Differing views of human nature are found in the theories of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. The two writers address diverse aspects of human life, with Marx centering on the economic and political and Freud on the inner life of the mind and the ways in which that manifests itself in human behavior. The two men have as their starting point a conception of human nature which shows why human beings behave as they do, and for both men the reasons for human behavior are hidden from view, hidden from the understanding of the majority of people responding to them. For Marx, the hidden force is economic and involves the relationship of the human being to labor, while for Freud the hidden force is found in theoretical constructs of the mind which govern different aspects of thought and behavior and whose interaction produces the behavior we can see.
Marx had a conception of human history based on dialectical materialism, which includes the sense that the determining factors in the development, relations, and institutions of mankind are not mystical or ideological but economic. Human actions are rooted in labor activities. Human beings have to secure a livelihood, and to accomplish this they organize their productive forces to operate throughout the economic spectrum. Padover (1978) writes: "These material actions are the overmastering force in all social existence and relationships" (p. 227). Everything else in life rests on this economic foundation.
The society that results is made up of social classes, with one class dominant at a given time based on the control of the means of production. Human nature is expressed in the way individuals relate to class and the way they are controlled by that relationship. The workers sell their labor and are alienated from the product of their labor because of it. They do not own the means of production, while the capitalist who does sells the product of the labor of the workers. This exploi...