The Oppression of Nature and the Latent Transhumanism of Marxism

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that Marxism is inherently transhumanist because it entails a drive to de-reify nature, including the human being. Nature ought to be, like religion and capital, considered a barrier to human self-production. I argue that the logic of Marxism also requires the temporal inversion of historical materialism, and its projection into the future. This is the transhumanism of Marxism. It is predominantly latent today. Marxists have largely been reluctant to conduct the temporal inversion of their historical materialist perspective, and in doing so have accepted an arbitrarily reified notion of the human. Transhumanists have not. I link Marxism and transhumanism through an ontological concept of suffering. Suffering encapsulates the materialist ontological relation between nature and the human. By tracing how suffering is articulated in both Marxism and transhumanism, I argue that we can get an idea of how to fully work out Marxism’s temporal inversion and revive its latent transhumanism.