"It is at this stage in his philosophical anthropology that Hegel introduces labour into his system. Only through labour, Hegel maintains, 'is the accidentality of coming into possession being transcended (aufgehoben)'. [19] Labour, to Hegel, is the sublimation of primitive enjoyment; in labour 'one abstracts from enjoyment, i.e. one does not achieve it. The object, as an object, is not annihilated, but another is posited in its stead'. [20]
"Labour is thus a mediated transcendence of the feeling of separation from the object; moreover, by its very nature, it is the locus of a synthesis of the subjective and the objective. The instrument of labour facilitates this mediation, and it is through labour that man becomes recognised by others. Labour is the universal link among men, 'Labour is the universal interaction and education (Bildung) of man . . . a recognition which is mutual, or the highest individuality'. [21] In labour, man becomes 'a universal for the other, but so does the other'.[22]
"Labour appears then as the transformation of the appetites from their initial annihilative character to a constructive one: whereas primitive man, like the animals, consumes nature and destroys the object, labour holds up to man an object to be desired not through negation but through re-creation. While the goal of production is thus explained as recognition through the other, its motive is still need. Consciousness, by desiring an object, moves man to create it, to transform need from a subjective craving and appetite into an external, objective force. Labour is therefore always intentional, not instinctual for it represents man's power to create his own world. Production is a vehicle of reason's actualisation of itself in the world. In a passage which prefigures his later dictum about the rational and the actual, Hegel remarks that 'Reason, after all, can exist only in its work; it comes into being only in its product, apprehends itself immediately as another as well as itself'. [23]
"But Hegel's views on labour as the instrumentality through which man acquaints himself with his world and thus develops both this world as well as himself is accompanied by a realisation that the conditions of labour postulate not only an actualisation of man but also his possible emasculation. To Hegel labour as practised in history has a double aspect. On the one band, it is the externalisation and objectification of man's capacities and potentialities: through labour, nature becomes part of the natural history of man: 'I have done something; I have externalised myself; this negation is position; externalisation (Entäusserung) is appropriation.' [24] But labour also brines forth conditions which frustrate man's attempt to integrate himself into his world. This element of alienation in the process of labour is, to Hegel, not a marginal aspect of labour which can be rectified or reformed: it is fundamental and immanent to the structure of human society, and it is one of the characteristics of modern society that this element is being continually intensified. What we have in Hegel's discussion of this issue is one of the first most radical realisations that the development of modern society much as it is welcomed by Hegel - adds a further burden to the traditional predicaments of human life.
"This vision of the workings of modern society does not come to Hegel through any empirical study of the social or economic conditions in his contemporary Germany. His account of these conditions in The German Constitution certainly does not describe a vital, let alone active and productive society. Nor does he refer to other, more developed societies: Hegel's views here are rather a distillation of the model of society presented by modern political economy raised to the level of a philosophical paradigm. [That this was Hegel's point of departure was clearly realised by Marx, who wrote in his Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts: 'Hegel's standpoint is that of modern political economy. He conceives labour as the essence, the self-confirming essence of man.' But since Marx was not acquainted with the unpublished texts of the System der Sittlichkeit and the Realphilosophie, he was not aware that Hegel did realise that labour entails alienation. Hence he mistakenly concludes that Hegel 'observes only the positive side of labour, not its negative side']. [25]" http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ot/avineri5.htm
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