The Marxist Foundation: Labor, Tool, Consciousness
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Vygotsky’s theory is orthodox Marxist in the best sense: it takes Marx seriously without becoming dogmatic. The core thesis: consciousness arises from labor. Marx had written: “Labor is […] a mediation of the metabolism between man and nature.” Man shapes nature through tools – and in this process his consciousness develops.[1]
Vygotsky transfers this to psychology: the tool is not merely a technical instrument (hammer, plow), but a psychological instrument (language, writing, number). Just as the hammer extends the hand, language extends memory. Just as the plow transforms nature, writing transforms consciousness. Cultural tools are congealed labor – they embody historically accumulated practice.[2]
The appropriation of these tools is not individual, but social. The child learns to speak because others speak. It learns to count because society uses numbers. It learns to write because writing is culturally transmitted. This appropriation is labor – the active transformation of others’ tools into one’s own. The child makes culture its own – and thereby becomes human.[3]
The dialectical structure: nature (biological organism) becomes second nature (cultural being) through mediation (the appropriation of tools). This transformation is not external but constitutive – it creates qualitatively new psychic functions. Memory turns from natural (immediate) to cultural (mediated). Attention turns from involuntary to voluntary. Thinking turns from practical to conceptual.[4]
This position is materialist (consciousness arises from practice), but not reductionist (consciousness is not merely nature). It is historical (consciousness develops culturally), but not relativist (the structures of higher mental functions are universal). It is dialectical (mediation creates something new), but not speculative (it is empirically testable).[5]
Karl Marx: Capital, Vol. 1, MEW 23, pp. 192-213 (“The Labour Process”). Vygotsky explicitly refers to these passages in: “Tool and Symbol,” pp. 21-25. ↩︎
Vygotsky: “Tool and Symbol,” pp. 53-58. The analogy between tool and sign is systematically developed, but also differentiated: tools are directed outward (they change nature), signs are directed inward (they change consciousness). ↩︎
On the concept of appropriation see: Alexei N. Leontiev: Activity, Consciousness, and Personality, Berlin: Volk und Wissen, 1982, chap. 3. ↩︎
This transformation is systematically analyzed in: Dieter Holz: “Vygotsky und die dialektische Psychologie,” in: Forum Kritische Psychologie 18 (1986), pp. 5-34. ↩︎
On the materialist, but non-reductionist position see: Jerome Bruner: Acts of Meaning, Cambridge/MA: Harvard UP, 1990, chap. 1: “The Proper Study of Man.” ↩︎