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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
‘Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human essence. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of social relations.’
It is a common belief, shared both by Marxists and by critics of Marxism, that differences in the interpretation of this statement have important implications for the assessment of Marx's system of ideas. How we read it will affect our view of the unity of Marx's thought and of the continuity of its development over his lifetime, and it will bear crucially on our appraisal of the epistemological status—metaphysical, scientific or mythopoeic—of the various elements of the Marxian system. Among Marxists, members of the Frankfurt School have emphasized the paternity of Marxian metaphysical humanism in Hegel's conception of man as a self-creating being, while Althusser and his disciples have seen in the extrusion from Marx's later work of any such ‘anthropomorphic’ notion a guarantee of the scientific character of his historical materialism. Among Marx's liberal critics, it is widely agreed that he espoused an essentialist view of man and, often enough, it is thought that this alone is sufficient to disqualify his system from scientific status. No consensus exists, however, as to the cognitive standing of the several components of Marx's thought. That agreement should be lacking as to the place in it of a conception of human nature is hardly surprising. Different construals of the role of a view of man will reflect divergent commitments, not only in the philosophy and methodology of social and historical inquiry, but in moral and political thought as well.
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49 I am particularly grateful to Gerry Cohen, David Miller, Bhikhu Parekh and Bill Weinstein for their comments on previous versions of this paper.