in the mind as the given, but its active translation intoforms of thought. What empiricism will wish to emphasise here is the act oftranslation by the mind over that which is simply reflected within it. Forempiricism, the mind, as the field of experience, is the site of the given, ofperceptions which are themselves indistinguishable from the mind itself. This isits passive quality. But at the same time, the mind is also an active principle,which generates and creates, organises and relates. This is why Deleuze willdefine the empirical subject primarily by transcendence. The subject is thatwhich transcends the given (Deleuze, 1991, p. 24). Therefore, the problem ofknowledge is always a problem of subjectivity and the practical activity ofa knowing subject. Empiricism is a theory of praxis. Marx’s epistemology haslong been understood accordingly: not as an accumulation of a fixed body ofknowledge, but as a dynamic theory of knowing, a knowledge which developsand evolves only through practice (Pilling, 1980, p. 76).5 Recall Marx’s firstthesis on Feuerbach:

The chief defect of all previous existing materialism (that of Feuerbachincluded) is that things [Gegenstand], reality, sensuousness, are conceivedonly in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuoushuman activity, practice, not subjectively. (Marx and Engels, 1998, p. 569)

More than a vague doctrine of the senses, it is precisely this notion of practicewhich will bind Marx to empiricism.









However, this engagement with empiricism in no way implies that Marx willcircumscribe his thought according to the traditional categories of his pre-decessors of political economy. The problems of surplus value and abstractlabour, for example, clearly remain inaccessible to even the most rigorousmethod of scientific observation and logical deduction. Even the commodity,Marx tells us, the most basic unit of capitalist exchange, is itself supersensible,its full social dimensions remaining hidden, concealed from view (Pilling, 1980,p. 80). This is what makes fetishism possible. What Marx so brilliantly exposesin the first volume of Capital is that as an immanently exploitive social relation,the logic of capital is not only phenomenally imperceptible, but this veryimperceptible logic is itself more concrete than that which is most immediatelyperceptible. The sheer ingenuity of Marx’s work is that his approach is at onceempirical and revolutionary, a science of thought developed and organised bothto explain and transform social reality (Gorman, 1981, p. 421). How does anuncompromising empiricist penetrate the imperceptible logic of capital? Howdoes Marx succeed where so many others failed before him? Marx’s empiricismis not the empiricism of Mill, Ricardo or Smith (Little, 1987, pp. 215–217). AsMarx will denounce in the Theories of Surplus Value: ‘Crass empiricism turnsinto false metaphysics, scholasticism, which toils painfully to deduce undeniableempirical phenomena by simple formal abstraction directly from the generallaw, or to show by cunning argument that they are in accordance with that law’(Marx, 2000, p. 89).6 For Marx, empiricism does not represent a series ofdeductions drawn from abstract general laws in order to grasp immediateempirical phenomena according to those laws. Quite the opposite, by groundinghis thought according to the real conditions of empirical subjectivity, whatempiricism offers to Marx is a substantial foundation in which concepts may becomposed and concrete appropriations of thought may depart and evolve.Therefore, Marx’s empiricism in no way negates dialectical thinking, but offersto it an empirical infrastructure, one which grounds the dialectic and shelters itfrom ideal speculation and abstract reductionism.7

Dialectics should be understood as a logic of internal relations. This is thekey to Marx’s most revolutionary discoveries in political economy. This isprecisely what the British economists lacked before him. But we shouldremember it is not Hegel, but Whitehead who defines dialectics accordingly.8

And when Deleuze attempts to offer a definition of empiricism, he will oftenappeal to Whitehead’s insistence that the abstract does not explain but mustitself be explained (Deleuze and Parnet, 2007, p. vii). Likewise, Marx’sdiscussions of surplus value and abstract labour will never offer their dimensionof abstraction as the basis for their explanation. Consider abstract labour. Here,its abstraction does not simply represent an ideal quality, but a real quality oflabour in its relations of capitalist exchange as value-form, its becoming com-mensurable or quantitatively equivalent; but it is precisely the task of Capital toexplain this real abstraction not by virtue of its abstract character, but in terms

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of its concrete social conditions. Accordingly, returning to the Grundrisse onceagain, Marx will sanction the scientifically correct method as the decisive pro-cess of ‘rising from the abstract to the concrete [so that] thought appropriatesthe concrete [and] reproduces it in the mind’ (Marx, 1973, p. 101).9 Forempiricism, the abstract is not the illusory, the false or the psychological, butthat which requires explanation by something other than its abstraction.Perhaps this is the first principle of empirical thought. Marx understands thisand takes it to its most productive point in his economic works.

