Freud articulated the coception of "human nature" different from Marx's ideas (before or after, say, "Theses on Feuerbach"). Freud writes in _Civilization and Its Discontents_:
***** The existence of this inclination to aggression, which we can detect in ourselves and justly assume to be present in others, is the factor which disturbs our relations with our neighbour and which forces civilization into such a high expenditure (of energy). In consequence of this primary mutual hostility of human beings, civilized society is perpetually threatened with disintegration. The interest of work in common would not hold it together; instinctual passions are stronger than reasonable interests. Civilization has to use its utmost efforts in order to set limits to man's aggressive instincts and to hold the manifestations of them in check by psychical reaction-formations. Hence, therefore, the use of methods intended to incite people into identifications and aim-inhibited relationships of love, hence the restriction upon sexual life, and hence too the ideal's commandment to love one's neighbour as oneself -- a commandment which is really justified by the fact that nothing else runs so strongly counter to the original nature of man. In spite of every effort, these endeavours of civilization have not so far achieved very much. It hopes to prevent the crudest excesses of brutal violence by itself assuming the right to use violence against criminals, but the law is not able to lay hold of the more cautious and refined manifestations of human aggressiveness. The time comes when each one of us has to give up as illusions the expectations which, in his youth, he pinned upon his fellow-men, and when he may learn how much difficulty and pain has been added to his life by their ill-will. At the same time, it would be unfair to reproach civilization with trying to eliminate strife and competition from human activity. These things are undoubtedly indispensable. But opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an _occasion_ for enmity.
The communists believe that they have found the path to deliverance from our evils. According to them, man is wholly good and is well disposed to his neighbour; but the institution of private property has corrupted his nature. The ownership of private wealth gives the individual power, and with it the temptation to ill-treat his neighbour; while the man who is excluded from possession is bound to rebel in hostility against his oppressor. If private property were abolished, all wealth held in common, and everyone allowed to share in the enjoyment of it, ill-will and hostility would disappear among men. Since everyone's needs would be satisfied, no one would have any reason to regard another as his enemy; all would willingly undertake the work that was necessary. I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communist system; I cannot enquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premises on which the system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments, certainly a strong one, though certainly not the strongest; but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness, nor have we altered anything in its nature. Aggressiveness was not created by property. It reigned almost without limit in primitive times, when property was still very scanty, and it already shows itself in the nursery almost before property has given up its primal, anal form; it forms the basis of every relation of affection and love among people (with the single exception, perhaps, of the mother's relation to her male child). If we do away with personal rights over material wealth, there still remains prerogative in the field of sexual relationships, which is bound to become the source of the strongest dislike and the most violent hostility among men who in other respects are on an equal footing. If we were to remove this factor, by allowing complete freedom of sexual life and thus abolishing the family, the germ-cell of civilization, we cannot, it is true, easily foresee what new paths the development of civilization could take; but one thing we can expect, and that is that this indestructible feature of human nature will follow it there. *****
1. For Freud, "aggressiveness" is primordial, an "indestructible feature of human nature," as he puts it. It is "aggressive instincts" that "force" civilization into a task of restricting, inhibiting, & sublimating them, so man will not ill-treat others. Thus Freud posits an ahistorical contest of "aggressiveness" and "civilization" (and in this battle, civilization is constantly threatened with disintegration).
2. Not only does the abolition of private property not destroy the material conditions for other kinds of competition & oppression (for instance, in sexual relations); primordial "aggressiveness" will express itself one way or another. Freud leads us to conceive of civilization as if it were a container for a given & unchanging quantity of amorphous "aggressiveness." This container has several outlets for bottled-up "aggressiveness": wealth accumulation, sexual competition, etc. If one of the outlets for "aggressiveness" were removed, it would likely redouble its power, erupting through other outlets more violently than ever.
3. Freud thinks that, in primitive times when private property hardly existed, aggressiveness "reigned almost without limit." This is a conception of human nature that made the "civilized" Europeans hate and envy the "savages" (imagined to be freer from inhibitions). Primitivism par excellence.
4. Freud manages to exempt "the mother's relation to her male child" from the primordal, universal, & eternal "aggressiveness," in keeping with the cult of motherhood and the importance of the male heir.
5. Freud's criticism of "communists" and their alleged premise of the "goodness" of the "original human nature" does not apply to the mature Marx & Engles (though it might apply to utopian socialists).
All five conceptions of "aggressiveness" are alien to Marx & Engels. Even the still left-Hegelian Marx of _Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts_ writes:
***** That which exists for me through the medium of _money_, that which I can pay for, i.e. which money can buy, that _am I_, the possessor of the money....The properties of money are my, the possessor's, properties and essential powers. Therefore what I _am_ and what I _can do_ is by no means determined by my individuality....
..._Demand_ also exists for those who have no money, but their demand is simply a figment of the imagination. For me or for any other third party it has no effect, no existence. For me it therefore remains _unreal_ and _without an object_. The difference between effective demand based on money and ineffective demand based on my need, my passion, my desire, etc. is the difference between _being_ and _thinking_, between a representation which merely _exists_ within me and one which exists outside me as a _real object_. *****
If the idea that the original "essence" is inverted into its opposite through the mediation of money still animates the left-Hegelian Marx, the mature Marx leaves no room for the "original essence" of "human nature" outside history (be it "good" or "bad"), much less the idea of primordial "aggressiveness":
***** Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human essence. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations. *****
For Freud, the human essence -- "aggressive instincts" -- stands outside the ensemble of the social relations. "The human essence, therefore, can with him be comprehended only as 'genus,' as an internal dumb generality..." (Marx).
Yoshie