Let us begin, in true philosophical fashion, with an etymological examination. Something Nietzsche and Heidegger are perhaps most famous for. In the analysis of a classic Marxist concept: Proletariat.
A concept necessary to understanding Communism, its theory and application (praxis).
For example; the first section of the Communist Manifesto, 'Bourgeoise and Prolétairat'
Communism as a theory, as we will explore here, is an attempt at a philosophy and science which investigates the possibility for the prolétariat to achieve freedom from their conditions. Precisely this phrasing, freedom from their conditions, will come under scrutiny and examination.
With great emphasis on this word: Freedom.
A definition of Communism given by Engels in the Principles of Communism:
— 1 —
What is Communism?
Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.
— 2 —
What is the proletariat?
The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor – hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition. The proletariat, or the class of proletarians, is, in a word, the working class of the 19th century.
Written: October-November 1847;
Source: Selected Works, Volume One, p. 81-97, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969;
First Published: 1914, Eduard Bernstein in the German Social Democratic Party’s Vorwärts!;
Translated: Paul Sweezy
The common English translation is either Emancipation or Liberation, certain sources for the Original German use Bedingungen der Befreiung which would crudely translate to conditions of exemption. Usually, when the duo Marx and Engels discuss liberation, often translated instead as Abolition, the original German used is Aufheben.
"A radically new mode of production that altogether abolishes and transcends... 'labor' itself in the sense in which mankind has always known it."
'the idea of abolition of labour'."
"While the fleeing serfs only wished to freely develop and fully realise the conditions of existence, which were already at sight, and hence, in the end, only arrived at free labour, the proletarians, if they are to fulfill themselves as individuals, must abolish the very condition of their existence hitherto, which has also been the condition of existence of all society up to the present, that is, they must abolish labour" (die Arbeit aufheben)."
[Robert Tucker, The Marxian Revolutionary Idea (London: George Allen & Unwin LTD, 1970), p. 27.
Robert Steigerwald, Herbert Marcuses dritter Weg (Köln: Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag, 1969), p. 235.
Bruno Gulli, "On Productive Labor: An Ontological Critique" (paper presented at the conference "Marxism 2000," University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 21-24 September 2000); Benedito Rodrigues de Moreas Neto, "Marx and the Labor Process at the End of the Century" (paper presented at the conference "Marxism 2000," University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 21-24 September 2000). 8. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke (henceforth MEW), vol. 3, Marx and Engels, Die deutsche Ideologie (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1956-1990), pp. 69-70,).]
"It is identical with the transition from capitalism to socialism, if socialism is defined in its most Utopian terms: namely, among others, as the abolition of labor, the termination of the struggle for existence – that is to say life as an end in itself and no longer as a means to an end.... This new, unheard of and not anticipated productivity allows the concept of a technology of liberation. Here I can only briefly indicate what I have in mind: such amazing and indeed Utopian tendencies as the convergence of technique and art, the convergence of work and play, the convergence of the realm of necessity and the realm of freedom."
- Marcuse, "Liberation from the Affluent Society," in The Dialectics of Liberation, ed. David Cooper, pp. 184-185
Aufheben, Aufhebung, Abschaffung, Befreiung
Although I'm lacking in access to material concerning the transcripts of the Grundsätze des Kommunismus and its English Translations, Principles of Communism, I would like to briefly demonstrate the importance of the usage of these terms which Engels uses to describe as the first principle of communism. The text is an updated draft of Engels' Confession of Faith, and would be followed by the Communist Manifesto alongside Marx.
In Grundrisse, Marx rejects the idea of transforming labour into play. In this context, he praises Fourier for having expressed the idea of "elevating (Aufhebung) ... the mode of production to a higher form." However, The German term "Aufhebung" means both "abolition" and "elevation." Marx plays here upon words, saying that the abolition of labour is not the abolition of production, but rather the abolition of the hitherto-inferior mode of production, labour, and the creation of a higher, non-labour mode of production
Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Okonomie (Henceforth Grundrisse) (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1974; first published 1939-1941), p. 397. Ibid., p. 599.
Here are some examples from the Communist Manifesto, with the German Translations kept alongside the original:
"Modern bourgeois society, which emerged from the decline of feudal society, has not abolished class antagonisms. It has only replaced the old with new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle."
-"Die aus dem Untergang der feudalen Gesellschaft hervorgegangene moderne bürgerliche Gesellschaft hat die Klassengegensätze nicht aufgehoben. Sie hat nur neue Klassen, neue Bedingungen der Unterdrückung, neue Gestaltungen des Kampfes an die Stelle der alten gesetzt."
"All the earlier classes that conquered power sought to secure the position in life they had already acquired by subjecting the whole of society to the conditions of their acquisition. The proletarians can only conquer the social productive forces by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation and thereby the entire previous mode of appropriation. The proletarians have nothing to secure of their own, they have to destroy all previous private securities] and private insurance."