New Inventions of the Subject: Materialism and Empiricism

If it is imperative that Marx’s conception of subjectivity be initiated via hisempiricism, it is because at the foundation of Marx’s empiricism rests his con-ception of subjectivity. Marx will not organise his thought around abstractcategories, but according to the conditions of real empirical individuals, theirlife and conscious activity. As Marx and Engels establish in the early pages ofThe German Ideology:

The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, butreal premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination.They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions oftheir life, both those which they find already existing and those producedby their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empiricalway. (Marx and Engels, 1998, pp. 36–37)

In so far as Marx and Engels speak of the conditions of real individuals, we mustconsider such passages both in material and empirical terms: as materialismstrives to account for the objectivity of conditions and the material determi-nations of these conditions, empiricism offers an account for the subjectivitywhich registers these determinations through experience and expresses them ina practical, sensuous way. More than the theme of history, what the Theses onFeuerbach will emphasise again and again is that in absence of this dimension ofsubjectivity, human sensuousness and practical activity, materialism is destinedto remain a hollow, static discipline.

In a revolutionary shift, empiricism will posit the subject as a radical empi-rical formation, a subject-in-process. Against rationalism and transcendentalidealism, empiricism will postulate that the very organisation of experience isnot given a priori, before the subject, but develops according to the process ofthe subject’s self-constitution through experience itself. For empiricism, thisprinciple must account for our experience of causality, relation and space andtime as much as for art and music. Placing these vastly more complex examples



aside, let us take music as our illustration as Marx will demonstrate this processhimself in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts:

only music can awaken the musical sense in man and the most beautifulmusic has no sense for the unmusical ear, because my object can only bethe confirmation of one of my essential powers, i.e. can only be for me inso far as my essential power exists for me as a subjective attribute [y].(Marx, 1992, p. 353)

Aesthetic experience is never an essential attribute of the subject, never simply aquality brought by the subject to external phenomena. This explains nothing.The ability to approach music as music does not belong to the subject ahead ofthe experience of music itself. In this regard, we must carefully distinguishbetween the capacity to hear (to register pitch, loudness, rhythm, tonal change,and so on) and the capacity to hear music (to identify, appreciate and respondto arrangements of sounds and silence aesthetically). Following Marx, the expe-rience of an object extends as far and only as far as my corresponding senseextends, my experience of that object representing the confirmation of mysense’s capacity in relation to its object. Thus, what Marx will call a musicalsense is a subjective power, a generated or cultivated ability or capacity toappropriate music musically according to an aesthetic sensibility developed bythe subject in response to the experience of music itself. Such passages representthe empirical origins of a Marxist aesthetics. For Marx, only music can realisea musical sense. Likewise for empiricism more generally, only experience canrealise a subject.

Empiricism asks not what are the abstract conditions of possible experience,but the actual conditions of real experience (Deleuze, 1994, pp. 284–285). FromEpicurus to Hobbes to Hume to Deleuze, from its most primitive to its mostsophisticated, what empiricism systematically disavows is an ideal or groundlesssubjectivity: an abstract subject which anticipates its encounter with theexternal world, a transcendental ego which arranges that encounter accordingto an ideal horizon. Contrary to Kant’s Copernican turn towards a subjectwhich organises empirical phenomena according to transcendental categories,the empiricist must locate the subject as that which unfolds or emerges from thefield of experience itself, an originary, essentially unorganised experience which,in this respect, must be understood as transcendental to the subject.10 In manyways, Kant intends to resolve the problem of Hume by internalising the problemwithin the subject, so that with Kant, the subject functions as a presuppositionin order to explain experience according to that which remains outside andprior to experience, that which remains impervious to experience. But againstKant, Descartes and Husserl alike, empiricism will propose that experience doesnot belong to a transcendental subject, but represents an impersonal, anony-mous, subjectless field from which a subject must be composed as a pragmatic

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psychological process of subjectivation. The mind receives a succession ofindependent, non-relational impressions which must be connected, contracted,associated and synthesised. This is why it is essential for Hume that the minddevelop certain unifying processes in which it may orient its experience in termsof association, memory and anticipation. The subject indeed organises experi-ence: subjectivity can be defined in no other way. Kant and Hume are inagreement on this. But what empiricism maintains is that if it is not to remain avacuous abstraction, the subject itself requires an explanation, an account ofhow the subject comes to be, the movement through which it develops itselffrom that which it is not.

