The Philosophy of Self Enhancement

Introduction
Early in childhood every young Human is taught “The acquisition of wealth is not a driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.” But what does that axiom actually mean? How is it that a philosophy can result in a world that has eliminated hunger, want, and the need for possessions? The purpose of this section is to familiarize visitors with this very important philosophy that has made Earth the paradise that it is now.

Karl Marx
The Human Philosophy of Self-Enhancement originates from the writings of a Human by the name of Karl Marx (1818-1883 OEC). While Marx was a prolific writer there are actually three items that the visitor should be familiar with for the purpose of this section.

First are the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. This material comprises four manuscripts, which Marx wrote in the period April-August 1844. They covered a wide range of subjects ranging from wages to the existential question of essence.

The second major document was co-written by Marx and Fredrick Engels. Known as the Communist Manifesto it explained that the existing mode of production of an historical era period of time determines the nature of that society, such as culture and political structure. Also, that the history of Human society is the struggle between various classes. The last struggle was to be between the owners of the means of production and the workers.

Another important work was Capital. In this massive tome Marx further explains scientific socialism and explained how currency-based systems exploit the producer by purchasing the labor power of the laborer at a discount.

Core Elements of the Philosophy of Self-Enhancement
The aim of the Philosophy of Self-Enhancement is the same as Marx. According to Erick Fromm in his book Marx’s Concept of Man  “…the very aim of Marx is to liberate man from the pressure of economic needs, so that he can be fully human; that Marx is primarily concerned with the emancipation of man as an individual, the capacity to relate himself fully to man and to nature; that Marx’s philosophy constitutes a spiritual existentialism in secular language…”

Historical Materialism
In the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy he wrote "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness." Therefore, to fully understand humans one must look at the relations between the person and the society in which they exist.

Historical Materialism differs from other types of materialism in two ways. As mentioned above the emphasis is not so much on biology as it is on the environment of the person. Society forms the person, their values and their perspectives. In addition, Historical Materialism differs in that life is viewed as motion rather than passive. Other views of materialism treated life and consciousness as merely by-products of nature. For Historical Materialism real life is interactive and fluid. The relationship is linear in that it develops and changes in real time events of the universe. In other words it’s historical.

Existence and Essence
The emphasis on the environment makes this philosophy a form of existentialism. It takes the existence of life as a fact of nature. Yet the meaning (essence) is not a given. While there is a human nature (as a species humans are as distinct as a targ is from a tribble) human meaning is developed in the real world interactions with the universe.

Labor and Becoming
The creation of meaning through real world interactions leads to the importance of labor. According to Fromm, “Labor is the factor which mediates between man and nature; labor is man’s effort to regulate his metabolism with nature. Labor is the expression of human life and through labor man’s relationship to nature is changed, hence through labor man changes himself.”

Labor then is more than just providing for one’s own means of substance. By molding the universe humankind creates it’s own meaning. It should be emphasized that labor is more than just manipulating matter. Again according to Fromm “Work is for him (i.e., Marx) the active relatedness of man to nature, the creation of a new world, including the creation of man himself. (Intellectual activity is of course, for Marx, always work, like manual or artistic activity.)

Consciousness and Social Structure
The interaction of humanity with the material universe and the resulting manipulation of it directly effect the nature of humankind’s consciousness. All aspects of human culture are the products of this interaction (labor).

Nature of Man
For Marx the activity of producing is the key to being alive. As long as humans are passive and not creating then they are nothing. Yet, if he or she is productive, if he or she is making a difference, then the human is developing his or her own essence. Meaning is found for the human in the productive process. Marx wrote in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, “It is life creating life. In the type of activity resides the whole character of a species, its species-character; and free, conscious activity is the species-character of human beings.”

There is a creative drive according to Marx that “is the essential power of man striving energetically for its object”.  This “principle of movement” characterizes humans. It is not some mechanical drive but a creative, lustful passion.

Wealth
Because the importance of the role of labor and creativity in the process of developing meaning then the importance of the products take on a new role. Marx wrote in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts  “that the production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.” For this reason the acquisition of things must not be the aim of a person.

One shouldn’t think that Marx, or the Philosophy, is unconcerned about poverty. Just the opposite is true. As the human psychologist Abraham Maslow pointed out a human has numerous levels of motivations that he or she must go through before “higher” behaviors of self-awareness can be easily achieved. The most basic is providing the means of substance along with security and safety. Until those basic needs are satisfied then the species could not advance.

As long as one human suffers in poverty then the whole human race suffers.  According to Fromm “For Marx, as for Hegel and many other thinkers of the enlightenment, each individual represented the species, that is to say, humanity as a whole, the universality of man: the development of man leads to the unfolding of his whole humanity.”

Yet the abolition of poverty did not mean that avarice and unlimited consumption was an end. The more material things become a center of one’s life then poorer the person becomes. Marx wanted to free the person from both want and the drive to acquire material goods. By doing so humanity would be truly free to develop and grow.

Alienation
Throughout the overwhelming majority of human history there was an ever-increasing alienation. Alienation is the separation of the laborer from the fruits and processes of labor. When humans are separated from the process and an object of work then he or she is alienated from their very meaning, Self-realization then cannot occur without great difficulty.

As the various modes of production changed humanity found itself more and more separated from the very objects of it’s own production. By becoming alienated from the products of its labor the individuals very essence was being reduced from what the theologian Martin Buber called a Thou to becoming an It.

Alienation reached its pinnacle with currency-based economics (i.e. capitalism). In currency-based economics humans no longer worked to create their means of substance. Instead they toiled for a wage to purchase their means of substance. The distance between their labor and the product became greater and labor itself became a burden and degrading.

According to Fromm “The central theme of Marx is the transformation of alienated, meaningless labor into productive, free labor, not the better payment of alienated labor by a private or “abstract” state capitalism.” He goes on write, “Essentially the whole existentialist philosophy, from Kierkegaard on, is, as Paul Tillich puts it, “an over one-hundred-year-old movement of rebellion against the dehumanization of man in industrial society. Actually, the concept of alienation is, in nontheistic language, the equivalent of what in theistic language would be called “sin”: man’s relinquishment of himself, of God within himself.”

Work then, or labor, isn’t something to be avoided. But neither should it be alienating. Labor should not destroy the individuality of the person. The person cannot become a thing. He or she must not become an It.

Money
Currency-based economies create only one need and that is the need for money. For in such a system a person is alienated from his or her labor and toils simply for a wage of money by which to purchase the means of substance. The acquisition of money, an object that has no inherited reason to be, becomes the ultimate source of life. It becomes an idol that the toiler must worship to survive. By worshiping this idol the toiler becomes less and less of a person.

The Good Society
Society then must be organized to allow the human to not be alienated from the product of his labor. Humanity must produce in a rational way that allows him or her to grow as a person. The person must not be a pawn in the system. Instead each person must be active in the planning and execution of the means of production. Cooperation rather than competition must be a major element of such a society.

By the middle of the 22nd century Earth had fully created such a society that allowed humanity an opportunity to break the historic bind that had forced a large majority of producers to toil for a small minority of owners. Such a democratic cooperative allows each individual to be free to define his or her meaning for being.

Conclusion
The Philosophy of Self-Enhancement touches all aspect of human society. Humankind has created a society that has broken its chains to the false drive of the acquisition of things. It has outgrown its infancy. For humans labor is not a burden that destroys the individual by making him or her a cog in a machine but instead labor is understood as the means by which there can be an enhancement of the self (hence the name of the philosophy).  In a society guided by such a philosophy the natural and proper relation between the person and the universe is achieved.  Truly the Human adventure is just beginning.