This paper was presented at Telos in Europe: The L’Aquila Conference, held on September 7-9, 2012, in L’Aquila, Italy.
The argument of this paper is inspired by the actual problem of the individual in the modern state, in other words, the relationship between the political life and the individual, or the relation of the individual with politics. The thesis would claim that the individual as one of the fundamental features of modern times does not exist—or is not considered—as political agent although the modern political institution is based on the existence of the individual with its economic, social, and political rights. In this context, the individual exists only as consumer both for him/herself and for another (capitalist) and as a producer for another (capitalist) but not as a creator for him/herself. Marx talks about the production and consumption dialectic in the “Introduction” to Grundrisse (1858, published 1939). In this context a brief survey is presented here of some well-known early writings of Marx in an effort to outline how this dialectic is revealed for the difference between Marx’s and Hegel’s philosophical perspectives of the individual existence. The statement claiming that Marx does not discuss the concept of individual as Hegel does is a delusion.