Subjectivity is a consequence of experience. From this conclusion we maybreathe new life into that seemingly worn out maxim which is so oftenreiterated to define the materialist conception of history: it is not consciousnessthat determines life, but life that determines consciousness (Marx and Engels,1998, p. 42). Perhaps this is as true for Hume as it is for Marx. And while it isunlikely that Marx is working through the intricacies of this problem withHume in mind, Marx’s trajectory towards a more dynamic, multifacetedmaterialism would necessarily incorporate a subjective dimension which woulddraw him ever closer to the empirical model. Hume himself would alreadyexhibit a certain sympathy for materialism via his psychology (Deleuze, 1991,p. 28). But materialism only discovers a certain depth when it departs fromempiricism. In a letter to Marx in 1844, still quite early in their relationship,Engels will insist upon this very point:

We must take our departure from the Ego, the empirical, flesh-and-bloodindividual, if we are not, like Stirner, to remain stuck at this point[Feuerbach’s conception of man]. ‘Man’ will always remain a wraith solong as his basis is not empirical man. In short we must take our departurefrom empiricism and materialism if our concepts, and notably our[concept of] ‘man’, are to be something real; we must deduce the generalfrom the particular, not from itself or, a la Hegel, from thin air. (Marx andEngels, 1982, p. 12)

Throughout their correspondences during this period, Engels will demand theirwork replace this wraith of man, whether Hegelian or Feuerbachian, with amore grounded conception of the subject as empirical man. This would not onlyremain a central theme throughout The German Ideology produced collectivelysoon after, it would form the basis of the text’s most significant theoreticalachievement: man is historical, his subjectivity composed not in isolation,generated from thin air, but against the particular social arrangements whichconstitute his basic material productive relations.

There is no dispute that the underlying historicism of subjectivity representsone of the major landmarks of modern social and political thought. But what is



less acknowledged is that this discovery is entirely predicated upon an empiricalconception of the subject, the subject whose conscious being does not anticipateits experience, but whose experience organises its conscious being. For Marx,like Hume, consciousness must be understood as a consequence of experience, itnever constitutes the self-identical property of the subject.11 But while Hume isconcerned with the empirical conditions in which experience generates a subject,Marx is concerned with the historical conditions in which this experience issaturated through praxis. This is precisely how Marx can arrive at a theoryof the subject whose consciousness is determined by its historical conditionsthrough the very process of its practical sensuous interaction with its immediatematerial environment. For Marx, subjectivity is a historical problem. But it is aproblem which first must appreciate the subject as the constitution of itsexperience. Although it is empiricism which provides this essential theoreticalframework, it is precisely this historical dimension which Marx will supplementto empiricism. Consciousness is itself historical. This is perhaps the greatestcontribution of The German Ideology. This is not only the essential oversight ofFeuerbach and the Young Hegelians, but of the British empiricists as well. Humeunderstands that the subject cannot be explained by the associations of the mindalone: this is why, like Freud, Hume must rely heavily on the manner in whichcustom and tradition orient each individual according to his particular subjectposition (Deleuze, 1991, pp. 102–103). But Hume has no conception of thehistorical conditionality of subjectivity in Marx’s terms. After Marx, history isno longer the context, but the very substance of an empirical process of subjectformation. Simply by existing, the empirical subject is a social entity (Gorman,1981, p. 411). Its consciousness, sensibility, its very abilities and capacities as amoral and intellectual being are entirely constituted against a historical horizon.Subjectivity is inter-subjective. The atomistic, ahistorical individual oftenencountered in liberalism exists only theoretically as a hypothetical abstractionfrom an immanent socio-historical field. In its unequivocal rejection of a trans-cendental subject, empiricism correctly frames the problem of subjectivityaccording to a constitutive process of subjectivation, the process in which asubject comes to be a subject through experience. But it is Marx who willground this process according to the historical conditions of our productivesocial relations, so that the subject not only represents an empirical problem,but a historical problem as well.

