In Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, he sets out to explore a different way of considering labor and exchange. Marx first considers the dominant paradigm of thought in this arena, which he names “political economy.” By proceeding from the set of assumptions inherent in political economy, namely “private property, the separation of labour, capital and land, and of wages, profit of capitol and rent of land,” (651) this paradigm takes for true what it “is supposed to deduce” (652). In this way, Marx relates political economy to theology, which also “assumes as a fact . . . what has to be explained” (652). Among the various effects of political economy are that the worker becomes a commodity, wealth is hoarded by the few, and society divides between “the property-owners and the propertyless workers” (652)

In response to this mode of thought, Marx attempts to create an idea of economics that is more firmly rooted in reality. He begins with what he considers an “actual economic fact” (653): that the worker becomes a commodity by its labor, and that the more labor the worker produces, the cheaper a commodity it becomes. As labor is carried out, it solidifies in the form of an object, which is then outside and separate from the laborer. In this case, labor can be appropriated, and set against the worker. Again, Marx draws comparison to religion: “The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself” (653).

Next, Marx considers the relationship between labor and nature, or the “senuous external world” (653). The latter provides the “means of life” for the former. Without nature, labor would have no materials with which to create an object, and no sustenance with which to support the worker. By considering this relationship, we can see how the worker can become “a slave of his object” (654). When the worker creates an object of its labor, the labor then exists outside of the worker, and, in most cases, is owned by another. This other, through ownership of the object of labor, owns too the worker from whom this object came. We see, once more, how this can be related to religion, where “the spontaneous activity of the human imagination . . . operates independently of the individual—that is, operates on him as an alien, divine or diabolical activity” (655).

By observing both political economy and theology through this lens, we see how these types of ideologies can lead to an ignorant assumption of facts, an externalization of the self, and, ultimately, an appropriation and exploitation of the self by another. Marx suggests that ideology in necessarily grounded in the reality of “historical life-process[es]” (656). When an ideology assumes an independence from and priority above real human experience, that ideology has become misguided. For Marx “where speculation ends—in real life—there real, positive, science begins” (656).

It is with this spirit that Marx challenges that ideologies of political economy and theology, and it is with this spirit that we may bring Marx into the literary world. As a cultural object, literature is an essential factor in the formation and maintenance of ideologies. As those who endeavor to appraise such cultural objects, it is our role (if one agrees with Marx) to assess the relationship between a work of literature and the reality from which it erupts. We are to judge each work of literature by the extent to which it challenges ideologies that break this connection, or by how well it draws these lines of connection itself.

The story of Billy Budd is generally a very easy story to understand. As the story shows, Billy Budd kills Claggart by accident and Captain Vere must make a decision on whether or not to sentence Billy Budd to hanging. This decision that Captain Vere depends on whether he judges with his feelings or his rules upon the ship. Melville brings up this idea of “cruci-fiction” which is a cross shaped diagram that shows the difference between how a character is perceived versus what really happens. Melville illustrates this relationship by linking Billy Budd to guilty, and Claggart to innocent. This goes against the characterization of the two characters at the beginning of the story. Billy Budd was seen to be a light- spirited and very personable sailor on the ship. Claggart was seen to be a sailor who starts trouble and is not as easy to get along with as Billy.  The characterization of Captain Vere is the most important element of this story and deconstructing him is necessary to the full understanding of the text.

Ultimately, Vere decides to execute Billy Budd for killing Claggart. In this case, Vere put natural law over his personal feelings when deciding on a verdict. Vere was able to detach himself from his feelings in order to make a decision that he felt was the best for the ship and overall the British Navy. Having knowledge of the historical context of this story makes it easier to understand the motivation of Vere. Even though he feels sorry for Billy, he had to make his decision under the king’s law. He is seen as a authority figure that rules by the book. Captain Vere is seen as intelligent and fair leader but ultimately he ends up sentencing one of his own sailors to death because of an accident. The reader is meant to feel animosity towards Captain Vere because we feel compassion for Billy Budd because he was systematically symbolized as the “good” guy in the story for lack of better terms.

