A World-Historic Shift: Hegel, Marx, and Labour
Carlos L. Garrido
Abstract
This article examines the transformation in the philosophical conception of labor initiated by Hegel and completed by Marx. The paper argues that Hegel effected a world-historic break by elevating labor from a mere means of subsistence or consumption to a fundamentally human, self-realizing activity essential to freedom and self-consciousness. Against scholars such as R.N. Berki, who deny Hegel’s influence on Marx, the article demonstrates that Hegel’s conception of labor as the formative act of human liberation provides the ontological and anthropological groundwork for Marx’s mature theory. Marx, he argues, sublates Hegel by resolving three contradictions in Hegel’s account: the justification of “restricted” alienation under wage labor, the illusion of the “free” labor contract, and the confinement of liberation to the sphere of consciousness. By grounding these contradictions in material social relations, Marx transforms Hegel’s idealist framework into a materialist one, where labor becomes both the essence of humanity and the means of its total emancipation. The article concludes that understanding Hegel’s theory of labor is indispensable for grasping the philosophical foundations of Capital and the dialectical unity of material and human liberation. This study thus intervenes in ongoing debates about the Hegel–Marx relationship, reaffirming labor’s centrality to the dialectical and historical materialist worldview.
Keywords
Hegel, Marx, dialectics, philosophy of labor, alienation, human emancipation