-"Alle früheren Klassen, die sich die Herrschaft eroberten, suchten ihre schon erworbene Lebensstellung zu sichern, indem sie die ganze Gesellschaft den Bedingungen ihres Erwerbs unterwarfen. Die Proletarier können sich die gesellschaftlichen Produktivkräfte nur erobern, indem sie ihre eigene bisherige Aneignungsweise und damit die ganze bisherige Aneignungsweise abschaffen. Die Proletarier haben nichts von dem Ihrigen zu sichern, sie haben alle bisherigen Privatsicherheiten] und Privatversicherungen zu zerstören."
"abolish the very condition of their existence hitherto, which has also been the condition of existence of all society up to the present, that is, they must abolish labour (die Arbeit aufheben)"
What I will claim here is a linguistic and philosophical development from Engels language of Befreiung, into Engelian-Marxist aufgehoben and abschaffen, into finally Hegelian-Marxist Aufhebung and Aufheben.
The importance of the differences in these concern deeply the dialectical philosophy of Hegel which grounds the possibility for Dialectical Materialism. Marx's development of Hegel is something with happens across his works and lifetime, most noticeably in the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right and Grundrisse which deals with Hegel's Science of Logic.
The shift emphasises a philosophical difference between exemption to abolition/emancipation/liberation which modern Marxist Scholars who translate will already retroactively incur into the original text, because this is the philosophical development of Marx and of Communism throughout its history.
Exemption means removal, upheaval. Which is only one half of the necessary freedom being described as the one Communism provides for Prolétairat. In the way that being removed from prolétairat status doesn't mean the same as liberating or emancipating it. This is an example of an Ex-proletariat:
Ex-
out of
outside
former, but still living (almost always used with a hyphen)
(biology) Lacking
An Ex-proletariat was previously a prolétairat but then became something else. Whilst this something else can include the new position granted by communist revolution, it doesn't exclude the prolétairat who has simply become bourgeois. A bourgeois member of society, a capitalist, Is precisely Ex-proletariat.
Prolétairat - Befreiung.
Though it is clear to marxists that turning prolétairat into bourgeois members of society is clearly not what is meant or intended with Communism and its principles. Rather, communism is the production of the Un-prolétairat. Or, the un-production of the proletariat by means of the proletariat.
Un-
Used to form temporary names of elements (such as unbiunium) whose existence has been predicted, and have not yet been given a trivial name.
(added to verbs to form verbs) do the opposite of, reverse (a specified action)
(rare) intensifying a verb that already suggests opposition or removal
(added to adjectives or past participles) not
(added to nouns) contrary to or contrasted against traditional norms; unconventional; alternative(added to adjectives or past participles) not
(added to nouns) contrary to or contrasted against traditional norms; unconventional; alternative
Un-proletariat suggests both intensifying a verb that already suggests opposition or removal, and the existence of something which has been predicted, and has not yet been given a name.
This is true, the new figure who emerges as Un-proletariat, not an Ex-proletariat, who hasn't simply exited his prolétairat status and become bourgeois. But has liberated himself and the condition which created her, creating something entirely new in the process.
This is the unique difference between the Hegelian Aufheben, Aufhebung of later Marxist texts and the Abschaffung, Befreiung of earlier Engelian-Marxist works. The difference between exemption and emancipation.
Hegel's sophisticated usage of both aufheben and aufhebung, which Engels later develops in his Dialectics of Nature as the third essential movement: as Negation of the negation.
"The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa;
The law of the interpenetration of opposites;
The law of the negation of the negation"
"All three are developed by Hegel in his idealist fashion as mere laws of thought: the first, in the first part of his Logic, in the Doctrine of Being; the second fills the whole of the second and by far the most important part of his Logic, the Doctrine of Essence; finally the third figures as the fundamental law for the construction of the whole system [...]
The mistake lies in the fact that these laws are foisted on nature and history as laws of thought, and not deduced from them. "
One "law" proposed in the Dialectics of Nature is the "law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa".
Most commonly cited is the change of water from a liquid to a gas.
But the negation of the negation:
"the Hegelian higher unity, in which the contradiction is supposed to be sublated, that is to say, in the Hegelian verbal jugglery, both overcome and preserved" - Anti-Duhring
This term, sublation, is at the heart of the revised and improved usage of terms like aufhebung. Overcome and Preserved. Precisely. Specifically, Aufhebung is the term referring to the immanent contradiction of both change and preservation. Radical transformation and of something remaining essentially the same; and Aufheben, the German verb means "to cancel", "to keep" and "to pick up", "to abolish". It is Aufhebung in Action. Sublation in motion. Sublimation.
The sublation of the prolétairat, a far more Hegelian understanding of it, is the proletariat becoming its own undoing. It overcomes itself, and survives this process. Becoming something new. Something entirely different. As Marx puts it in the Grundrisse:
"What is progress if not the absolute elaboration of humanity’s creative dispositions . . . unmeasured by any previously established yardstick[,] an end in itself . . . the absolute movement of becoming?"
There is indeed perhaps no name yet for the Un-prolétairat, it is a temporary stand in for the previously unmeasured transformation of quantity into quality and the negation of the negation.
Prolétariat - Aufhebung
Metamorphosis.
Communism is the cocoon for the caterpillar proletariat, the Un-prolétairat is the emergent butterfly.