The Historicism of the Senses: Subject and Object

It is against this background that the significance of the Economic and Philo-sophical Manuscripts will be most apparent. Clearly experimental and notintended for publication, it is here where Marx will most vividly articulate thefoundations of his own empiricism of the subject bound to larger themes of

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labour, alienation and private property. Hence, let us concentrate the remainderof this study on a more detailed analysis of some of these key passages.

‘The cultivation of the five senses is the work of all previous history’ (Marx,1992, p. 353). Perhaps we should initiate our analysis here. While the Manu-scripts will still very much raise the question of subjectivity through an ongoingdispute between Hegel and Feuerbach, there is no doubt that what Marxproduces is something entirely new, irreducible to either of these two sources.From the outset, Marx will distance himself from a position which draws thesubject from reason, right or religion. Rather, more than any other of Marx’swritings, the Manuscripts will be organised around the problem of experience:the nature of experience, what renders experience distinctively human and howcapitalism systematically impairs and degrades the depth and magnitude of thisexperience. It is in this respect that Marx will qualify his approach simul-taneously as a naturalism and humanism, not only an empiricism of experience,but an ethics of experience as well. This empiricism and humanism will remainindivisible in the text, any attempt to dislodge one from the other not onlyartificial, but limited in scope. For Marx, the empirical constitution of a subjectmay not be isolated from a historical constitution of man.

Marx holds that subjectivity must be understood in terms of praxis, a dyna-mic process in which the subject comes to itself, as it were, from the outside,from an engagement with the outside (Fromm, 2004, p. 28). The site of thesubject’s realisation is always located beyond the subject in a material fieldexternal to itself. The subject is never a given, or given to itself. Marx is nophenomenologist. Unlike Husserl’s transcendental ego which is directly con-scious of its own essence, Marx’s species-being discovers itself only through anexpression of itself in sensuous form. Thus, the manner in which the subjectencounters itself, its nature, its needs, its powers as well as the limits of thosepowers, as an individual and as a species, is expressed according to its objectiverelations, its relation to its objects:

To say that man is a corporeal, living, real, sensuous, objective being withnatural powers means that he has real, sensuous objects as the object of hisbeing and of his vital expression, or that he can only express his life in real,sensuous objects. (Marx, 1992, p. 390)

That the subject can only express its life in real, sensuous objects is to maintainthat the subject is always expressed by something external to itself. Hunger, forexample, may be a drive, a natural need (albeit a socialised need from the start),Marx explains, but in so far as the object of my hunger is external to my hungeritself, something of myself is expressed by virtue of the external object whichsatisfies it. My powers, accordingly, the very abilities and capacities whichdefine what I am and what I can do, may only be explored through theirexpression in an external, sensuous form so that the expression of a power is at









once to have that power expressed to me, its manifestation and externalisationsimultaneously its exploration and cultivation. Powers are never understoodsimply in terms of their potentialities.

In this respect, studies of the Manuscripts which extract a theory ofsubjectivity via Marx’s concept of labour are entirely justified. For Marx dis-tinguishes man as the species which is not only produced by nature, but pro-duces itself through its own practical activity. Human labour is never merely theproduction of objects, the manipulation of nature or the expulsion of energy.Labour is the very substance which transforms both object and subject in theprocess of production. In the production of objects labour represents theobjectification of man, his becoming-objective in a concrete, sensuous form.Labour is thus not only the manifestation of subjective powers, it is the practicalcondition which facilitates the subject’s experience of itself in an externalmaterial field. But in so far as man externalises himself in his labour and hence,actualises himself externally in the material world in the form of sensuousobjects which stand out against him, so that in his perception of his objects oflabour he perceives something of himself, Marx’s theory of subjectivity mustinclude a second, more foundational dimension, namely an empiricism ofexperience itself. This is a psychological requirement. Following his detailedexamination of estranged labour, this is precisely what will motivate Marx’sdiscussion of the senses later in the third manuscript.

