Sense of life in the age of universal labor

Abstract

In any historical epochб the sense of life is one of the key questions of human existence. However, the problem of the sense of life becomes especially relevant during critical historical epochs, including todays, because without solving this problem it is impossible to develop constructive tendencies of the new stage of social development. From the Marxist point of view, the key sense-making factor is always labor, since the latter is the essential force of human force, which enables heopleim to be the cause of themselves. Accordingly, radical changes in labor eventually lead to significant changes in the sense of life, which, through spiritual choices, have an inverse effect on labor. Hence, the need for a dialectical consideration of the question of the sense of life not only in the abstract-universal, but also in the concrete-universal, historical aspect. K. Marx singles out a special (creative and selfdetermined) type of laboruniversal labor, which only in the present epoch receives great quantitative distribution and qualitative development. This research examines the influence of the formation of universal labor on the actual and potential changes in the sense of life of our contemporaries. It is shown that universal labor, opposing laborjob and spreading in conditions of sense-life problems conditioned by labor-job of decaying capitalist epoch, itself leads to sense-life crises of two types. The first one characterizes such crises within the framework of late capitalism, the second one within the framework of the emerging post-capitalism. The first type is associated with the external contradictions of universal labor, the second type with its internal contradictions. Nevertheless, the internal tendencies of the formation of universal labor, associated with its developed cooperation (with both contemporaries and predecessors), are aimed at a favorable resolution of sense-life difficulties.