The M ediation o f Nature through Society

79

nature presented by the Enlightenment. T h e epoch o f the

Enlightenment was incapable o f analysing labour as the
means o f appropriation, o f moving from this to the neoessity
o f the division o f labour and the accompanying ck-ss
divisions, and finally o f revealing with this analysis the class
character o f bourgeois society, since this was an epoch
when the bourgeoisie posited itself as an absolute, and
viewed the concept o f class, if it did so at all, purely as a
moment o f past history*.77 Hence the real background o f the
M arxist concept o f metabolism did not even enter the field
o f vision o f the Enlightenment. Nature was seen as some
thing immediately given, instantly capable o f apprehension,
whereas M arx stated that:
T h e object o f labour can only becom e raw m aterial when it has
already undergone a change m ediated through labour.71

T he whole o f nature is socially mediated and, inversely,

society is mediated through nature as a component o f total
reality. The hidden nature-speculation in M arx character*izes this side o f the connection. T he different economic
formations o f society which have succeeded each other
historically have been so many modes o f natures se lf
mediation. Sundered into two parts, man and material to be
worked on, nature is always present to itself in this division.7*
Nature attains self-consciousness in men, and amalgamates
with itself i>y virtue o f their theoretical-practical activity.
Human participation in something alien and external to
them appears at first to be something equally alien and
external to nature; but in fact it proves to be a natural
condition o f human existence*, which is itself a part o f
nature, and it therefore constitutes natures self-m ovem ent
O nly in this way can we speak meaningfully o f a dialec
tic o f nature*. Unlike Engels (who agreed for once with
Feuerbach on this), M arx the nature-dialectician did not
lim it him self to contemplating pre-human nature and its
history, viewing reality only in the form o f the O bject?,*
nor, despite his admiration for Hegel, did he view reality in
the form o f the Subject*. He insisted instead on the indi
visibility o f the two moments. T he awareness o f this
indivisibility lies at the core o f M arxs materialism.*1 Marxs