I think that power plays a significant role in the story of Billy Budd. While Captain Vere felt sympathetic towards Billy, he wanted to make sure that the hierarchy on the ship was clear. The captain is the boss because he runs everything, has his own quarter of the ship, and wears different clothes from the rest of the sailors. He needed to keep order upon the ship and keep the social hierarchy in check so no other sailor even thinks about trying to do what Billy did.

Lastly, language plays a big role in Billy’s downfall. Billy had an inability to speak and convey his thoughts which lead to his violent outburst against Claggart which killed him. Johnson states that “his literal mindness (Billy) is represented by his illiteracy because, in assuming that language can be taken at face value, he excludes the very functioning of difference that makes the act of reading both dispensable and undecidable. (2262).” Billy is put at an disadvantage because he could not properly convey his words to Captain Vere or Claggart which led to his downfall.

In “Semiology and Rhetoric,” Paul De Man brings attention to how rhetoric exhibits the tension between critical and creative writing.  Critical writing relies on grammar and clear, direct statements.  When rhetoric is inserted into language, the lines begin to blur.  Rhetoric undoes grammar, or at least adds something indiscernible to the structure of the sentence.  De Man uses the example of Archie Bunker saying “What’s the difference?” in response to being asked how he would like his shoes tied.  Archie doesn’t care how his laces tie, but instead of saying that explicitly, he uses a snarky rhetorical question to make his point.  Interpreting “What’s the difference?” literally would tell the reader that he genuinely wants to know the impact of tying his laces either under or over.  But rhetoric complicates the literal, “the same grammatical pattern engenders two meanings that are mutually exclusive: the literal meaning asks for the concept (difference) whose existence is denied by the figurative meaning.” (1370).  

This creates a dilemma for the addressee.  Rhetoric produces the need for the receiver to distinguish which meaning is the correct one, whether it is the literal or the figural.  We can only do this through “the intervention of extra-textual intention” (1371).  In Archie’s case, his snarky tone tells his wife that he is so annoyed with the question he can’t bother to give her a straight answer.  The rhetorical question was used to convey his irritation in a non-literal sense.  De Man follows with another example, a passage from Proust.  In Proust’s passage about Marcel, he uses a series of single-moment shots: the bed, the book, light streaming through the window, etc., until we finally arrive at the metaphor of the chamber music flies.  The combination of metonymy and metaphor culminate in giving the reader the most accurate scene of Marcel in his room, both physically and mentally.  

Rhetoric is the best way to connect to readers on a deeper level.  It undoes logical grammar and “writes figuratively about figures.” (1374).  In Proust’s passage, summer is the signified, and the flies are what he chose as the signifiers.  There are thousands of other possible options he could have used, but the flies were the best way to capture the experience of summer that most all people can relate to.  De Man ends the essay with “Literature as well as criticism […] is condemned (or privileged) to be forever the most rigorous and, consequently, the most unreliable language in terms of which man names and transforms himself.” (1378).  This goes back to Nietzsche and the idea that every word created by man is an arbitrary label that has no formal basis.  We have both the blessing and the curse to continuously reinvent the words we use, and the meaning behind our sentences.

I am a closet Marxist “commy”, at least on a non-Marxist spiritual tip. Specifically meaning, it would be wonderful, in a global city like New York, to have a holiday dedicated to the temporary closure of commercial hi-risers, from Goldman Sachs to Gap, like they indirectly do on Thanksgiving Day. There would be ads from TV to billboards, promoting this occasion, to give heads-up to save sufficient food for the individuals diet, and gather in parks like Governor’s Island or Union Square, to kumbaya it out. But alas, as a capitalist nation, that advocates individual pursuit for life (money), liberty (money), and constitutional happiness, most NYers have “better” things to perform than to meditate and light up sages.

