Natural man

From MarxWiki

“Natural Man” is a concept that stemmed from the Enlightenment, whose philosophers used it to explain, well, pretty much whatever they wanted. But Rousseau, for example, used it to explain natural law and reason, both fundamental principles of The Enlightenment. Marx argues, in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, that the concept of “natural man” only serves the romantic notion of the Bourgeoisie: but in fact it is fictitious, and represents only one of the many falsities that capitalism rests on. Early philosophers that are said to have founded modern economics often used natural man as a gateway to explain the “invisible hand” that guided the economy. Marx asserts that it is constructed through a false notion of production; a view that paints it as ahistorical, natural, and inevitable while means of production are the inverse. The concept of “natural man” who is able to act on his own self-interest and still get what he needs only seems to distance the elite from problems with distribution and exchange, a problem which still holds today. Many things upset the idea that if we all acted on our own self-interest, everyone would be happy: the unemployment rate and the level income in the third world, for example, can lead one to the same conclusion that Marx was led to: we do not live in a society where we are all able to act on our own self-interest. We abide by the rules of an economy that allows the elite and the wealthy to act in their own self-interest.