Private Property and Labor: Seed of a New Worldview A Textual Interpretation based on the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Abstract

In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, young Marx addressed a novel issue: whereas traditional political economists regarded private property as an object opposed to the subject, adopting a metaphysical mode of thinking characterized by subject-object opposition, Adam Smith, referred to by Engels as the Luther of political economy, for the first time connected private property with the subject, thereby breaking away from its previous characterization as an objective, external dimension, implying signs of transcending Feuerbach. However, although Adam Smith and other political economists placed private property within human nature, due to their class limitations, they effectively treated profit-seeking activities as human nature, which is essentially a negation of humanity and diverges from human essence on the level of value. Marx, in critiquing their inherited ideas, not only links labor with private property but also understands labor as genuine, a return to the essence of humanity, as free labor rather than alienated labor, thereby laying the groundwork for the establishment of a scientific understanding of practice.