ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an argument to justify the integration of the semantico-ethical theory and the Marxian account of historical necessity just rehearsed. The distinction between objective and subjective productive forces is explicitly drawn by Karl Marx. He speaks in Capital of the separation ‘of subjective labour power from the objective conditions of labour’ as being the ‘real foundation in fact, and the starting point of capitalist production’. The recognition that imagination and intellection were central to the subjective productive forces prompted Marx not only to make the radical division between human labour and animal activity that he makes in this passage, but also to distinguish what he called ‘co-operative’ from ‘universal’ labour. The latter represents the historical store of the collective achievements made possible by the subjective forces of production. The proposition that human labour in its fullness includes human language is one that someone trained in the Hegelian tradition might very well take for granted.
