Marx and Tao
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In Erich Fromm’s Marx’s Concept of Man and Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching we see the philosophy unfolded of the “virtuous” man. In the case of Marx, the virtuous man is the one who remains whole and connected to humanity despite the alienating environment in which modern humans find themselves. As Fromm (v) states at the outset of his work, “Marx’s philosophy represents a protest against man’s alienation, his loss of himself and his transformation into a thing; it is a movement against the dehumanization and automation of man inherent in the development of Western industrialism.” According to Marx, man is what he does and his nature is revealed in history, a history he creates. However, the nature of society is such that it rips man away from his nature by making him a product or a thing, detached from his true self. In Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching we encounter a book of aphorisms which suggest many similar ideals and virtues to Marx’s. In the fifty-seventh aphorism in Tao Te Ching we see Lao Tsu’s (Fifty-Seven) concept, similar to Marx’s, that less is more when it comes to humanism and regaining our nature in a “civilized” world, “Therefore the sage says: I take no action and people are reformed./I enjoy peace and people become honest./I do nothing and people become rich./I have no desires and people return to the good and simple life.”Where Marx is concerned, materialism, specifically work to produce things, separates man from his own nature, but it a
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f socialism is aimed at helping man develop a form of production and organization in society which enables him to overcome this alienation. Marx contends that men are unable to make living their business because their business of life is producing. Marx also makes the distinction between real needs, those that are necessary for fulfillment as opposed to false needs, those desired and produced that actually serve to make man more unfulfilled. The true needs are only the ones that will bring fulfillment and realization to man’s true essence and nature. As Marx puts it, “The existence of what I truly love is felt by me as a necessity, as a need, without which my essence cannot be fulfilled, satisfied, complete…Often man is conscious only of his false needs and unconscious of his real needs” (Fromm 63).
Marx contends that the unalienated man does not try to dominate or control nature, instead he becomes one with it, one alive and responsive toward objects. Unalienated man is able to overcome the separateness and antagonism between subject and object, he is no longer a stranger living amidst a group of strangers, but he is in his world, a world that fulfills his essence. Humanism is the underlying core virtue of Marx’s man, a
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Approximate Word count = 1299
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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