As we saw in the case of music above, Marx will speak of the senses asessential powers which express one’s abilities and capacities as an empiricalsubject, as the power to experience or to raise experience to new heights, newpotentials. However, we have also seen that the actualisation of these powers isalways consequential, the result of an active engagement with the outside, anobjective encounter, the appropriation of the object:

All his human relations to the world – seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting,feeling, thinking, contemplating, sensing, wanting, acting, loving – in short,all the organs of his individuality, [y] are in their objective approach orin their approach to the object the appropriation of that object. (Marx,1992, p. 351)

Marx explains that man is endowed with natural, vital capacities, but thesecapacities will remain only virtual until composed and organised accordingto the experience of their corresponding objects. The capacity of the eye isdistinct from the capacity of the ear, each sense appropriating its object in analtogether different way. Likewise, the cultivation of each sense signifies itsqualitative differentiation, its coming into being as a distinct, uniquelyorganised sense with its own distinct power: ‘An object is different for theeye from what it is for the ear, and the eye’s object is different from the ear’s.The peculiarity of each essential power is precisely its peculiar essence [y]’

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(Marx, 1992, p. 353). Therefore, it is the object of experience which organisesthe senses, their powers and limitations, the appropriation of the object thecomposition of its corresponding sense, the experience of that object onlylimited to the extent that its corresponding sense is limited to experience it. Ormore simply: it is experience which organises the experience of the subject,which realises its senses and powers to experience. It is for this reason thatMarx understands the subject’s appropriation of the object as the confirmationof its essential powers, as the realisation of its individuality and affirmation ofits reality. As man relates to the world primarily through his powers andpowers of experience, it is precisely through these powers that the worldbecomes something real for him, affirming his experience of it: ‘Man istherefore affirmed in the objective world not only in thought but with allthe senses’ (Marx, 1992, p. 353).12

That the senses only come into being through their objects may appear acurious position. But from this position we must draw two conclusions. First, aswe have seen, the subject is never realised in a void, but according to the expe-rience of its objects, the appropriation of its objects and its objects of labour.The subject expresses itself and is expressed to itself through its objects, theexperience of its objects the organisation of its experience and powers toexperience, the subject itself the consequence of this organisation of itsexperience and realisation of its essential powers. Second, in so far as the sensesare composed through the appropriation of their objects, which themselvespossess a particular history, society, set of human relations, the sensesthemselves must be understood as historical.

Perhaps Marx understands the organisation of the senses as the first task ofhistory. The senses are never reducible to physiology, utility or necessity. ForMarx, this is merely indicative of a restricted, diminished sense, a senseabstracted from its social form: ‘Sense which is a prisoner of crude practicalneed has only a restricted sense’ (Marx, 1992, p. 353). Rather, Marx contendsthat the senses are in no way monolithic in scope, but are in fact, always split ordoubled; they have, as it were, two sides. We may designate the direct senses asthose which represent the passivity of experience as need: practical, asocial orpre-social, the biology of the sense organs which belong to a natural historyof the species. The eye evolves to solve the problem of light and distance, the earto discern certain vibrations, the epidermis to respond to certain stimuli, andso on. The directness of the senses refers to the immediacy of experience, theunmediated force or vivacity of sense impressions which Hume introduces inthe opening pages of the Treatise. But on the other hand, as Marx will detail,the senses are simultaneously human or social senses which embody analtogether different history, objective relation and signification:

Apart from these direct organs, social organs are therefore created in theform of society; for example, activity in direct association with others, etc.







has become an organ of my life expression and a mode of appropriation ofhuman life. (Marx, 1992, p. 352)

The manifestation of the senses, as human senses, is indicative of the effectivemediation of the field of experience by the field of history, the sense organsnow taking on a social, inter-subjective quality as social organs: ‘Obviouslythe human eye takes in things in a different way from the crude non-humaneye, the human ear in a different way from the crude ear, etc.’ (Marx, 1992,p. 352). This is what renders human experience possible. As a social entity,species-being lives, produces and reproduces itself entirely against a historicalbackdrop, and hence experiences its existence according to the dynamics of itsparticular social reality. As Marx states above, social organs are composed inthe form of society: they are cultivated in direct association with the activity ofother human beings, communism merely representing the social organs in theirmost complete, emancipated form. Thus, as an expression of collective humanpraxis, the social organs will appropriate their objects in an entirely differentmanner than those of the crude direct senses, the experience of the object losingits abstract objective character and becoming something else, somethinghuman:

For not only the five senses, but also the so-called spiritual senses, thepractical senses (will, love, etc.), in a word, the human sense, the humanityof the senses – all these come into being only through the existence of theirobjects, through humanised nature. (Marx, 1992, p. 353)

