Now to the second issue. Right from the start we saw Marx
present the idea that the essential human activity is productive
activity, specifically labour. This, then, appears first in the
Early Writings, yet also provides the grounding for both
Marx’s economic theory and his theory of history. Labour is
the source of all economic value, and is also the driving force
of history. But does labour have the importance Marx
supposes?
If one had to stand there and pick out a single ‘essential
human activity’, then ‘productive activity’, broadly construed,
looks like a very plausible candidate indeed. But why
suppose that there is one essential human activity? Marx says,
early in the German Ideology: