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“The End of History”: A Reappraisal of Marx's Views on Alienation and Human Emancipation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

J. J. Clarke
J. J. Clarke
Affiliation:
University of Singapore
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Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , September 1971 , pp. 367 - 380
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1971

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References

1 For example, Gellner, Ernest in Thought and Change (London, 1964Google Scholar), and Flew, A. G. N. in “The Apocalypse of the Young Marx” in Question 2 (London, 1969Google Scholar).

2 For example, Popper, K. R. in The Open Society and Its Enemies (London, 1945Google Scholar), and Berlin, Isaiah in Two Concepts of Liberty (Oxford, 1959Google Scholar).

3 See Hyppolite, Jean, Studies on Marx and Hegel (London, 1969), 116.Google Scholar

4 The argument will be based almost entirely on the works of the pre-1848 period, but without prejudging the issue with regard to the later works. For extended expositions of the claim that there is no real gap between the young and the older Marx, see Avineri, Shlomo, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge, 1968CrossRefGoogle Scholar), and Tucker, Robert, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (Cambridge, 1964Google Scholar). The works most often referred to are: “On the Jewish Question,” the “Introduction” to the “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right,” and the “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,” collected in Karl Marx: Early Writings, ed. Bottomore, T. B. (New York, 1964Google Scholar), and also The German Ideology (Moscow, 1964).

5 Studies on Marx and Hegel, 87.

6 Marxism: The Unity of Theory and Practice (Michigan, 1954), 83.

7 Thought and Change, 126.

8 Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy, ed. Bottomore, T. B. (New York, 1964), 67–9.Google Scholar

9 For a full treatment of this point, see Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, chap. 3.

10 This at any rate has been a common interpretation, but see Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel, for a more “realistic” view of Hegel.

11 Early Writings, 43.

12 Ibid., 158.

13 The German Ideology, 57.

14 Early Writings, 203.

15 Ibid., 207.

16 Ibid., 128.

17 Even the “basic” need to eat is transformed by the cultivation of men's senses; see ibid., 161–2. I have developed this point at length in an article entitled “The Unity and Diversity of Culture” in American Anthropologist, lxxii, no. 2 (June 1970).

18 Early Writings, 128.

19 Ibid., 160.

20 In Sartrean terms, it would be a case of mauvaise foi to blame man's alienated condition on factors that were claimed to be outside of his control; man is always potentially master of his own fate.

21 Ibid., 137 and 156.

22 Studies on Marx and Hegel, 88, 87.

23 See chap. 8 and the “Conclusion” of his Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx.

24 Ibid., 239. Tucker appears to suggest that it is a mental condition.

25 Ibid., 126.

26 See Early Writings, 160 ff.

27 Ibid., 160.

28 See Tucker, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx, 137. Kamenka also agrees that alienation is something “distinct from and more basic than the economic facts supposed to follow from it,” although he goes on to quote the Communist Manifesto in support of the further claim that Marx subsequently abandoned this view. But in the passage quoted Marx is not rejecting his own earlier view but is castigating Hegelian abstractions such as “alienation of humanity,” “dethronement of the Category of the General,” etc. See Kamenka, Eugene, The Ethical Foundations of Marxism (London, 1962), 83.Google Scholar

29 Early Writings, 79 and 80.

30 Ibid., 153–5.

31 See in particular “Private Property and Communism” in Early Writings, 152 ff.; The German Ideology, 45; and Critique of the Gotha Programme, Selected Writings, ii, 24.

32 This is Avineri's view, which explains why he is puzzled by the “bucolic” images of The German Ideology: these are not employed as models or paradigms of a future society, but rather as illustrations in support of his argument concerning the fixation of social roles. See The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, 220 ff, and The German Ideology, 45.

33 The German Ideology, x.

34 Early Writings, 165.

35 Ibid., 177–8.

36 Ibid., 171.

37 Gellner describes this as the “Hidden Prince” – the true, good, genuine self awaiting release. This interpretation of Marx appears to ignore Marx's insistence that men create themselves through their work – not the unfolding of some inner principle – a view closer, if anything, to Hegel's. See Gellner, Thought and Change, 86 ff.

38 See The Ethical Foundations of Marxism, 96–9. Kamenka assumes that by “self-determination” Marx meant acting in accordance with one's own nature, and in so far as acting in accordance with one's own being is necessarily harmonious, self-determined activity is also necessarily harmonious. Once we abandon this overly sophisticated view we can see more clearly the absurdity of claiming that Marx was a soft-minded Utopian.

39 The belief that the communist revolution implies for Marx some kind of transformation of human nature is seriously entertained by many scholars. Thus Tucker speaks of a “self-change… a new state of the generic human self” (Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx, 151), and according to Hyppolite “… the Hegelian conception of alienation, unlike the Marxian, is not confounded with a complete loss of the self in a new nature” (Studies on Marx and Hegel, 89). See also Flew, “The Apocalypse of the Young Marx,” 19–20. I believe it is more correct to interpret the revolution negatively as the removal of the impediments to self-realization rather than any positive change wrought in human beings themselves.

40 The German Ideology, 270–1.

41 Ibid., 93–4.

42 See Early Writings, 160–1.

43 The German Ideology, 272.

44 Hyppolite writes: “It is undeniable that the capitalist system represents a form of human alienation, but it can hardly be the only one. Is there not in love, in human relationships, in the mutual recognition of men, in technology whereby man creates and builds his world, and in the political administration of the state… a representation of the self external to itself… which presupposes a kind of separation or alienation” (Studies on Marx and Hegel, 87). I do not think that Marx would object to the spirit of this remark, though he might qualify it by saying that such “esoteric” forms of alienation can only appear when the more pervasive economic forms have been, or are being, overcome.

45 Early Writings, 80 and 170.

46 This not only applies to economic factors but to religious ones as well: “The criticism of religion disillusions man so that he will think, act and fashion his reality as a man who has lost his illusions and regained his reason; so that he will revolve about himself as his own true sun.” Ibid., 44.