> "Hegel's phrase 'the labor of the negative' covers this rending work
> of self-interrogation and self-alteration. Labour, because it is
> hard; negative, because it is destructive. And the model of a human
> being, moving painfully in stages to self-knowledge, helps us to
> understand the larger movement of human history as Hegel conceived
> it."
This isn't an adequate rendering of the Hegel's elaboration of "the higher dialectic of the conception" in terms of "self-estrangement" within the labour process, the elaboration appropriated in the role in individual development Marx himself assigns to the labour process.
"The outstanding achievement of Hegel’s Phänomenologie and of its final outcome, the dialectic of negativity as the moving and generating principle, is thus first that Hegel conceives the self-creation of man as a process, conceives objectification as loss of the object, as alienation and as transcendence of this alienation; that he thus grasps the essence of labour and comprehends objective man – true, because real man – as the outcome of man’s own labour. The real, active orientation of man to himself as a species-being, or his manifestation as a real species-being (i.e., as a human being), is only possible if he really brings out all his species-powers – something which in turn is only possible through the cooperative action of all of mankind, only as the result of history – and treats these powers as objects: and this, to begin with, is again only possible in the form of estrangement." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/hegel.htm
According to Marx, what's supposed to be happening in the "estrangement" that is wage labour is "the integral development of every individual producer."
What's meant by "integral development" can be gleaned from passages such as the following from the context of the passage Doug recently quoted, a passage that associates "wage-labour" with "greed" elaborated as "estrangement" in the above sense, i.e. as the treatment of money as "the alienated ability of mankind."
"As material representative of general wealth, as individualized exchange value, money must be the direct object, aim and product of general labour, the labour of all individuals. Labour must directly produce exchange value, i.e. money. It must therefore be wage labour. Greed, as the urge of all, in so far as everyone wants to make money, is only created by general wealth. Only in this way can the general mania for money become the wellspring of general, self-reproducing wealth. When labour is wage labour, and its direct aim is money, then general wealth is posited as its aim and object. ... Money as aim here becomes the means of general industriousness. General wealth is produced in order to seize hold of its representative. In this way the real sources of wealth are opened up. When the aim of labour is not a particular product standing in a particular relation to the particular needs of the individual, but money, wealth in its general form, then, firstly the individual's industriousness knows no bounds; it is indifferent to its particularity, and takes on every form which serves the purpose; it is ingenious in the creation of new objects for a social need, etc. It is clear, therefore, that when wage labour is the foundation, money does not have a dissolving effect, but acts productively; whereas the ancient community as such is already in contradiction with wage labour as the general foundation. General industriousness is possible only where every act of labour produces general wealth, not a particular form of it; where therefore the individual's reward, too, is money. Otherwise, only particular forms of industry are possible. Exchange value as direct product of labour is money as direct product of labour. Direct labour which produces exchange value as such is therefore wage labour. Where money is not itself the community [Gemeinwesen], it must dissolve the community. In antiquity, one could buy labour, a slave, directly; but the slave could not buy money with his labour. The increase of money could make slaves more expensive, but could not make their labour more productive. Negro slavery -- a purely industrial slavery -- which is, besides, incompatible with the development of bourgeois society and disappears with it, presupposes wage labour, and if other, free states with wage labour did not exist alongside it, if, instead, the Negro states were isolated, then all social conditions there would immediately turn into pre-civilized forms." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch04.htm
So, according to Marx, "money as aim" in wage labour leads, "behind the backs" of the individuals who do it, to "integral development," i.e. to "general industriousness" where "the individual's industriousness knows no bounds; it is indifferent to its particularity, and takes on every form which serves the purpose."
The ultimate end point of this development is "the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption, and whose labour also therefore appears no longer as labour, but as the full development of activity itself, in which natural necessity in its direct form has disappeared; because a historically created need has taken the place of the natural one." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch06.htm
These developmental claims are repeated in Capital where the ultimate post-capitalist end point is specified as "the fully developed individual, fit for a variety of labours, ready to face any change of production, and to whom the different social functions he performs, are but so many modes of giving free scope to his own natural and acquired powers." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm
According to Marx, it is its contribution to this development that is the positive in the "negative" that is the "self-estrangement" of wage labour in capitalism , a negative that includes, in addition to the treatment of money as "the alienated ability of mankind," the wage labourer as "a living appendage of the machine," the "detail worker of today" who, in contrast to the "fully developed individual," is "grappled by life-long repetition of one and the same trivial operation." In contrast, in a community of "fully developed individuals" "labour in which a human being does what a thing could do has ceased."
The treatment of the "self-estrangement" of wage labour as contributing positively to "the integral development of every individual producer" is one essential aspect of Marx's appropriation of Hegel's "dialectic of negativity as the moving and generating principle," i.e. of Hegel's "higher dialectic of the conception."
Unfortunately, wage labour has not turned out to be positively developmental in the way Marx predicted.
Ted