The Work and Culture

In contrast to the traditional socio-cultural-anthropological definitions of culture, here culture is analyzed in the framework of Marx\u27s concept of work. The starting assumption is that culture is the consequence of work. Being the process of man’s mutual exchange with nature, the work is bestowing a specific character on the result of this process. As the culture is the consequence of work, i.e. the results of the man’s relationship with nature, it appears as the result of this exchange, hence as the possession of nature. Such a concept of the culture implicates a critical attitude towards it. The culture is here appearing as a reification of reality for man. Man becomes the owner of the nature, i. e. he modifies the outer world according to his own measure. By this he objectifies nature as an object of his unlimited appropriation. Cultivation, work and culture become thus media of man’s abstraction from nature. Culture as the product of work not only separates the man from nature, but contributes to his further alienation. It forms up into a force which becomes an objective in itself. Man transforms from being a subject into an object of manipulation by anonymous authority contained by culture. Moreover, he becomes a working instrument serving to the multiplication of culture. But, in the analysis of the relationship between routine and creative work, the author finds possibilities of disintegration of work in culture, i. e. the separation of man from the routine work with the help of improved means of production, hence the elements of culture. By disintegration of work, the culture negates the content of its own alienating, reifying nature. The culture is thus appearing as a possibility of annulment of work — hence of itself as the alienated consequence or product of work