Character mask

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The character mask as a concept in Marxist sociology is the name given to the alienated human being in capitalism , who is a personification of economic conditions.

origin

Karl Marx, for his part, took the term from the theater language of the 18th century , with which character masks (e.g. il dottore ) were distinguished from national masks (e.g. The Turk ) in the Italian comedy of types.

Character masks represent the theater is a disguise that a particular state is supposed to represent or people; on stage, the character mask roles should represent a character in his complete development.

In its more recent, ethically tinged meaning, the word already appears in Jean Paul .

Personification of economic relationships

As “character masks”, Marx describes the forms of interaction of individuals in a particular society as a function of the directly social forms of work. In the first chapter of his main work, Das Kapital , he introduces the category of the character mask when comparing modern capitalism with medieval agrarian society.

At that time, serfs and landlords , vassals and feudal lords, laypeople and pastors faced each other in social production and the spheres of life built on it. According to Marx, these relationships also took on fetishized forms, but in contrast to the situation under capitalism, they were determined by the direct relationship between individuals:

“The natural form of labor, its particularity, and not, as on the basis of commodity production , its generality, is here its direct social form. The drudgery is equally measured by the time as the goods-producing work, but everyone knows serfs that there is a definite quantity of his own personal labor, which he spent his master on duty. Tithe to be paid to the priest is clearer than the priest's blessing. Regardless of how one may judge the character masks in which people face each other here, the social relationships of the people in their work appear in any case as their own personal relationships and are not disguised in the social relationships of things, of the work products. "

In capitalism, the owners of goods face each other in exchange. Their relationship is now determined by the social relationship of commodity values:

“The goods cannot go to market themselves and cannot exchange themselves. So we have to look around for their guardians, the goods owners. The goods are things and therefore have no resistance to people. If they are unwilling, he can use force, in other words, take them. In order to relate these things to one another as commodities, the custodians must relate to one another as persons whose will dwells in those things, so that one only acquires the foreign commodity with the will of the other, i.e. each only through one or both common acts of will by selling his own. You must therefore recognize each other as private owners . This legal relationship, the form of which is the contract, whether legally developed or not, is a relationship of will in which the economic relationship is reflected. The content of this legal or volitional relationship is given by the economic relationship itself. The people exist here only for one another as representatives of goods and therefore as goods owners. In the course of development we shall find in general that the economic character masks of people are only the personifications of the economic relationships as the bearers of which they face one another. "

Here, too, labor power is understood as a commodity which the worker exchanges with the capitalist for wages. Both "capitalist" and "wage worker" are character masks as such; H. Personifications of economic categories.

meaning

The Marxian use of the term in capital , where it denotes the structural determination of individual actors, was formative: "We are concerned here with people only insofar as they are the personification of economic categories, bearers of certain class relationships and interests," for which it makes no sense had to "hold the individual responsible".

According to Marx, people in capitalism have specific roles and functions that are determined by society. Basically, however, they always have to act as capitalists or proletarians , everything else (e.g. professional ethics) - including “personal” characteristics (e.g. generosity) - are masks that fall when things get serious.

Ingo Elbe writes, for example:

“Marx's economic criticism consistently develops the actions of the actors from the socialization conditions of work, from the conditions in which the individuals are placed in the context of the everyday re-production / production of their lives. This structural determination of the actors, the compulsion that results from the given conditions, on the basis of which the individuals primarily relate to one another through social issues, he summarizes in terms such as 'character mask' or 'personification'. "

Alex Demirović emphasizes that the Marxian version of the personification of social relationships not only represents a process of determining economic structures on the actors, but also emphasizes the opposite aspect, that social structures must always be made and maintained by people, and thus also be changed can.

“It's about understanding the logic of individual actions. The social processes are not the result of individual volitional decisions. But neither are they just passive victims. The character mask is determined by Marx as a personification. This gives his reflection an active accent: the individuals are made into definite persons in and through the circumstances under which they live. In this way they become bearers of relations, not of any relations, but of class relations. The people actively carry the circumstances and reproduce them through their actions. If the relationships were not supported by people, they would not exist. But it's not the individuals, but ... the people as members of classes. They act according to certain collective points of view: they think and speak to one another, develop daily habits, form expectations about the course of social development or their rights and make decisions in these collective contexts. They develop dispositions to exercise command over other people, create reasons for themselves why they are allowed to exercise power and acquire social wealth and use force in their defense. All of these are always collective practices, i.e. concrete conditions under which certain individuals live as a collective. This collective practice - a class practice - can be changed. "

swell

  1. ↑ Character mask , in: Herders Conversations-Lexikon , 1st edition 1854–1857.
  2. ↑ Jochen Hörisch : Character masks . Subjectivity and Trauma in Jean Paul and Marx. In: Yearbook of the Jean Paul Society . No. 14, 1979.
  3. ↑ MEW Vol. 23, pp. 91-92
  4. ↑ MEW Vol. 23, pp. 99-100
  5. ↑ Marx: Capital. MEW Vol. 23, p. 16
  6. ↑ Ingo Elbe: Character mask .
  7. ↑ Alex Demirovic: What exactly does Marx mean by "character mask"? With the prevailing production conditions, is it possible to shed the character mask? (e.g. outside of the production context?) ( Memento of the original dated November 30, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , November 10, 2008. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kapital-lesen.de

literature

See also