As a historical entity, species-being approaches its objects endowed with a kind ofsocial priority, a perception invested with historical privilege, so that the object, asa socially appropriated object, is experienced not principally as an object sociallymediated but as an object immediately social. Therefore, the subject will alwaysdiscover itself inhabiting a world distinctively human, even its perception of thenatural world marked by the humanity of its senses. For Marx, this uniquelyhuman experience must raise the problem of method once again. For as long asscience departs from sense perception, as human perception, it is not nature,properly speaking, which immediately confronts man but man himself:

Man is the immediate object of natural science; for immediate sensuousnature for man is, immediately, human sense perception [y]. [y] Butnature is the immediate object of the science of man. Man’s first object –man – is nature, sense perception [y]. (Marx, 1992, pp. 355–356)

Sense perception is not only the point of departure for natural science; it is also itsmost immediate object. For as man’s first object of natural science is man himselfin the form of sense perception, the first object of the science of man is nature, the

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nature of his sense perception. Thus, sense perception represents the point inwhich nature and history lose their qualified distinction. It is for this reason thatMarx writes that he looks forward to the day when there is only a single science.

Private Property and the Emancipation of the Senses

Given the moral orientation of the Manuscripts, it would be inappropriate toconclude without at least briefly considering the implications for the experience ofMarx’s empirical subject under capitalism. Marx writes in the Manuscripts that intheir immediate praxis, the senses become theoreticians. As they appropriate theirobjects, the senses become the active expression of their particular historicalconditions; they embody and reflect, as it were, the social character of their app-ropriated objects. Thus, under the conditions of private property the constitutionof the senses begins to change, their organisation and manifestation determinedaccording to their most immediate objects, the objects of capital. As thecommodity, the principal unit of capitalist productivity becomes the privilegedobject of our collective activity and interaction, it is the commodity which formsthe basis of our comprehension of ourselves as individuals and as a species.Capitalism is not only the organisation of production, it is the organisation ofexperience itself. Marx is convinced of this. For Marx, capitalism represents thecorruption of the senses, the deterioration of their social quality, their inability toexperience in a human way. As the senses are composed according to theexperience of private property, the diversity of the senses, as the very possibility ofexperience, is reduced to a one-dimensional sense of possession, of having:

Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is onlyours when we have it, when it exists for us as capital or when we directlypossess, eat, drink, wear, inhabit it, etc., in short, when we use it. Althoughprivate property conceives all these immediate realisations of possessiononly as means of life; and the life they serve is the life of private property,labour, and capitalisation. (Marx, 1992, pp. 351–352)

This degraded, one-sided mode of experience is emblematic of the reificationof the senses, their estrangement under capital: ‘Therefore all the physical andintellectual senses have been replaced by the simple estrangement of all thesenses – the sense of having’ (Marx, 1992, p. 352).

How are we to understand this estrangement of the senses? Rather than anantagonism of human nature separated from itself, the theory of alienationshould always be approached in terms of the diminishing of an essential power,of a particular ability or capacity of the subject, regardless of what the naturallimits of that ability or capacity might be. What is estranged from the subjectis a potential, what it can do, what it can think or what it can experience. Thus,








the estrangement of the senses signifies the diminution of the very power toexperience, the inhibition or contraction of the breadth of possible experience,the reduction of experience to a distinctly capitalist privatisation of space,parcelisation of time, quantification of labour, rationalisation of movement,valorisation of the object and competitivisation of the other. In this respect, theestrangement of the senses cannot be said to be limited to the experience of theproletarian class alone, but is rendered universal under capitalism.

However, as Marx wants to remind us, the depth of the human experience is inno way limited to that offered by capital. The capitalist subject does not representa universal archetype. Rather, for Marx, capitalism’s historicism, its very artifici-ality as a historical formation, is indicative of the immanent possibility of its trans-gression. Although in 1844 Marx is yet to elaborate on the extensive theoreticalimplications of such transgression, the Manuscripts clearly understand this super-session of private property as not only the emancipation of labour, the liberation ofan economically dispossessed, socially dissociated and politically disfranchisedproducing class, but likewise, as the complete emancipation of the senses:

