> Rather than viewing capitalist relations as extrinsic to the
> Subject, as that which hinder its full realization, Marx analyzes
> those very relations as constituting the Subject. This fundamental
> difference is related to the one outlined earlier: the quasi-
> objective structures grasped by the categories of Marx's critique of
> political economy do not 'veil' either the 'real' social relations
> of capitalism (class relations) or the 'real' historical Subject
> (the proletariat). That, those structures *are* the fundamental
> relations of capitalist society that, because of their peculiar
> properties, *constitute* what Hegel grasps as a historical Subject.
> This theoretical turn means that the Marxian theory neither posits
> nor is bound to the notion of a historical meta-Subject, such as the
> proletariat, which will realize itself in a future society. Indeed,
> the move from a theory of the collective (bourgeois) Subject to a
> theory of alienated social relations implies a critique of such a
> notion. It is one aspect of a major shift in critical perspective
> from a social critique on the basis of "labor" to a social critique
> of the peculiar nature of labor in capitalism, whereby the former's
> standpoint becomes the latter's object of critique.
For Marx, early and late, the "subject" of history was never a "historical meta-Subject" if by this is meant a "subject" different and separate from "individuals".
In this sense, both his ontological and his anthropological ideas were always "individualist". They constintute "individuals" as the sole locus to which agency and the realiztion of value can reasonably be attributed, i.e. Marx always rejected the idea of a collectivity such as "society" or a "class" as such a locus.
"In history up to the present it is certainly an empirical fact that separate individuals have, with the broadening of their activity into world-historical activity, become more and more enslaved under a power alien to them (a pressure which they have conceived of as a dirty trick on the part of the so-called universal spirit, etc.), a power which has become more and more enormous and, in the last instance, turns out to be the world market. But it is just as empirically established that, by the overthrow of the existing state of society by the communist revolution (of which more below) and the abolition of private property which is identical with it, this power, which so baffles the German theoreticians, will be dissolved; and that then the liberation of each single individual will be accomplished in the measure in which history becomes transformed into world history. From the above it is clear that the real intellectual wealth of the individual depends entirely on the wealth of his real connections. Only then will the separate individuals be liberated from the various national and local barriers, be brought into practical connection with the material and intellectual production of the whole world and be put in a position to acquire the capacity to enjoy this all-sided production of the whole earth (the creations of man). All-round dependence, this natural form of the world-historical co-operation of individuals, will be transformed by this communist revolution into the control and conscious mastery of these powers, which, born of the action of men on one another, have till now overawed and governed men as powers completely alien to them. Now this view can be expressed again in speculative-idealistic, i.e. fantastic, terms as “self- generation of the species” (“society as the subject”), and thereby the consecutive series of interrelated individuals connected with each other can be conceived as a single individual, which accomplishes the mystery of generating itself." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm
>
"History does nothing, it “possesses no immense wealth”, it “wages no battles”. It is man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights; “history” is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch06_2.htm>
The importance Marx assigns to "class" derives from his understanding of the process through which "individuals" develop the intellectual and aesthetic "powers" that consitutute them as "universally developed individuals" capable of the activities constitutive of the "freedom" that defines "the true realm of freedom", an idea of "freedom" that involves "necessity" - the "Unity of the Universal and Individual" - in the sense Engels, appropriating Hegel, elaborates in the passage from Anti-Duhring. <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch09.htm>
This sense assumes the existence of "universal" intellectual, aesthetic and ethical principles. The ethical principles are elaborated in terms of relations of "mutual recognition" (as in the passage from the Comments on James Mill).
So, according to Marx, the relations and activities consittutive of wage-labour - "class" - in capitalism contribute positively to "the integral development of every individual producer".
This development ends in "individuals" with the developed "powers", the developed "virtuosity", required to initiate a "revolutionalry praxis" that then further develops their individual "powers" to the degree necessary to "fit" them for the activity of "appropriating" the productive forces developed within capitalism and using them to create a penultimate society - "socialism" - from which all barriers to full "individual" development have been removed.
The further development this makes possible then makes practicable "communism" elaborated as "the true realm of freedom" (which is why the latter can also be identified with "the development of human powers as an end in itself"). <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch48.htm>
Through this development the "fully-formed proletariat", understood as "the abstraction of all humanity, even of the semblance of humanity" whose "condiitions of life ... sum up all the conditions of life of society today in their most inhuman form", is "abolished".
"Individuals", through "the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them” by "the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum", become capable of creating and appropriating the intellectual and aesthetic "goods" that consitute the content of ideal relations of "mutual recognition", i.e. that consitute the fully "free" activities that define "the true realm of freedom".
“As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well- spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few, for the development of the general powers of the human head. With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of penury and antithesis. The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them.” <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch14.htm>
This "abolition" applies to insturmental activity in "the realm of necessity" as well as to end in itself (i.e. fully "free") activity in "the realm of freedom" of a "communist" society.
“"The saving of labour time [is] equal to an increase of free time, i.e. time for the full development of the individual, which in turn reacts back upon the productive power of labour as itself the greatest productive power. From the standpoint of the direct production process it can be regarded as the production of fixed capital, this fixed capital being man himself. It goes without saying, by the way, that direct labour time itself cannot remain in the abstract antithesis to free time in which it appears from the perspective of bourgeois economy. Labour [i.e. the insturmental activity that defines 'the realm of necessity'] cannot become play, as Fourier would like, although it remains his great contribution to have expressed the suspension not of distribution, but of the mode of production itself, in a higher form, as the ultimate object. Free time—which is both idle time and time for higher activity—has naturally transformed its possessor into a different subject, and he then enters into the direct production process as this different subject. This process is then both discipline, as regards the human being in the process of becoming; and, at the same time, practice [Ausübung], experimental science, materially creative and objectifying science, as regards the human being who has become, in whose head exists the accumulated knowledge of society.” <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch14.htm>
"It is self-evident that if time of labour is reduced to a normal length and, furthermore, labour is no longer performed for someone else, but for myself, and, at the same time, the social contradictions between master and men, etc., being abolished, it acquires a quite different, a free character, it becomes real social labour, and finally the basis of disposable time - the time of labour of a man who has also disposable time, must be of a much higher quality than that of the beast of burden." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus- value/ch21.htm
>
Ted