General Will and Sharing

Marx's juxtaposition to Hegel overshadows a potentially instructive contrast with Kant. Both he and the latter are influenced by Rousseau's General Will, but while Kant conceives it as primarily a Moral Principle, for Marx, it is a Political one. For Kant, it is the ground of an overcoming of Egoistic drives, which he further projects as the basis of a polis, i. e. his Kingdom of Ends, but the latter remains an abstract ideal, mediated with actuality by 'God'. In contrast, Marx regards Kant's concept of Morality as an expression of social alienation, with the abolition of Private Property the actualization of the General Will that reconciles Morality and Politics. However, so long as his "for me" concept of Consciousness is unaffected by that abolition, the projected reconciliation remains incomplete. In an alternative to both approaches, the concept of Sharing is both a Moral expression of the General Will, and the basis for the concrete achieving of the Socialist goal of the abolition of Private Property, i. e. it can change both persons and the world in accordance with Rousseau's concept.