The supersession of private property is therefore the complete emancipationof all human senses and attributes; but it is this emancipation preciselybecause these senses and attributes have become human, subjectively andobjectively. The eye has become a human eye, just as its object has become asocial, human object, made by man for man. (Marx, 1992, p. 352)

For Marx, the supersession of capitalism announces the restoration of the huma-nity of the senses. As the object is appropriated as a truly collective, social object,made by man for man, the eye, the ear are regenerated as truly human senses, anexperience liberated from the restrictions of capital and mediations of commodi-ties. And while empiricism must reject any teleological claims of communism, itdoes provide Marx with the theoretical bases to demonstrate the subject’sessential plasticity, its dynamic capability to be composed and transformedaccording to its conditions and experience of its conditions. Indeed, throughoutMarx’s work, there is a sense that communism does not so much represent theend of history as the beginning of a new kind of subject. Such conclusions willperhaps best epitomise the distinction between an empirical and Hegelian readingof Marx. Empiricism is the first theory to postulate this radical plasticity of thesubject. This is essential both to Marx’s historical and moral theory of man.

Acknowledgement

I am deeply grateful to Prof. H.T. Wilson for his support and assistance in thecomposition of this article.

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About the Author

Bryan Nelson is a PhD candidate in the Social and Political Thought programmeat York University, Toronto. His research concerns contemporary continentalphilosophy and radical democratic thought.

Notes

1 For a brief overview of Taylor’s discussion see J. Bohman (1986, p. 341).2 R. Hudelson (1982) and D. Little (1987) will argue for a consistently empiricist Marx.3 This is what Marx identifies in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts as the direct quality of

the sense organs. See my discussion below.4 On this question see H.T. Wilson (1991), Marx’s Critical/Dialectical Procedure, p. 57.5 Chapter 3, Section III of G. Pilling’s text ‘Empiricism and the empirical’ is particularly helpful here.6 This passage is in reference to Adam Smith and the reasons for his inability to distinguish between

surplus value and profit.7 For a detailed examination of the empirical foundation of Marx’s dialectical method, see

H.T. Wilson (1991), Marx’s Critical/Dialectical Procedure. D. Little (1987), on the other hand, isable to affirm Marx’s empiricism only at the expense of his dialectical method.

8 On the relationship between Whitehead and Marx see A.F. Pomeroy (2004).9 Once again see H.T. Wilson (1991), Marx’s Critical/Dialectical Procedure.

10 Deleuze will often describe his own philosophy as a transcendental empiricism.11 Even for Locke consciousness will identify the essential sameness of the self. Not so for Hume.

Hume will never detach consciousness from experience in this regard. Perhaps it would be mostaccurate, therefore, to assert that for Hume, consciousness follows experience without beingdistinct from it.

12 See E. Fromm (2004), Marx’s Concept of Man, p. 28.

References

Althusser, L. (2005) For Marx, Translated by B. Brewster. London and New York: Verso.

Bohman, J. (1986) Making Marx an Empiricist: On recent ‘analytic’ Marx interpretations.Praxis International 6(3): 341–352.

Deleuze, G. (1991) Empiricism and Subjectivity, Translated by C.V. Boundas. New York:Columbia University Press.

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Fromm, E. (2004) Marx’s Concept of Man. New York: Continuum.

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Hudelson, R. (1982) Marx’s Empiricism. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 12(3): 241–253.

Little, D. (1987) Dialectics and science in Marx’s Capital. Philosophy of the Social Sciences17(2): 197–220.

Marx, K. (1973) Grundrisse, Translated by M. Nicolaus. London: Penguin.



Marx, K. (1990) Capital Volume I, Translated by B. Fowkes. London: Penguin.

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Marx, K. (2000) Theories of Surplus Value. New York: Prometheus Books.

Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1982) Collected Works Vol. 38. London: Lawrence and Wishart.

Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1998) The German Ideology including Theses on Feuerbach andThe Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy. New York: Prometheus Books.

Pilling, G. (1980) Marx’s Capital: Philosophy and Political Economy. London, Boston andHenley: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Pomeroy, A.F. (2004) Marx and Whitehead: Process, Dialectics, and the Critique ofCapitalism. New York: Suny Press.

Taylor, C. (1966) Marxism and Empiricism. In: B. Williams and A. Montefiore (eds.)British Analytical Philosophy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 227–248.

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Politic of Senses; Karl Marx

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