ABSTRACT
Marx had postulated a contradiction between the collective organization of production and the individual ownership of the means of production. As a consequence, he held, workers have no control over their work or the use to which the wealth they produce is put. Workers are, as it were, "wage slaves". But this contradiction, Marx believed, which is crucial to capitalist production, will eventually spur workers to recognize who and what they are as distinct from the bourgeoisie. In his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx asserted that an object, reality, is not known through abstract contemplation but only through practical, sensuous activity. Yet, Marx's conception of the vast division and coordination of work, which is a social object, was that of a theorist, an abstract understanding quite distinct from the lived, practical, sensuous reality of his or anyone's work life. Perhaps they all had "false consciousness", as Engels put it. But this consciousness was false if one accepted Marx's philosophy of history.