I digress. I am a closet Marxist in light of recent history, of corrupt communism from it’s leaders, one being Mao Zedong (or was he a fascist?). But here’s why communism is flawed as a 365 day political establishment…because Robinson Crusoe (667) is not the native Lenape Indians, and the Lenape’s are not cynically Aristotelian political animals, and neither does the Lenape political/tribal system cover vast land of geography. However, it’s worth noting in modern day, that nuance communism has sustained across China. So yes as a counter argument, geographically across a country, communism has spread, but fatally this political ideology of (sorry for the simplistic version) property publically owned and workers earn what they create for their needs, is not definite in the minds of all Chinese.

America has done a (more Trumpian than Hegelian) phenomenal job in mass-composing it’s political ideology, impressing post-industrial nations, that hasn’t banned their media channels. Nonetheless, the current billions of citizens settled in China, there are a large number of those people, who don’t believe in the one-for-all distribution system. Even the native Lenape’s (Gotham, p.5), who stationed seasonally on the tip of what is now called Manhattan, were influenced by the Dutch foreigners household materials (blankets, forks, kettles, etc.), which were initially all unnecessary, but unfortunately they grew to depend on these items, when the East India Company had gradually more vested interest on their coastal lands, that rendered scarce the surrounding trees and animals.

Speaking of material dependence, that predates commodification (665) that Marx speaks of, it was this dependency I attributed the power imbalance, of the superior-subordinate dyad, which Marx systemically loathes during the early industrial revolution. The material being money—a foreign idea to the Lenape’s, who unfortunately acquiesces: thru the bartering of Wampum for euro-centric material needs of the 1700’s, to afford survival such as Thoreau-ian food, fuel, shelter, clothes (Walden)—was both [1] why they couldn’t question their reality that was selfishly-economic-first-corruptly-political-second, thus warping the myopic vision of the worker (652), and [2] couldn’t Robinson Crusoe an individual livelihood, because America isn’t a stranded island, and the US competitively put most local farmers outta business, during the bi-coastal railroad period.

But neither can a communist social Crusoe-ian (660) establishment last, even post-exposure of Wilde-ian hedonism (with it’s purple cloak and infinite cig smoke)…because of the variable of an always-necessary leader, whether in an equanimity focus (i.e. Lenape) or not society, that historically has purview and “privilegized” information, along with his advisors, and whom he horizontally politics with; like the pre-Martin Luther Roman Catholic priest, who withheld biblical knowledge for non-Latin readers. Lastly, a leader is requisite in a communal society not to instill a superior-subordinate complex, but to be a deputy, a spectre of law…and historically speaking, I cannot think of one civilization (barring wars), that has survived from ancient times to 1848, because, as Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Yes, this is a pessimistic stance, but to give impartial treatment to all political ideologies, especially the more persuasive capitalist nations of today, our “leaders” in business and politics, can never create such utopia in their transnational world. But what can be done, existentially, is to find, a non-trivial Kumbaya in the Governors Island of themselves. And you may be wandering how a factory worker in early industrial revolution can find inner bliss? It’s too simple and inconsiderate to state they should’ve left their job. Buuut…

Capitalist economy is corrupt and unfair. Society is sets up the working class for failure and the elite will only gain more power and prosperity. Political economists ignore inequality in our economic society. In Karl Marx’s “From Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,” Marx depicts the inequality of the economy. He explains how the society works for the working class, how we begin to lose a sense of our selves as workers. Marx begins by stating the idea, “the worker sinks to a level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities; that the wretchedness of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production” (652). Society falls into two classes as Marx states, “the property-owners and the propertyless workers.” It is the propertyless workers who work for the property owners or as it is implied, it is the propertyless workers who are owned by the property owners. The property owners pay the workers, essentially owning them. They are able to sustain by providing the workers income to do so, if the workers stop working, then they would not be able to support and sustain themselves for long, thus creating this cycle, where workers work until their deterioration.

