Marxist Criticisms Of Capitalism

In Marxist thought, the material conditions produce individual as objects that are subject to domination. Capitalist societies create alienation and commodity fetishism, and societal structures become reified in the consciousness of individuals within a society and seem to be natural and unchangeable. In this way, the self is oppressed and isolated from the species-being of humanity. Likewise, nature is turned into something that is to be exploited and commodified. The mechanisms of capitalism are fundamentally those of domination, both of humanity and the rest of nature.

Marxist thought, in essence, stresses the malleability of humanity based on the material conditions in which one finds oneself. It is due to this that “man's species being,

both nature and his species property, [can be turned] into a being alien to him” by capitalism, but the hope can remain that “the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being” is possible.1 The fundamental observation that the human subject is shaped by the conditions that surround one's development is one of immense importance. The first step in understanding how it is that one's environment shapes the self is recognizing that it does do so. From this standpoint, one can then attempt to gain the necessary critical distance to examine one's society in a way that does not simply reify its structures and view them as absolute. If one does not do this, then one risks simply “[reinforcing] the existing order… by taking over its worn-out categorical apparatus and the pernicious power-philosophy lying behind it.”2
As important as Marx's observation that humans are greatly influenced by the conditions in which they find themselves is, he also articulated another truth of immense importance, that “man is a part of nature.”3 The techno-rationality of modern industrial society does not recognize this, or at least avoids serious consideration of its implications.

Nature is viewed as something to be conquered and controlled. It is to be turned against itself so that humanity may utilize nature in order to “use it to dominate wholly both it and human beings.”4 Just as humans are to be reduced to nothing more than their work, nature is to be nothing more than the raw material for that work. The mentality of domination contains the subjugation of both humanity and the rest of nature, and they must be assailed

together.
Yet it must be noted that Marx and at least some of his intellectual heirs fail to understand the extent to which it is truly that case that humans are a part of nature. Adorno and Horkheimer note that throughout the European intellectual tradition, “the idea of the human being has been expressed in contradistinction to the animal.”5 They maintain this distinction on the basis that humans possess reason while animals do not, which is the core of this traditional separation. Yet the truth is that humans are animals, and maintaining such a sharp distinction between the two categories is not justified. From the most basic biological standpoint, humans are animals because of their evolutionary history. The human species is derived from a lineage that produced organisms that are unambiguously recognized as animals, the non-human great apes.
One could argue that, although this may be the case, the genetic categorization of life obscures a qualitative difference produced by reason between humans and animals. This view would maintain that humans should be viewed as a fundamentally distinct part of nature despite their shared ancestry with animals. Yet it also maintains animals as an alienated other, and how much more alienated must the rest of nature be if even those elements that are closest to humans must be kept at so great a distance? Humans and other animals share more than just DNA, and the mental and emotional faculties that Adorno and Horkheimer ascribe to humans and deny to animals based on their Aristotelian framework are present in both. The difference is often one of degree rather than kind.6
Humans are natural because they are animals.

This is not to say that there are no differences between humans and other animals, or even that none of these are purely qualitative. There clearly are important distinctions between them, and it may even be valuable at times to rely on the old terminology, although not in a way that assigns reason or complex emotional capacities exclusively to humans. Part of this is because critical theory is right to stand against modes of thought that erase differences. Yet for Adorno and Horkheimer, the traditional break between humans and animals is reified. This goes beyond simply noting that humans are different from other animals (though it is curious that the distinctions between different kinds of non-human animal life are obscured), and posits animals as fundamentally alien from

humans.
This relates back to Marx's insight that the historical conditions of a society shape the subject. The contradictions present within a societal structure or belief may not yet have manifested themselves to a degree that their negation can be articulated, as one could argue was the case regarding the issue of animal cognition. In the same manner, one may misjudge the degree to which history has unfolded. Adorno argued that, in his time, “the pure contradiction between the forces and relations of production” existed, but that “was probably not yet the case” in Marx's time, even though he had argued it was.7 Adorno and Horkheimer note that the Sirens in Homer's Odyssey offer no more than a false promise, there is no way in which one can stand entirely outside their time and see all of history.8 That Adorno and Horkheimer were unable to recognize the fundamental untruth present in the way they conceptualized the difference between the categories of human and animal reflects this.
Though they do not necessarily fall victim to the most pernicious aspects of complete alienation from nature (a general awareness of the need to overcome this alienation may serve as a partial defense against it, and offer hints as to a mode of resistance), what remains reified cannot be fully challenged. Under the capitalist mentality, nature is to be exploited and commodified. The fundamental nature of production lies in the truth that “the worker can create nothing without nature”.9 This is true even in the context of theory; the theorist is a part of nature, and, more importantly, the food through which the theorist gains even the energy to think is nature. Life must always utilize nature, in one fashion or another, to survive or take any action beyond mere survival.
Yet the rationality of industrial society extends beyond this. Nature is alien, so it must be dominated and bent to the will of humanity; humans must use their knowledge of nature to become the masters of nature.10 Adorno and Horkheimer, although they were unable to see past the illusory eliminates in their division of the human and the animal, did note and condemn the “exploitation” and “suffering” of nonhuman animals at the hands of humans.11 In the current historical moment, this suffering has increased in intensity. Humans are driving the extinction of many organisms, animal and otherwise, through the careless exploitation and pollution of nature. Though alienation and domination do not always take the form of turning something into the other, the distance at which society holds the rest of nature provides a rationale for the exploitation of nature. The capitalist may ask why it matters if humans drive extinction, excepting cases in which this will prevent future profit. The death of animals means nothing in itself, as nature only matters to the extent that it can be commodified.
Adorno and Horkheimer are critical of this view, but they weaken their argument against it. For them, animal life is simply “[oscillation] between pain and boredom, between brief moments of sated impulse and endless craving”; they claim that animals cannot escape such a miserable existence because “identifying remembrance is needed, assuaging knowledge, the religious or philosophical idea, in short, the concept” is needed to do so.12 If animals are doomed to suffer endlessly from birth until death no matter what, then why should one extend any ethical considerations beyond the most basic to them? Perhaps one could agree that there should be certain limits placed on the ways in which animal life is exploited, but, in the end, they are “just” animals, and are barely worth any more consideration than machines. This conception is totalizing, reductive, and false. Though Adorno and Horkheimer certainly do not take this view, their criticism of the exploitation of animals fails to fully foreclose it and is perhaps to be understood as stemming primarily from their stand against industrial society's exploitation and degradation of humanity; the value of animal life in and of itself is limited.13