Political economists explain nothing about how the political economy works by making connections of the important ideas such as when Marx states, “He assumes in the form of fact, of an event, what he is supposed to deduce–namely, the necessary relationship between two things–between for example, division of labour and exchange” (652). Wealth and income gap is another connection political economists fail to explain. The catchphrase we all recognize is, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” This is true among capitalist economies, as the gap between the property-owners and the propertyless workers will continue to increase over time. The worker becomes a cheaper commodity, the more commodities he creates. Marx explains, “the product of labour which has been congealed in an object, which has become material: it is the objectification of labour. Labour’s realization is its objectification” (653). The workers essentially become objects themselves, they are considered a capital, a means of production which can easily be replaced by a machine or a robot. The more the worker puts himself into his work, the less of himself he retains. This causes the worker to be alienated, “not only that his labour becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside of him, independently, as something alien to him” (653). Being this “object,” it actively alienates the worker from their humanity and depravity of means of life. Their work, their labour essentially becomes their news means of life– to sustain, leading to a loss of human identity.

The more the worker puts into his production, the less he has to consume for himself. The more he produces, the less he becomes as he is consumed by his labour and production, yet, in order to sustain, he must be able to produce and work– work for another person. The worker is forced to produce for another, leading to a loss of self, as his creativity, spontaneity , and imagination is belongs to another. Marx concludes, “In his human functions, he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal” (655). We, the working class, have more or less become modern day slaves–wage slaves. It is a vicious cycle, that most of us will indeed become stuck in, our work will define our lives and we will likely be working until our work deteriorates us until we can no longer produce. We expendable capital no different from a kiosk or a kitchen appliance. It poses a question— what is the difference between modern day slaves and workers in the capital economic system? Even though there are now some better benefits and working environments, workers and slaves essentially work until they are consumed and they can no longer produce, which causes them to lose value, being unable to provide sustenance.

In his collection of writings, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Karl Marx discusses the subservience one suffers in having a job. He argues that the more a worker produces, the less valuable the worker becomes because he “falls under the dominion of his product” (653). In turn the worker’s value and the product’s value become two separate entities where the product outweighs the producer. Therefore, the worker becomes enslaved to his work in many ways. As someone who works a full-time job, I pride myself on the freedom in consumerism I can enjoy as a result of the time I put in, sometimes too much time one might argue, but Marx has made me wonder if there is freedom in my consumerism or am I just bound to the system itself?

Marx begins his piece by discussing the “premises of political economy” that workers within the system have taken for granted, such as land rights, value of exchange, and most momentously, labor rights (or lack thereof). He notes that political economy has made “abstract formulae” that construct economic standards, which “it then takes for laws” (652). Marx challenges what civilians view as a system they are bound to, and reformats them as pieced-together laws not fully explained. He calls out labor work as one of the worst of these “abstract formulas” that nobody questions.

In his crusade against labor work, Marx compares the value of the laborer to the value of the laborer’s production. Marx states, “The worker becomes an even cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion the devaluation of the world of men” (653). Marx makes the point that in world of increasing material production, a growing importance is placed on the material itself and there exists an inverse relationship with the lessening importance of the workers themselves. He proceeds to discuss the “alienation” of the worker,” for as much as they produce, in reality, the materials which they produce as well as their actual production abilities, become separate entities from the producers themselves (653). Therefore, the worker becomes a separate and alienated entity with devaluated importance. Marx sums this argument up when he says, “The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labour becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him…” (653). Marx points out a scary fact: the more a worker produces and the more merit he puts into his job, the more the worker separates himself from his product and his work becomes defunct as the product takes over. Marx then shines light on the worker-to-“slave” aspect of this system, where people must work to gain value for sustenance on which to live (654). The more they work, however, the less valuable they become in favor of the object they produce, and it is an ever-living cycle in the system which one is consistently devaluating to the point where he or she is no longer living, but only surviving.

Marx’s argument makes me question the real meaning in my working my 40-hour-a-week job, where I work overtime to make ends meet. But do these ends justify these strenuous means? Or do I merely live in this previously constructed and unquestioned system that he mentions in the beginning of this essay? I used to consider the food I buy and the rent I pay a freedom I obtain within this system, but really I am prisoned in this cycle of work, which leads to increasing devaluation. Survival and life are two separate things, which used to be alienated, but have become merged in the system of political economics.